techPresident - Trippi's Warning for the GOP - Comments

Trippi is still ahead of America

cfinnie — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 14:23:24 -0400

Someday, Joe Trippi will be right. But, as history shows, it's rarely during the campaign he's working on.

The Internet enabled Howard Dean to be a viable candidate. It did not make him a winner. And I contend that the reason it enabled his high profile and fundraising totals was not because of the tool, but the campaign and candidate. When I first went to the Dean campaign site, I was amazed at what I read there. There was no political parsing. I didn't see calculation and hype. I saw open, honest opinions and I was hooked. So that was the first tool I saw the campaign use. But it was the message that did it, not the tool. When I first saw Dean, he said "only you have the power..." Then campaign then provided the tools and the structure to back that up. So the tools proved the commitment. But they were not the winning message, just the medium.

As the earlier comment points out, blogs are impacting the MSM. But their media reach is still a fraction of Faux Noise. With that big an echo chamber, even the lack of message can be overcome. That's why the Republicans are not worried.

I wish I shared his optimism

Dan Ancona — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 20:50:04 -0400

My feeling is that - if us lefty internet organizer types are hugely and uproariously successful over the next year or so - at most something like a quarter or maybe a third of the electorate is going to be directly impacted by the independent internet media, except maybe for the occasional wild viral hit. There's still a LOT of voters out there watching Fox, and between known site traffic numbers and the last Pew, we know that a lot of folks getting news online are getting it from MSM sites.

Sure, the 'sphere is having a somewhat increasing role in shaping how the MSM covers stuff - and arguably in exposing hilariously brash acts of hypocrisy like O'Reilly's latest stunts - but we've still got a long way to go from where I'm sitting.

Trippi's Warning for the GOP

Micah L. Sifry — Wed, 25 Jul 2007 12:03:19 -0400

Not only should Republicans be worrying about how their presidential candidates run the YouTube gauntlet at their September debate in St. Petersburg, Democratic web maven Joe Trippi tells David All that in the general election, they face being completely overwhelmed by the "gigantic community" the Democratic field is generating online.