Election 2004

Whatever happened to the bulge on President Bush's back, visible in the Presidential debates? It was referred to by the usual family of -Gates: AudioGate, PrompterGate, and, my favorite, "The Battle of the Bulge." I had followed the story develop first-hand on various blogs, and saw how it played out in the national media, fading out by election day. It's returned to the news, briefly, courtesy of a Dan Kennedy column in the Phoenix. I thought I'd take another look at the story, and try to answer the question as to why the Internet blogs, for all their supposed powers, could not shake the truth out. This is part of a series on "Truth Exposure: Getting the Facts to Light."

First, some background. A couple of weeks before Election Day, the Republican party obtained a hard copy of the Democrats' 46-page "Victory 2004 Florida Coordinated Campaign" and posted it online (in PDF format). The GOP claimed that this document, which had a page for signatures from the Kerry-Edwards campaign, the state party, and union groups, proved that the Democrats were engaged in illegal coordination betwe. The Democrats responded that the coordinating committee was in fact an independent entity allowed by the law, the Florida the Republicans were engaged in the same. The Republicans said they'd file suit with the FEC.

I went to the last hurrah party for the "Young Professionals for Kerry" last week at M.J. O'Connor's. A few people objected, not wanting to have to leave the "unified" group and have to choose between the three tribes listed below. We assured them that a little competition is good in the off years. So here's what to do, if you're young and want to keep the patriot fires burning in Boston:

In the last weekend before Election Day, I feel that I personally persuaded maybe four people to vote through my canvassing efforts. And perhaps a few more on election eve, asking people to honk for Kerry, standing on the highway of SW 10th St. in between the Operation Bubbe headquarters at the Comfort Inn and the I-95 ramp in Deerfield Beach. Many of the big rigs honked for us; some SUV driver asked us whether Kerry was running for President of France; a reporter from the Forward stopped by to ask directions to the hotel (he would file this article). But it didn't matter, as we were blown out of the water in Florida.

Last Saturday I went up to Harvard for an event organized by Anna Weisfeiler of the Harvard Extension School Democrats. It featured Walter Podrazik, David Hunter, and Gary Flowers, who have worked at a number of Democratic National Conventions, coordinating the logistics for political invitees and for the media. It the type of day that made one want to get out of Boston, which I did, not to the Cape but to Cambridge, as I thought I'd like to begin to get ready for the convention next week.

Here's the list of convention bloggers. I'm not on that list, since I take exception to calling this website a blog. Nonetheless, if I do come up with some idle thoughts that are blogworthy, Jon Lebkowsky and Aldon Hynes have asked me to contribue to Greater Democracy. With 15,000 journalists in town, it's going to be a challenge with any unique slants. I expect to contribute one or two articles here. And about 200 pictures.

This perhaps drew winces in every living room in America. But it did inspire me to consider how a structured forum for questions & answers can offset some of the better-known deficiencies of press conferences. I wrote it up in a proposal called the Question Scoreboard. This page is a sampling board for questions for the President and the 2004 campaign.

Picking a candidate is hardly done rationally (as I had feebly done earlier in trying to deduce, according to the Civilities Themes, who would be the best candidate). More often it's about rationalizing your choice once you've made it. Now obviously, Kerry is the best choice for me, for the Network/Access reason alone. After all, I know people in Massachusetts politics, and I'm more closely linked to Kerry than the rest of the candidates. Besieds, it looks like he's going to be the nominee.

The social software and use of the Internet attracted the media, the media attracted attention, and Howard Dean rode the polls up. He peaked too early, and he was stung too many attacks; he criticized the "Washington establishment" of Democrats while soliciting endorsements from them. (In 1992, it was seemed ok for Jerry Brown, or even Ross Perot, to criticize the Washington Democrats for rolling over in the Reagan/Bush years. Now, when liberals think of this group, we like to think of them as the last people defending our nation from indulging into a dangerous cocktail of laissez-faire attitude and crony capitalism, and the preventing the extension of the state of paranoia). Dean just wasn't the best candidate. The only question left was, how did he spend $40M?

The DeanSpace team-- the ones driving the technology for the campaign-- have been asking whether anything went wrong. (I followed DeanSpace only in the last several weeks, so I have a marginal association at best). Mark Ratcliffe provides a summary of answers in his Meta-Analysis of the Dean Campaign. A few commentators, such as the pseudonymous Spengler of the Asia Times, have made an ill-informed comparison of DeanSpace developers to a "dotcom startup", and compare the "crash" to the Internet bubble. (It was roundly criticized by letters to the editor). The only thing I can add is some insight that the "social software" used by the Dean campaign wasn't always social, and sometimes it was anti-social.

1. The software has to continue to be developed, especially along the lines of fostering truly effective deliberation. The emphasis on blogs will be subsumed into more comprehensive community systems. I call it constructive media. Whatever the technique is, it has to be more thorough-sounding than just "Internet-based".
2. We'd have to start using the software for local, smaller efforts, and prove that they are effective complements to committee-meeting politics.
3. We need candidates who really believe in this stuff and practice it, and make their way from the beginning of their political career using it.

Does Howard Dean remain the patron saint of the movement? Not to me, really. It is ultimately ironic that the politician most associated with the Internet, Al Gore, did not inspire this movement after losing the most contested election in the modern age. So maybe it would be prudent to evolve the software to DemSpace for now, that would certainly please the Democratic nominee. It also might call to attention that there's no comparable "GopSpace".

David Brooks, on Wednesday's All Things Considered with E.J. Dionne, remarked:

"Only 42 percent of people voted for him because they agreed with him on the issues. 46 percent said they voted for him because he's 'electable'. What they're doing when they're saying when he's electable is that one group is saying that he has certain qualities that appear to appeal to other groups of people. That's pretty suspect to go about voting, because people tend to be wrong."
"Multi-State Primaries Await Democrats"