OkayStupid, I Got It
April 4th, 2007I can’t believe it. This guy is spreading rumors on the Internets that Hillary Clinton can’t win the Presidency because she can’t get enough dudes on the Internets to fill her campaign coffers. Oh, sure, The Author tries to pre-empt The Argument that Obama is Dean 2, and it’s true enough that Obama !=(doesnotequal) Dean. Howard Dean wasn’t as good at receiving money from the traditional sleazy sources as Obama is, but the truth is that Barack Obama will find himself unable to raise as much money as The Clinton Machine and I imagine that grassroots supporters will be more plentiful for them as they’ve done it before and therefore have a greater base of support, which is quite important. More important than, say, Barack Obama’s 100,000 internet donors. But wait!:
Every one of those 100,000 contributors is a passionate, fired up mini-evangelist for the Obama campaign who can email friends, attract new supporters, create networks, and create the “virality” that online marketers lust for but seldom achieve.
Oh! I get it now. Obama’s Howard Dean but cooler and Hillary Clinton is John Kerry with sexxxy. To rephrase: Dean was, I don’t know — Livejournal.com, and Obama is MySpace+Facebook.
OkayStupid, I got it. That makes a lot of sense. Except for the fact that it doesn’t. People who do their politicking on the Internet are far less likely than their peers IRL (LOL!) to go out and vote, drive a carpool of old folks to the polls or pass out flyers. And that’s important and always will be, moreso than the Internet — and by that I mean, The Internet can work as a tool. A tool, but it is not a campaign and anybody who talks about having Internet strength or of the Internet as their shield — they’re bound to lose. I imagine that Obama, and Clinton, and Edwards and old man McCain, even, understand this, and it’s time that we all do.
Listen. I think the Internet is an amazing tool. It’s great, but you can’t politick online, and people emailing does not a winning campaign make no matter how much you want to spin it that way. And if Obama does win — which I have always doubted — it won’t be because someone posted on FaceBook.
Sorry.