I am so disgusted by the Supreme Court’s upholding of the Republican Abortion Ban today that I just don’t know if I can make sense right now. It is time for people without wombs to stop making laws about reproduction!
Category: politics
All things political, great and small.
Edwards in SL: a day at the beach
I’ve posted the second in my techPresident series on voter-generated campaigns in Second Life. It’s about Edwards Campaign Central, and it’s not pretty. After getting griefed on the mainland, they moved to a PG-rated location at Laguna Beach. I find the tropical setting to be mighty incongruous with a serious, populist campaign.
All the photos I’ve taken are also being added to this Flickr Collection. Please go read the review at techPresident and let me know what you think.
Avatar-generated politics
I was quoted on the CBS News web site talking about candidates in Second Life! The article does a decent job of focusing on the interesting story of how supporters are working for candidates independently of their campaigns, and avoids trite sensationalism around the obscenity that is just as common in SL as it is on the rest of the Internet. (Although the author strangely seems to have visited the old Edwards HQ which has since been moved to a quiet beach setting.)
So far, the default model for building a campaign in Second Life has been “build first, ask for endorsement later,” as Ruby Sinreich wrote in TechPresident. The default stance of campaigns toward their Second Life depiction is curious indifference.
– Democratic ’08 Hopefuls Go Virtual, Obama Dips Gucci-Clad Toe In Second Life Waters; Clinton, Edwards Hands Off Of Their Digital HQs – CBS News
I remember being quite pleased with myself when I came up with that phrase. I’m glad someone else noticed. This reminds me, I am overdue for posting some more reviews on techPresident. I have already taken pictures of John Edwards’ virtual bungalow, so I need to write that up, revisit the Barack Obama HQ, and apparently there are some Republicans I have to check out…
Edwards campaign all over social network sites
Since you ask… why yes I was quoted in the Washington Post today! 😉
All the presidential hopefuls are online. Everyone’s got a Web site. A few hired full-time bloggers and videographers. Most have MySpace profiles, just a click away from “friending” a supporter. Yet Edwards has taken his Internet presence a step further, fully exploiting the unknown possibilities (and known pitfalls) of the social Web, online strategists say. Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), judging by the number of friends on MySpace or number of views of his YouTube videos, may be the most popular online candidate, Republican or Democrat. But Edwards arguably has the most dynamic Web presence — he’s everywhere, doing everything.
[…]
Adds Ruby Sinreich, an online consultant who works with nonprofits and writes the progressive blog OrangePolitics.com, “What you have to remember is that signing up for these social networking sites is free, and it shows that he’s open to new ideas and open to the openness of the Internet. Look, voters are swayed by the people they know. That’s not new. That’s not about technology. But what we have now is a new technology that is all about building relationships.”
– Grass Roots Planted In Cyberspace – washingtonpost.com, 3/30/07
I also pointed the reporter to Valdis Krebs, so I’ll take a little credit the smart stuff he said as well.
Second Life echos the first one
I just blogged on techPresident about the Hillary Clinton campaign HQ that some folks have created in Second Life. Short version: it plays into the worst stereotypes of her as an iron maiden and looks like butt to boot. It amazes me that Hillary is portrayed as a clueless authority figure even by her supposed supporters.
Here are my two favorite parts: the stage that looks like it came straight out of the popular “Vote Different” (a.k.a. Hillary 1984) video, and the helipad complete with limousine motorcade and police HUMV for security!
(Click for larger versions.)
Please check it out and let me know what you think: http://techpresident.com/node/171
I plan to post pictures and reviews of all of the candidates in SL. Right now there’s only Edwards and Obama, so they will be next.
How do you spell L-I-E?
I just got the following new alert from CNN.com “The White House will allow key presidential aide Karl Rove and former counsel Harriet Miers to be interviewed by committees probing the firings of U.S. attorneys, but they will not testify under oath, Rep. Chris Cannon says.”
In other words, we don’t want to start a whole ‘nother perjury investigation so we’ll let them lie to you, just not under oath. Does that make you feel better?
Irrepressible content
Another great online strategy from Amnesty International: to counter growing censorship and repression of Internet speech, they have created http://Irrepressible.info where you can sign a pledge for Internet freedom and get your own badge to dynamically display censored content on your own blog.
Por ejemplo:
They also have a public API! (They do lose points for having a typo in the code for the badge above. Good thing I know how to spell “fragments” and fixed it myself.)
Obama gaining black support
It sounds like African Americans are starting to get to know Barack Obama, and they like what they see.
In polls taken in December and January, Democratic African-Americans favored Clinton over Obama by a 60-20 margin. Now Obama leads Clinton among African-Americans by a margin of 44-33 percent. That shift has brought Obama’s overall support among Democrats up to 24 percent, from 17 percent in January. John Edwards holds steady at 12 percent.
Blogging from the top down
Salon has a very interesting article today by Lindsay Beyerstein of Majikthise on why she turned down the job that Amanda Marcotte briefly held with the Edwards campaign. She also addresses what she thinks is a major flaw in their online strategy: by making bloggers “official” you remove most of the value of their independent, outsider voices.
The Edwards campaign wants decentralized people-powered politics. Ironically, by hiring well-known bloggers to manage a destination Web site, it was actually centralizing and micromanaging. Every campaign needs a blog, but the most important part of a candidate’s netroots operation is the disciplined political operatives who can quietly build relationships with bloggers outside the campaign. And the bomb-throwing surrogates need to be outside, where they can make full use of their gifts without saddling a campaign with their personal political baggage.
My candidate is Good!
This entry was also posted at techPresident.com.
I tend to be more interested in “how the web is using them” than “how the candidates are using the web” in techPresident’s mission. So of course I’m fascinated by the John Edwards Is Good website. I like the ambiguity of this slogan. Does it mean Edwards is good… looking, for America, at billiards? It could be any of the above.
When I saw first these 80’s-inspired t-shirts popping up during the 2004 campaign, I took them for nothing more than a smarmy remark on Edwards’ looks from some overly-clever college students. However, it seems that this meme has blossomed into a full-on campaign. While the goal was previously to market the shirt and take pictures of people wearing it in funny places, now the site seems to be semi-seriously promoting the election of John Edwards.
One the things that I found most powerful about Dean for America was how they allowed any interest group to really adopt the candidate and make him their own. Left-handed Rhode Island gun-owning cat lovers for Dean – right on! This is a great way for potential supporters to build community and feel that their interests are represented. Apparently this particular toungue-in-cheek version started with Mark Warner is Good (RIP), and has also spawned Obama is Good which sports all of the same features as John Edwards is Good (JEIG).
The sites have their own Facebook groups (of course), and links to MySpace, etc. They also have serialized, unauthorized biographies of their candidates, but the Obama is Good (OIG) site seems more earnest, while JEIG has a lot of humorous, fictional content and silly pictures. One my favorite features is a comparison of which is better, John or Elizabeth Edwards? (I’m partial toward the latter.)
I couldn’t find an equivalent Hillary is Good site, but it’s just a matter of time. Are there any similar independent and unorthodox campaigns for other candidates?