The Kerry Campaign Online

Dennis Kennedy has an interesting post today about Dave Winer and thoughts on the Kerry campaign, the DNC, and their use of Internet technology in this election.

As usual, Dave has his panties in a bunch over the DNC reliance on television ads. He's under the impression they are "clueless":

"Joe Trippi, get a clue. Geez Louise. He thinks the role of the Internet in politics is to raise money so they can run ads on TV. Look at how much good all those TV ads did for Howard Dean. You think he would have figured it out by now. The election will happen here, not there. Probably not the Presidential election of 2004. Perhaps one of our goals for the DNC is to smoke out innovative uses of the Internet by Democrats, where they're doing more than raise money for TV ads. Put that one on the list for sure."

As they say on one of my favorite radio programs, let's do the numbers:

• There are 248 *million* television sets in U.S. Households
  
• 98.2% of all households with at least one television
  
• The average number of TVs per home in 2001: 2.4
  
  
  
• 54 million households have computers
  
• 51% of households have one or more computers
  
• 41.5% of households with computers have Internet access
  

Hmmm... yes, what on earth is Joe Trippi smoking?! The DNC definitely needs to pander more to the self-important blog community. The revolution will not be televised, it will be blogged.

Now, let me preface this by saying I'm not a political analyst. But common sense sure tells me that advertising where the greatest number of people will see my message sure makes sense. The Internet is proving to be a very valuable fund raising tool, in spite of the fact that Winer thinks that's a poor use of the net. However, in June the Kerry campaign raised $34M with about $3M of that being on-line. Impressive use of the net, if you ask me, but it also demonstrates again that the majority of the money and most likely the votes are not coming from on-line.

Is the Kerry campaign making the best use of the net that they can? Probably not. Will the net be more influential in future elections? To put it in terms even Winer can understand, "Duh". Of course as the net grows in popularity, and as the general populous becomes more comfortable there will be a rise in the influence of the Internet on campaigns. But honestly, stop putting the cart before the horse. The democrats aren't doing a horrible job on-line; they are raising good money via the web, and they are keeping people informed of campaign info on-line. That's pretty good for the present state of politics and the present state of the web. They're even trying some interesting things, such as the custom "Kerry Campaign" newsreader Dennis mentions. (Although, I think that is mis-guided. Why in the hell would I want a Kerry only RSS reader? Answer: I wouldn't.) But they are trying.

What it really boils down to is that Winer disagrees with anyone who he doesn't feel is using the net and blogs the way he sees fit. Disagree with him, and you need to "get a clue". What's that? You're raising millions of dollars on the net not doing it his way? Apparently, that still makes you a chump in his book. Whatever. Hey Dave, put your money where your mouth is, run a successful, all Internet political campaign. I dare you.