Not only did John Edwards’s 2008 campaign team break new ground online with his use of mobile shortcode (see Justin Oberman’s blog post below), they’ve been busy all over the web. They put the obligatory video up on YouTube, and they managed to get A-list tech blogger Robert Scoble to cover his announcement, an unusual pairing to say the least. (Which didn’t hurt since his own blog went down today, which my spies say was the doing of tech vendor Plus Three.)
But if you want to count bang for the buck I would have to put at the top of the list Edwards’s appearance live-blogging on DailyKos, where, if you took the time to scroll through the comments you’d learn that he endorses Howard Dean’s 50-state strategy, that he doesn’t know how to spell the word negotiate (“Pharma got its way on the Medicare prescription drug bill, and as a result imports from Canada were not allowed, and the government using its market power to negiotiate [sic] prices was prohibited. We cannot let big pharma dictate public policy.”), that he’s working on a plan for universal healthcare and wants to hear people’s ideas, that we should start getting out of Iraq by “withdrawing 40,000-50,000 troops immediately,” that he’s got a bit of a paunch (see this photo from New Orleans), and that he wants to get tougher with China over Darfur.
Now, none of that is necessarily news, but what is news is a formal presidential candidate directly mixing it up, live, with anyone who has an account on DailyKos. The pay-off is not just that this is a hugely trafficked site where Edwards’ post is being featured. It’s in the treasure trove of engaged activists who are literally lining up like kids in an ice-cream store to declare their support for Edwards’ bid. His post there had 555 comments by 2:30 eastern, five hours after he went up on the site, a pace reminiscent of the Howard Dean blog on a good day. I doubt many other Democratic contenders will do as well when they take their turn liveblogging Kos.
But all that said, is Edwards as engaged as his wife, Elizabeth, in his conversation with the grass-roots? My friend Matt Stoller makes the point that he’s not quite there. His team is still using the web to troll for support rather than give up real power and control to the people, he argues, noting that Edwards chose to do a silly non-announcement email to his list rather than ask them something substantive in advance of his going down to New Orleans today.
It’s a good point and one that is worth keeping in mind as the other 2008 candidates roll out their announcements over the next months. Are they just using the web to push their message out and raise money? Or are they engaging in a new kind of politics, one that is more peer-to-peer?
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