The Campaign Trail and New Media
Hats are being thrown in the ring right and left, the money scramble is on, and the 2008 Presidential Campaign has begun. It’s a wide open field, and, since there is no incumbent president or vice president running, the number of candidates on both sides of the fence is, at this time, staggering. A recent article in the NYT about the Rush of Entries into the race speculates on how, with the compressed Primary schedule, the New Media will affect both races.
It’s an interesting speculation, first from the point of view of how many States have juggled their Primary schedule to be within the first week, or at least within the first month, a move that has election analysts scrambling for answers on what that could mean. Will New Hampshire returns be diluted by upstart South Carolina and Nevada races? Or will the opposite hold true and the sweep happen early? And what about the dough? A full campaign chest in the past has always had some sway over who will ultimately swing the vote. But there’s a possible wildcard here, one that may allow, if used effectively, to swing a vote without a lot of dollars.
The NYT article quotes Matthew Dowd, who helped get Bush re-elected:
“The earlier process will reward candidates who truly have a succinct, credible, authentic and passionate message which can sustain itself over the long nature of the campaign,” said Matthew Dowd, the chief strategist for Mr. Bush’s re-election campaign in 2004.He also said that in 2007 candidates would be rewarded by scoring points in “nonvoting events” such as media attention, their standings in the polls and the size and response of crowds, because those sorts of factors will help winnow the field more than the primaries still a year away.
Despite the intense focus by most candidates on showing that they can raise the money to run a long and expensive campaign, having a big bank account, Mr. Dowd argued, may actually not be as important in the early stages of this presidential cycle as it was in previous ones.
“It’s for two reasons: the early process will not involve paid media as much, and new technology allows little cost to talk directly to voters,” he said. “And the early process will make it more important for a campaign to know how to respond to knowable and unknowable events in next 12 months.”
Steve Elmendorf, a Democratic strategist who worked on the presidential campaigns of Representative Richard A. Gephardt in 2003 and Senator John Kerry in 2004, warned that candidates and their aides, no matter how tired they become, would have to stay on their toes because any misstep might be captured on tape and circulated on the Internet.
“Every move they make in Iowa and New Hampshire will be on YouTube,” Mr. Elmendorf said. “The only certainty by January ’08 is that people will be pretty tired.”
So a mis-step by a frontrunner, with the result ending up on YouTube, could possibly unmake a front runner. But there’s another wildcard, one I imagine will eventually be picked up and tossed down to trump, maybe in this election, maybe not. What if a candidate became an effective Podcaster? What if those podcasts were provocative enough to become viral, and be Dugg and Del.icio.used and /.ed and Newsvined? Comparing the cost/benefit of TV commercials versus podcasting is a bit tough right now since there is no historical precedent, but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that podcasting is exponentially cheaper than national TV and Radio advertising on the major networks. So anyone who learns to game the Web using this medium just might be able to reach an impressive number of voters and with more than just the billboardish sound byte allowed by the expense of Big Media. A candidate who learns to use this will have the luxury of TIME, not in getting the message out, necessarily, but for sure in the length of the message. Though there are still bandwidth constraints, a ten minute message is an allowable and do-able podcast. Think of what that would cost with Big Media. And if the podcast is promoted ON Big Media as a way of extending a message, it’s very possible that someone who is maybe a less well-heeled candidate but is an effective and charismatic speaker could garner the views that could push him or her over the top.
Will it happen? I don’t know. I do know that even if it doesn’t, there will be a lot of Youtube and Google Video clips of the candidates in the coming months, not to mention huge blocks of blogger bandwidth devoted to who is doing what, who stands for what, who did what, who won’t do what, and who did what to whom.
Interesting times ahead.
Technorati Tags: Presidential Election, Presidential Campaign, Caucus, Primary, New Media, Big Media
