Political Gastronomica : January 2008

« October 2007 | Main | February 2008 »

Wow - JK stands his ground and stays above the fray

Well, I am catching up on This Week with George Stephanopoulos and watched as he interviewed JK. And, for a man who has many ways of looking at an issue and trying to be very professorial, he did amazingly well with the question about Shrum's book and the quote regarding Edwards. Now, I have no idea what the quote was, but JK did not rise to the bait - and that was impressive.

Way to go JK!

Tags: John Kerry, George Stephanopoulos, John Edwards

Posted by Sanford Dickert at 11:47 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Kerry to Endorse Obama. Wow.

This was a shocker from a different point of view. When I was sitting down at CooBric, my CooBric cofounder Tony mentioned that Kerry was endorsing Obama for his run for the Presidency. Now that made me pause.

First thing I did is go to memeorandum and found a couple of articles. Kerry is going to announce at 11am in South Carolina - something hit me. That was where JK announced his campaign in early September 2003. I wonder if they will have the same ship in the background.

My question was "why?" Not that I think Obama is a bad choice, but I thought maybe he would stay above the fray until more was decided. His work with Clinton and his running mate Edwards - I thought maybe some form of loyalty? But then I read and remembered a couple of things:

• Clinton piling on Kerry for his "get stuck in Iraq" faux pas
  From the AP article on Yahoo! News: "While Kerry has been close to Clinton's husband, the former president, he was incensed in 2006 when she chided him after Kerry suggested that people who don't go to school "get stuck in Iraq." Aides said Kerry meant to jab at Bush and say "get us stuck in Iraq," and that he didn't appreciate Clinton piling onto the criticism he was already getting for the remark.
• Kerry wanting to be a "kingmaker"?
  JK has been fighting for Democrats for the past four years, building on his 3M member email list and continuing the fight to generate interest amoungst the faithful. He has raised incredible amounts of money for many Democratic causes - and candidates. Is this another way of him using his resources to help another? Certainly.
• Kerry and Edwards did not agree on giving up the fight
  I was reading the book "Was the 2004 Presidential Election Stolen" and learned that the night the details were coming out about the voting discrepancies in the battleground states and how Edwards wanted to fight on. It was Kerry (according to the book) that decided otherwise. After seeing both of them together in Florida and other places, it was a surprise that he did not make any endorsement.

I am pleased to see JK back in the game - and offering his help to any candidate. That is one of the things I truly like about JK - he is trying to help and do his best. His support for Obama is his way of contributing to the discourse - and to help get America (and the politically sensitive) engaged.

Tags: John Kerry, Barak Obama, Campaign 2008, Endorsement for Obama

Posted by Sanford Dickert at 10:50 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

The most important issue in deciding the Presidency?

Sorry, but this one was too funny to ignore (from the Onion News Network):

Posted by Sanford Dickert at 5:40 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Blast from the Past - Kerry's 2004 Online Fundraising Performance

I have been reading all sorts of posts on the performance of the different campaigns, including Colin Delany's post on TechPresident about John Edward's $1M funding surprise in five days and the insurgence of online fundraising after a successful win in Iowa and/or in New Hampshire. Well, I have always had the online stats from those first two weeks after Kerry won Iowa and New Hampshire and thought maybe I could share them with you.

(click to see larger image)

Performance-based Metrics
One of the things we were doing from November until January was trying to unlock the secrets of fundraising and online performance. I spent untold hours pouring over data and online donations to determine the potential success formula. We learned that more pages on a contribution page is bad (went from a 20% conversion rate to an 80% conversion rate), one page minimum on the forms, fewer elements are better (you do not need them to check off each line on the FEC disclaimer) and watched how the conversion rate (contributions/unique visitors and finished contributing/started contributing) improved. But nothing could prepare us for the avalanche that happened on the day after Iowa.

The very next day, as the graph shows, we were having incredible performance on the donations. At the time, I got besieged by one of the communication staffers who asked me for metrics on performance. After a bit, we rushed out numbers and found our press going through the roof. Everyone wanted to know how we were doing. I remember a staff meeting a couple days later where someone from the senior staff commented on the ATM machine finally was working with the Internet. Within a week, we had hit $1M on online donations - web and email.

New Hampshire and Super Tuesday
We were seriously worried about the software doing on contributions since it was relatively cheap and had not been tested under serious load conditions, but when New Hampshire went to JK, I was there all night long watching the server load, making sure we were okay. And, we made it quite nicely. It wasn't until SuperTuesday that we discovered the fallacy of low-cost solutions in an enterprise world.

The evening that SuperTuesday was announced for JK, we were in a large auditorium and were watching the celebration of JK becoming the presumptive nominee. It was astonishing, and I had someone watching the server to make sure all went well. The very next day, MeetUp.org decided to point their 2M members to our server. According to our software provider, we were assured everything would be okay. It could handle the load. Uh huh.

Within 15 minutes, the server suddenly froze and gave up the ghost. We restarted the server and tried again. Less than 5 minutes and it stopped. Interesting, at the same time, Nicco Mele of the Dean Campaign called wondering how we were doing. We discussed performance - and even commented on the sudden uptime challenges - and he said that their (the Dean Campaign's info) had always said there was a pent-up energy for donating once the nominee was chosen. I had to dash off, and fortunately for us, we had a backup plan in place to handle the donations - making them a more "batch" process rather than a "real-time" (authorization right at the time of request). Once that system was in place, we easily took in another $1M within 24 hours.

It was an amazing time, and I wonder how Joe is doing over at the Obama campaign right now...

And for the political/data junkies, I offer the following PDF with the graphs for each of the online efforts during those weeks. Click here for the PDF.

Tags: Online Fundraising, eCampaigning, John Kerry, Campaign 2004, Online Fundraising Performance

Posted by Sanford Dickert at 3:03 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Obama's success a combination of factors...

Watching the returns with the DL21C this past evening, I wondered why Hillary Campaign did not turn out the voters that she needed.

Boy, it was COLD out there!
On every television news program this morning, as well as various websites, there was a constant drumming of "the incredible turnout of the youth vote". In an article by CBS News, I read:

In a night of record turnout for the Democratic caucuses, Obama and his message of change captured the vote of the first-time caucus-goers, as well as the votes of young people and political independents.

Well over half of those attending the Democratic presidential caucuses - 57 percent - were attending their first caucus ever, and their choice for the nomination was Obama, with 41 percent support. Hillary Clinton received only 29 percent of first-time votes, and John Edwards trailed with 18 percent. (Among those who attended a caucus previously, Edwards - an Iowa caucus veteran from 2004 - won with 30 percent of the vote.)

It was among young caucus-goers, however, where Obama truly carried the evening. Attendees under 30 voted 57 percent for Obama, compared to only 14 percent for Edwards and 11 percent for Clinton. Among Gen X-ers - 30 to 44 year-olds - Obama received 42 percent to Edwards' 21 percent and Clinton's 23 percent.

In contrast to Obama's strong support among the young, Edwards and Clinton appealed to older voters. Edwards won Baby Boomers with 31 percent, to 28 percent for Clinton and 27 percent for Obama. Clinton handily won the senior vote with 45 percent of those 65 and older, compared to 22 percent and 18 percent for Edwards and Obama respectively.

One of my friends pointed out that the weather this past weekend was 7 degrees Celsius - and last night, was closer to 2 degrees C. Heck, on Weather Underground today, I got a bit of a chuckle when I looked up the Des Moines, IA weather and it said, "Today is forecast to be Much Warmer than yesterday." So, from this simple read, I would assume that senior citizens in Iowa more than likely stayed home, nestled in the warmth of their homes.

Add to the fact that, with the January 3rd primary being just before student return for college, that would mean that Iowa students are spread out around the state (supposedly with their families), while out-of-state students are returning to the college towns, which would normally be chockful of other Iowan resident students. So, with a spread of students in all of the counties, it is not a surprise that a student vote would be quite impactful.

A Lesson from 2004
In 2004, Kerry's upset victory could more than likely be attributed to the desire for change as well, but I would harken it to the fact that many spoke about in the days following: he was considered the other caucus-goers second choice, if their first choice did not garner enough votes in the first round of the caucus. As reported in Talking Points Memo, Obama courted voters to go to the caucus and make him "your second choice, although you are wiser making me your first". When Kucinich and (potentially) Richardson did the "viability dance" (and not sure what happened with Biden and/or Dodd), the idea that the courtship of other, non-viable candidate support may have been incredibly successful by the Obama campaign.

Is this a mandate from the "voters"?
Sorry, but I do not think so. Last night is a reflection the Obama message and their field organization, coupled with the weather (what if it had been warmer and the senior citizens came out in even greater numbers), coupled with the "second choice" option, coupled with the distribution of the youth vote across Iowa (instead of centered at their institutions), I think we might have had a different outcome last night. So, while Iowa makes Round One for Obama, I wonder how New Hampshire turns out in five days.

Tags: Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards, Campaign 2008

Posted by Sanford Dickert at 10:13 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Which horse am I supporting? None of the Above...yet.

For the past two months, I have been traveling around the States and recently out of the country, and I could tell that we were coming close to the Primary Season. Not simply because my google Reader was inundated with vitriol over one candidate saying something bad about another, but the increase in discussion amoungst my friends both here and abroad. Funny thing - everyone that asks me the question gets pretty much the same response:

None of the Above

You know, when the race started out 18 months ago, I was thinking - Gov Bill Richardson. Now, there's a man with a record and a point-of-view I could agree with....until I started hearing him extol his own virtues again, and again, and Again, and AGAIN. Something about the concept of discussing his resume over and over again led me to ask about his vision over the other candidates. But all I can remember from his speeches is "I am the only candidate here whose resume has...."

Then I took a look at John Edwards. Now here is a man whom I am enthused about with his focus on the common man (person, if you will) and a real touch. He has a terrific style about him and he is more grassroots than anyone else I have seen. But I was there in 2004, watching him with JK (I have this photo of the two of them after a speech in South Florida that showed how these two men had become good friends in the midst of the war they were in) and his own speeches were amazing. And he is the real dog in this fight - willing to push for visibility of real issues. But, something still does not gel (and we are not talking about his hair). Not sure how to put my finger on it, but it arises from experience in managing large organizations and from a "transformation" in terms of views and ideas. But I would say that his campaign, I am intrigued by.

Senator Obama - I am not sold yet. From my viewing, he reminds me of the difficulty JK had when presenting his strength on TV. I hear he he is arousing on the stump (as others have seen), but something seems to be missing. I can not put my finger on it - almost something like gravitas is missing. I completely respect his intellect and his desire to bridge the gap. But something has not caught for me with his campaign - something like the discussion I remember having with a friend of mine at Kerry who talked about the moment when the candidate realized that they were competing for the Presidency, not just playing the candidate. It is a moment where you see, as my friend Marcus would tell me, that the candidate was Presidential material - not just my perception of he (or she) being Presidential material. Senator Obama has not hit this yet, IMHO.

And as for Senator Clinton - whew. This is a toughy. I have been impressed with the efficiency and professionalism of her campaign (the number of people women I have referred to her campaign office is astonishing) and the way it has been run - in some ways, I only wish the Kerry Campaign had Mary-Beth Cahill a whole lot sooner. But, I am not an avid Hillary supporter like a number of my political friends are at the moment. I , like a lot of Americans am waiting to see what happens - and will make my choice when I have to.

As most Democratic operatives know, I will support whomever becomes the presumptive Democratic nominee since I am so tired of a Republican Administration and want to change the direction of our future. So no matter who wins the Democratic nomination, I will more than likely vote Democratic....unless one thing occurs:

Mayor Mike Bloomberg gets in the race.

I have been contemplating this for the past 18 months and, while I normally vote straight Democratic, there are other issues that I have been contemplating, especially when I take a worldly view. And, I am sorry, the issues facing the American people in the coming 4, 8 and even 12 years are far greater than partisan politics.

But, like everyone else in the nation who is watching the event in Iowa, I am wondering what happens next.

Tags: Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards, Mike Bloomberg, Campaign 2008

Posted by Sanford Dickert at 8:01 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack