Ned Lamont squeaked by Joe Lieberman in the Connecticut Senate Primary. The ramifications are still being sorted out all around the blogosphere. It was a great night for the netroots, and a powerful statement about the War in Iraq. Hearty congratulations go out from the California blogosphere to both Mr. Lamont and the people of Connecticut. I'm also happy to point out our own Barbara Boxer has offered to campaign for Lamont after strenuously supporting Lieberman in the primary.
But, I'll leave the grandiose statements about the Lamont victory in a national context to others, but I think there are real lessons that can be focused upon the state of California and our politics. I'll be focusing on the role of Lamont's web-related strategies and their applications for California. These strategies could be used in this campaign cycle, for Phil Angelides, but should also be considered in future cycles.
Let's go to the extended for a more detailed look...
Ned Lamont is frequently cast as a puppet for other interests, for Lowell Weicker, the Senator that Jomentum beat 18 years ago, or the blogosphere or Kos specifically. But Lamont is really powered by the people of Connecticut. Jomentum even did a cute little "bear cub" ad portraying Lamont as Weicker's baby bear. Very cute Joe. Oh why, not, I'll throw the YouTube video of it up:
Now, wasn't that cute? You'd really think that there was this effort by Weicker to alter the race. I guess that's not totally untrue either. However, Lamont 's candidacy was, and is, based upon the people of Connecticut. His ads all featured the "I approved this message" notice, but Lamont used it to his advantage by including the line "So do we" by a large cast of characters. Every ad Lamont ran included this "So do we" line. It was quite effective, but you can see for yourself. Here's his "teacher" ad:
Pretty effective, huh? But Lamont did more than just token gestures to engage the grassroots of the Connecticut Democratic Party. Of course, that won't translate as easily to the much larger state of California. Heck, LA County is nearly as big as the entire state geographically and has a population approximately three times larger than Connecticut. So, some of the power of Lamont's strategies would be muffled by the sheer distances and population of the state. Obviously it's impossible for a statewide candidate to do more than token door-walking, but in CT it played a big part.
The Lamont Web strategy
But that is not to say that nothing can be learned from Lamont's campaign. His Internet strategy was, to say the least, phenomenal. He utterly overwhelmed Lieberman's web presence. He was able to do this partly because he had netroots allies, including Kos, that encouraged his campaign to go digital. But more importantly, Mr. Lamont made a commitment to the medium. He hired Tim Tagaris, of Jeff Seeman and Paul Hackett fame, to run his netroots operations. I'll walk through several of the strong points of Lamont's site:
The blog: Tim Tagaris (as above mentioned) was a known commodity in the blogosphere. He had done some great work with Swing State Project and for the campaign of Paul Hackett, among others. He set up a strong blog operation and netroots community engaged in that operation. Tim's posts on the Ned Lamont blog and on Daily Kos and other blogs consistently get comments flowing in. It's been effective in getting both money and contributions into the campaign. Lamont raised over $300K on ActBlue, and that excludes money that came in snail mail style due to stuff people had seen on the blogs. It's also important to note that much of that money came from out of state. Tim and his use of the blog were instrumental to the nationalizing of this race. Other ways the blog was used effectively:
GOTV efforts: In the last few days, Tim posted diaries on the Ned Lamont Blog, Daily Kos, MyDD, and other blogs requesting assistance in the GOTV efforts. He got it. Check out Tim's list of dKos diaries and this diary specifically. This is trememdously important in California where voters are distributed over vast stretches of space. GOTV work and organizing is challenging, additional volunteers are tremendously valuable.
Distributed Research: I loved this use of the blogosphere. If the campaign did this by themselves it would have expended valuable resources. By using netroots resources, it was accomplished quickly, cheaply and effectively. See this dKos diary. Again, California candidates would be wise to consider this tack to harness some of the incredible talent of the state and the blogosphere.
The videos: Lamont was all over YouTube. Search for him and you get almost 250 videos. Impressive. Some of these are just Lamont commercials, and some are actually Lieberman commercials tagged with Lamont's name. But the overwhelming majority are videos that grassroots supporters of Mr. Lamont uploaded to YouTube. The campaign themselves uploaded tons of videos. The videos served as focus points for people who may not have had the chance to meet Mr. Lamont. This is a particularly valuable lesson in California, where candidates won't be able to meet everybody. But videos of informal meetings with small groups of people allow people to get an idea of what the candidate is like up close and personal.For example, how about this one from January 2006 uploaded by Ct-blogger of Connecticutblog.
Friends, Family, and Neighbors: This was a wonderful tool (now down for campaign restrictions, I believe) which allowed friends from within and outside of the state to contact their contacts in the state. Calls and letters from personal contacts are far more valuable than phone calls from some random activist. It leveraged Lamont's initial fervent support very well. In California...yeah that would be very, very valuable.
How many robo-calls do you get? How many robo-calls do you hang up on? I'm guessing those two numbers are a) high and b) darn near equal. Robo-calls have very limited effectiveness. The same goes for volunteer phonebanks to some extent. Yes, they are very valuable and can be a good resource. But do you really want to be getting calls from strangers telling you to vote for some politician. You know that they are calling you because of your party affiliation or you fit some other demographic. It's not a bad thing, it's just not the most effective thing.
Political commercials are omnipresent in California. It's almost like commercials for Frosted Flakes, ipods, and the Gap can't make it air. It's ridiculous. And how effective are they if people eventually just tune them out.
How much more effective is it if you can actually get all of your supporters to, in an organized fashion, claim their circle of contacts and talk to them. They get them to vote for the candidate, but an even more successful call would yield additional financial and time contributions. A large group of people would be overlapping, but that can be dealt with in the software that organizes the program. And if these activists can get their friends to make calls too...whoa. You're talking about an extremely effective tool for both campaigning and GOTV.
Lamont's campaign should be considered a lesson and a warning for future campaigns. Get with the program and harness the strengths of the internet...or end up like Lieberman the Luddite...
