The Pitfalls of a Technology Campaign

A piece by Kathleen Parker has been making the round of the top websites, mostly without comment or without lots of comment regarding what Parker doesn't say.

What Parker does say is that we may not really want a President who is so in tune with pop culture that he or she forgets about the rest of the non-plugged in country. Parker also suggests that technology, particuarly the web, will play an important part in the campaign, but not the most important part.

What Parker doesn't say, but certainly implies, is that candidates, all agog with the latest internet craze, cannot forget about good old fashioned, retail politics. Making the connection with voters has probably never been more important, but that connection cannot be over a broadband internet service for most Americans. They still want to see their candidates in teh flesh and they want their candidates to deal with real, flesh and blood issues.

At the end of the week, the Presidential candidates will close out their second quarter fundraising and FEC reports will be due on July 15. One of the things that can be extrapolated from these reports is not about money, but about people and appeal. Sure fundraising is important that the total cash brought in will still remain the horse race of choice amoung the press. But dig a little deeper and you can see something a little more important, how broad the base of support is.

Take for example, the leading two Democrats, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. In their first quarter fundraising, leaving out the $10 million Clinton transferred from her Seante campaign, the two candidates were remarkably close in fundraising. But if you look at some other data, you find that Obama's appeal is a bit more broad based. First, Obama had itemized contributions from individuals totaling 20,399 records, some of which were duplicate people. That is some 25 percent larger than Clinton's 16,190 records.

While I don't know if Obama is a better grassroots campaigner, his organziation seems to be much more grassroots that Clinton's. That, above all other reasons, is why Obama is such a challenge. Even granting that contributors are not necessarily a representative sample of voters, the fact taht Obama is raising smaller amounts of money from fewer people means that his campaign is casting a wider net. Remember, that people who contribute money to a candidate are far more likely to vote for that candidate--they have not only a political interest but now a financial interest in the candidate's success.

The key take away from Parker and from analysis of the FEC reports is that you can't just use technology to win a campaign--politics is still, after all is said and done, about people.