Do Democrats Have an Advantage on the Web?
Joe Trippi, author of The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Democracy, the Internet and the Overthrow of Everything, served as Howard Dean’s campaign manager in 2004 and as a senior advisor for John Edward’s 2008 bid. According to him, the Democrats have a “huge, huge advantage” on the Internet and social media.
Trippi is in a unique position to make that judgement call — during the Dean campaign, he combined his twin loves of politics and technology to form one of the earliest digital-centric presidential campaigns in U.S. history. Four years later, Obama for America would take the Trippi playbook all the way to the White House.
Currently, he runs Trippi & Associates, a political multimedia firm. He blogs at JoeTrippi.com and tweets under @JoeTrippi.
Trippi will be speaking about the future of digital campaigning at this year’s Mashable Connect conference. Mashable sat down with him before the conference to ask him about the 2012 election, social media and the Internet.
In your 2004 book The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, you argue that the Democratic party has a “leg up on the Internet ladder” as long as they continue to be a progressive, forward-moving party. Do you think that the Democrats and progressive organizations still have that “leg up” on the Internet in 2012?
Yeah, I don’t think there’s any doubt that the Democrats have a huge, huge advantage on the net and in social media. I mean, some Republicans are starting to show that they’re getting it: Ron Paul has been building his network out there, but the Romney campaign kind of seems to be even flagging; Gingrich and Santorum are trying, but they doesn’t seem to be building anything out there of significance. As a party, they’re far behind.
What got them into the hole is that George W. Bush didn’t need the Internet. He broke every fundraising record of a presidential campaign in 2000, and he was doing it again in 2004. Obama out of necessity built on what Dean had done out of necessity…There’s some real power here that can change at least the way campaigns are being run. [Obama's] got 13 million people in his network. Three million give half a billion dollars and the GOP has nothing, literally starting at zero.
The Republicans don’t have the network. [James] Carville used to say, “It’s the economy, stupid.” Now it’s “the network, stupid.”
A major part of President Obama’s success in 2008 had to do with his database — his campaign wasn’t stuffing supporter information into shoeboxes, but rather they built a huge digital stockpile of information about the people the campaign interacted with on a daily basis. The presidential campaigns are doing this again in 2012, but should voters be concerned who owns this data and what happens to it after the election’s over?
Every campaign I know of has been very strict about its privacy rules and disclaimers, and abides by them.
The Kerry campaign had a huge problem at end of 2004 because they had a very clear privacy policy that said names were only for the “Kerry for President” campaign. When he lost, there was no way to say “Hey, Democratic Party, here’s these names.” Part of the problem once Obama became president was that there really wasn’t a way to move 13 million people from the campaign to the White House.
I think overall there is a problem, and people should be worried about privacy on the net. Anytime they Google something or visit a page, sites are all collecting their info and selling it or using it. Campaigns are no different — people need to be aware of that. I think it’s going to be a bigger and bigger concern.
Recently, Arianna Huffington suggested that social media is being used by journalists — especially those of the political variety — to highlight fleeting “mini-controversies” while ignoring “the stories that matter.” Do you agree? Why or why not?
Who decides which stories matter? Will just editors decide because they know better than the rest of us? Or is it what we’re all interested in and what’s trending because we’re having conversations about it?
The great thing about social media is that you don’t have limited column space — there’s endless room for content. And the great thing about that is that it’s in the hands of people that decide which stories matter by rating, retweeting, posting, etc. That’s a different editor — a different editing — that has to happen at the New York Times, where editors decide what’s going to make it and everything else loses.
Every one of these conversations is happening before. They were happening over neighborhood fences, at water coolers and at the dinner table. People thought, “I was having the only conversation about Alec Baldwin.” It turns out, no, the entire planet’s talking about him. The press wasn’t able to listen in and say, “Wow, everyone at the water cooler is talking about Alec Baldwin,” but now they can. Smart reporters are realizing there’s a story here.
The other thing that’s happening is, because we can see what conversations are happening, the press then picks one and says, “That’s a bigger story.” Now you’re seeing this massive echo chamber between conversations happening on social media. And the press flocks to something it perceives as a big story, which generates more conversation…This really grows and magnifies it and reverberates in ways that we haven’t witnessed before in terms of speed, power, how it can impact a large group of people or get somebody fired. Because of that echo chamber, I think we’re seeing bigger reactions to things.
In that same 2004 book, you dismissed television as a one-way medium, citing the Internet as the invention which will restore two-way conversation. What do you make of services like NetFlix and Hulu, which revert the two-way Internet-capable box back into a TV, and have millions of subscribers between them?
How long is it until you can’t tell difference? They’re both the same thing — you’ve got the Internet box that has your own TV station, and because you’re putting in “Trippi” and “Mashable,” you’re getting everything you want.
I think [these services] are going to continue to empower all of us to connect, but it’s not gonna be the same box. I was referring to a box in which the only people who can put anything on it are people who can afford millions of dollars in TV ads to tell you what to think, without you saying anything back. I think all these things — NetFlix, Hulu — will continue to turn the tables. There’s no way those are only going to be used by “the powers that be,” so to speak.
With YouTube, a lot of it is still one-way, but I think you’re going to start to see some different uses of video. In the Edwards campaign, there was this really cool thing that happened: We put a video up of [Edwards] working on building a home for Habitat for Humanity in New Orleans. He ended the video by saying, “So, that’s what I did for my community service today. Tag you’re it.” And what happened was pretty amazing: People started to make videos of things they did and said, “John, you’re it,” and we played a game of tag. Some kid in Iowa cleaned up a river. People trying to one-up each other, all off of Edwards’ sort of off-the-cuff remark.
I think you’re going to see things like that — all this is still very primitive, but there’s some amazing things that can happen once these tools are developed. I think things are going to happen differently as more people are using and experimenting with them.
Joe, thank you for sitting down with us today. We’re very excited to have you at Mashable Connect this year
I’m excited to be there as well, thanks for having me today.
From May 3-5, 2012, join Mashable for our biggest conference of the year and explore the future of digital. Our annual destination conference brings our community together for three days to connect offline in an intimate setting at the Contemporary Resort at Walt Disney World®. At this year’s conference you’ll hear from leaders like Joe Trippi, Lawrence Lessig, Roger McNamee, Hilary Mason, Pete Cashmore and others about how emerging digital media and technology will shape our lives now and in the years to come.
Registration is now open.
Image courtesy JoeTrippi.com
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