The Web on the Candidates

Kate Phillips at the Caucus picks up on a "flooding the zone" meme that's made it's way from Chuck DeFeo to Joe Trippi to TechPresident contributor David All. Writes All, "the idea behind 'flooding the zone' is to virtually take organic search on YouTube out of the picture as effectively as possible. It’s practically a last-resort tactic which will hopefully never be needed. If the decision is made by your campaign that a YouTube video, like 'Macaca' is crippling the campaign, pull the trigger and 'flood the zone.'" Phillips points out that the previous day she posted about Trippi's reference to flooding the zone at the Business Development Institute's conference on "The Future of Political Communications" (and I heard him use the same phrase at the Politics Online conference earlier this year). Not everyone agrees with the the theory, however. Justin Hamilton, a staffer for Rep. George Miller, criticizes the approach in the comments below Phillips' post: "1) If it’s viral, it’s being passed peer to peer primarily. So the smaller number of people who take the time to find something by organic search on youtube won’t have an impact. 2) By going so far out of your way to keep people from seeing something, you’ve created a taboo effect that will both: make people want to see it more; and give the story a second day because the coverage will turn to the 'desperate cover up attempt' that might make more of an issue than the issue itself."

The Web on the Candidates

Danny Glover at AirCongress writes that Newt Gingrich is issuing us a "conversation challenge." Newt dismissed the Hillary 1984 video as "utterly, totally destructive of the process of thought. There is not a single thing in that commercial that enables America to solve a problem. … It’s the Entertainment Tonight version of governing a great country. … Everything is reduced to gossip, attack, whose consultant is cleverer. And it’s really very destructive." Instead, he's proposing that the nominees engage in a 90-minute dialogue once a week from Labor Day 2008 to Election Day. "Once a week with a timekeeper and no moderator. No Mickey Mouse questions. No gimmicks. Two adults, much like [Abraham] Lincoln and [Stephen] Douglas," he said.

The LA Times reports that Google, and to lesser extent other web companies like Yahoo and Myspace, is aggressively reaching out to political campaigns, looking to provide them with advertising and other services.
Phil Noble of PoliticsOnline thinks it's a smart move: "There's probably a lot less [money] than they think initially, but Google plays for the long term and they're smart to be there... The Internet and politics is a revolution, and Google and these guys are not going to lead the revolution, but they don't want to get shot in the back either." According to techPresident contributor Michael Bassik, 2004 campaigns only spent $12 million on online ads, compared to $1.6 billion on TV, but "political campaigns are expected to shift more of their ad dollars to the Web." Google will be waiting in the wings.