MyDD :: Looking ahead: Presidential primaries

Looking ahead: Presidential primaries

by Bob Schacht, Fri Jul 06, 2007 at 05:30:07 AM EST

I was thinking this evening about the very compressed primary season next winter. The primaries will come fast and furious, and the candidates will have little time for personal contact with voters. Normally, what this would mean is big $$$ for massive television campaigns, and I am sure that we'll see that.

However, there is another possibility, and some of the middle tier candidates might take advantage of it, if they are smart: The toobz. Howard Dean emerged in front of the pack in 2004 because he learned more quickly than anyone else at the time how to harness the Internet. We know all of the candidates will try to harness the Internet, but which one will be the most successful, and how will he or she do it?

Of course, the toobz are two-way highways. We in the blogosphere can help channel those interests. So this will be not only about which candidate will use the Internet most effectively, but which blogs will become the go-to places and become magnets for action. What role will MyDD play in that?

Its time to start thinking about that, and fast. MyDD has a Facebook group with 510 members so far that might prove important, if we learn how to use it right. FireDogLake is being a bit more intentional about developing its Facebook alter-ego, and it has 658 members so far. DailyKos Kossacks has 145 members, but it also has a vigorous e-mail forum on Yahoo Groups (DailyKos@yahoogroups.com) which, though it only has about 54 members, is generating about 27 messages per day.

"America for Barack Obama" has 7,262 members, and may have been the first Facebook group for a presidential candidate.
Edwards' Facebook group has 3,112 members.
"America for Bill Richardson" has 2,143 members.
"Sen. Chris Dodd for President, 2008" has only 297 members, but in addition to that facebook group, they've started a "Chris Dodd for President" Facebook "network".

But there are also ANTI-candidate facebook groups. There are multiple anti-candidate groups for each one, but the one before which all the others pale is "ANTI Hillary Clinton for president`08", with 62,014 members! By contrast, the largest pro-Clinton group I could find was "Americans For Clinton in '08!", with 2,825 members.

E-mail groups? Blogs? Social networking sites like Facebook? Which will have the greatest impact? And what role should MyDD play?

Bob in HI

Tags: Presidential primaries; Presidential candidates (all tags)

Permalink :: 12 Comments :: Post a Comment

Lots more organizing going on on Facebook (none / 0)

Barack Obama is ahead of the curve because of his widespread support among young people.
I've been involved in an organizing wing of Million Strong, so that's what I know best. One Million Strong for Barack has over 300,000 supporters, along with multiple branch groups focused on organizing, fundraising, coordinating, and petition-writing. There are in total hundreds of Obama support groups.
It is kind of a sad commentary that a couple weeks ago Stop Hillary Clinton: (One Million Strong AGAINST Hillary) passed up Million Strong for Barack and became the largest group. The anti-Hillary group now has 346,569 members.
Students for Barack Obama, the official student wing of the Obama campaign, has over 60,000 members.
Techpresident.com, a website that monitors political campaigns on the web also tracks and graphs the number of friends candidates have on Facebook, MySpace, etc.

One Million Strong --- Join up

by psericks on Fri Jul 06, 2007 at 06:37:36 AM EST

Re: Lots more organizing going on on Facebook (none / 0)

Psericks,
Thanks for your comments. These mass organizations are interesting, and could play a significant role. How do they keep in touch with their supporters? E-mail? Phone? Social Networking on the Internet? Text messaging? or what? How do they cultivate the interest of the supporters to maintain a high level of interest?

Bob in HI

by Bob Schacht on Fri Jul 06, 2007 at 01:48:10 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Looking ahead: Presidential primaries (none / 0)

i just checked the anti-hillary group on facebook, and it's kind of funny to see so many people oppose to the clintons...

What should scare the Clintonistas is that this anti-hillary group is now the largest group on facebook's history...You have students of all political stripes joining together to stop hillary.

One question i would like to know is whether this group is active and doing stuff to stop her?...Maybe the pro-Obama group could join forces with this group to stop her.

by JaeHood on Fri Jul 06, 2007 at 07:01:18 AM EST

Re: Looking ahead: Presidential primaries (none / 0)

Hey maybe you should take a page out of 2004 and realize that hating someone alone can't get you the nomination as long as your candidate is not connecting with the people then your prospects of winning with your anti hillary force is not good.

by bebe on Fri Jul 06, 2007 at 11:00:41 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Looking ahead: Presidential primaries (none / 0)

there's really not anything you can do about the people who are alienated by hillary clinton. yes, you can suppress their vote, which is the obvious strategy that hillary has to employ. but you can't make people stop feeling alienated by her. only she can do that. she hasn't and it doesn't seem she cares to...

"vision for change comes first and foremost...from me." -- Barack Obama

by bored now on Fri Jul 06, 2007 at 12:43:48 PM EST
[ Parent ]

be patient (none / 0)

all i am saying is it's not enough to just be anti-hillary

by bebe on Fri Jul 06, 2007 at 12:51:56 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: be patient (none / 0)

hmmm, i don't need to be patient. hillary can't do anything to win my support until 2016. nor can i see a path to victory for her, under any circumstances. it may be, as some people contend, that hillary has the best chance -- which means, to me, that democrats have no chance in 2008. how's that for counterintuitive?

"vision for change comes first and foremost...from me." -- Barack Obama

by bored now on Fri Jul 06, 2007 at 02:56:30 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Looking ahead: Presidential primaries (none / 0)

And what role should MyDD play?

Evidently as a repository of candidate hit pieces testing and recycling right wingnut memes by the amateur fans of various candidates.

543,895 votes

by Michael Bersin on Fri Jul 06, 2007 at 08:38:05 AM EST

Re: Looking ahead: Presidential primaries (none / 0)

Michael Bersin wrote,

"And what role should MyDD play?"

Evidently as a repository of candidate hit pieces testing and recycling right wingnut memes by the amateur fans of various candidates.

I did not mean the point of my diary to be a "hit piece." It was meant as a brief survey of Internet activity of presidential candidates to see where the activity was, and how many people were involved.

The question of what role MyDD should play has been ignored by everyone, so far, except for this negative cat call. OK, so let me refine the question: What POSITIVE role should MyDD play?

Bob in HI

by Bob Schacht on Fri Jul 06, 2007 at 01:04:52 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Looking ahead: Presidential primaries (none / 0)

I did not mean the point of my diary to be a "hit piece."

Actually, I was referring to the increase in the number of diaries with those apparent characteristics posted by others.

543,895 votes

by Michael Bersin on Sat Jul 07, 2007 at 11:51:38 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Looking ahead: Presidential primaries (none / 0)

Actually the Clinton stuff is getting ridiculous on both sides.
Pro Hillary people act is if anything negative about Hllary is absolutely baseless. Again,she's not Mary Mother of Jesus.

Some anti-Hillary folk,are saying just enough baseless,non diary worthy crap to validate their paranoia.

by g1967 on Fri Jul 06, 2007 at 11:13:59 AM EST

Re: Looking ahead: Presidential primaries (none / 0)

The primaries are going to be here before we know it. Six months seems like a long time, but I have a feeling time will go by faster than people think- especially when the holidays start coming around.

by reasonwarrior on Fri Jul 06, 2007 at 11:22:34 AM EST

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