Politcal Gastronomica

So — with the successes in TN and VA – eyes are turning to DC and WI. Clark’s bow out has been extremely helpful – we are finding resources that were not available originally in the past few days.

Spent Sunday evening traveling to ETCon in San Diego — where I met up with more tech people and attempted to communicate with various people about the entry they could have into the Kerry Campaign. Highlights of the trip:

• Met Trippi – he was extremely friendly – but on the stage, was quite adamant about what he thinks HD is going through and the benefits JK is having with the media’s turn of events. People communicated with me on what they thought of his positions and how things have gone wrong – but I am learning more and more, this is all about what is the “message”.
• Met with the Tech4Dean Team – one of the leaders of the team open communications – and now we are chatting about what is next. Their vision for extending what can happen in the Democratic process is inspiring – the challenge is that the campaign is a train barrelling toward a goal – and limited time and bandwidth to implement all of the ideas. But the door is unlocked and we are happy to listen.
• Met with Cam Barrett – interesting person and good egg. Did not know all of his credentials – but it was definitely worth the conversation with him and with Howard Rhiengold. Ed Cone and Phil Wolff joined us for dinner which made for an interesting conversation.

Myself – I keep feeling there are not enough hours in the day – which is exhausting to say the least. There are so many tasks to be addressed, and it never feels like there are enough hands to handle them. And then, with Drudge coming up with his sleaze – makes the coming weekend all the more exciting. We shall see what evolves.

Well – Washington and Michigan has come in – and JK has blown it away. Unbeleiveable. I still, no matter how many people tell me that JK is the nominee – I am not completely bought off until I see Florida, California or New York won (call it silly naivete). Once that is done, I think it is the best to keep a moderate thought. Though, people have chats about – even if JK were to have a “mistake”, “misstep”, or something – Edwards is better positioned than HD. Which makes me think – we need to make sure that the Dean
supporters learn more about the JK effort and to understand what JK.com and our team have been doing since the beginning.

To that end, I am heading to San Diego to go to the O’Reilly conference this afternoon (enjoying a late flight to catch people) and I will be there on Monday to connect. If anything can happen – it will be the chance to help people and get them to understand the efforts we are focusing on – and the input/help we could use. And to that end, I think I am going to open up the demtech Group to allow people to join and become part of the discussion – since the CTOs were unable to connect – I will attempt another way. Maybe – Adina’s solution (using the SocialText wiki) will finally come to light. I will write some things up on my way out there – the idea of connecting will happen – and the challenge will be in organizing and find the people to help make this happen. We have been working on it – now is the time to get the memes out there.

Sunday morning news programs are going to go into the discussion cycle of how John Kerry received more money from individuals that work or worked as lobbyists than any other Senator in 15 years. Funny thing is, when we worked on the particular issue that JK did not take money from lobbyists and PACs, it was researched that JK had not taken any money from PACs or lobbyist groups for both his Senate and his Presidential Campaign. It is funny — two facts come to light here.

One, if you worked as a lobbyist, you are now not allowed to give money to a political candidate for fear of impropriety. Every American is entitled to contribute $2000 to a candidate — no matter what job they have. And two, the largest portion of the “lobbyist” money (as reported in the Washington Post) came from John Kerry’s brother’s law firm. Of the $640K of money, a little over 1/3 came from Cam and his partners. Is this a bad thing?

The fact that he was able to raise money for his brother over the years — is that not what we try to do in starting a business? Only we would call it “friends and family” money and call those people “angels”. But in the realm of politics, we have to be worried about “propriety” and how things are perceived.

And, being a Silicon Valley guy — I am amazed at how the news cycles work. Four weeks ago, we were dead on arrival. The candidate’s background was no different than it is now, the message has been honed during the last two months — but it is a distillation of what he had been saying for quite some time, and now Kerry is the frontrunner. And with this weekend being dominated the SuperBowl, the threats of al-Qaeda and airflights, and now this. I wonder how long this will ride — and how much it will impact the primaries/caucuses? JK has nothing to be ashamed of — and a record to stand on.

Been a couple of days — and again, the change in the campaign is indescribable. But, in an interview with a new volunteer, I realized the similarities of this campaign with another situation I was intimately involved in — the dot.com experience. We were fighting in a market that the leading company was generating all of the attention — both in terms of media interest, customer attention, vendor attention, and purchase orders. All without having the product “sold” to a single customer. And then, the first consumer reports came out that were not statistical samples — but the real purchasing patterns emerged. And suddenly, the customers took another look at the other products.

Our little company, in the wake of this domination of the media and mindshare, we took stock of what was happening. Our original efforts were stymied — both from the outside and from within. But we spent time looking, listening and learning — we refocused our efforts, we changed tactics and started to address some of our major issues — and we waited. Because no matter how good our site was, no matter how good our product was — until the customer decided to sample our product and decide to purchase it — we had very little justification for our efforts.

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