Politics & Punditry On The Internet

Can the blogosphere really alter the tides of political campaigns? After Howard Dean's meteoric rise from the bottom of the Democratic presidential hopeful pack to its undisputed front-runner, the blogging community supporting his campaign was given a significant amount of credit for Dean's success.

Alexis Rice of Johns Hopkins states in his White Paper, The Use of Blogs in The 2004 Presidential Election that "Blogs have already become a power tool in the Democratic presidential nomination battle." Rice goes on to say that "the leading candidate in the blogging revolution is former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, who, through a network of websites and blogs, created a dedicated Internet following that helped him lead all Democratic candidates in fundraising over the past two quarters."

No doubt, campaign blogging is effective for:

1) Reaching out to potential voters
2) Enlisting others in supporting outreach efforts
3) Raising additional campaign funds

Having said this, its my humble opinion that we are we giving way too much credit to the blogging phenomenon. Yes, blogging continues to expand its sphere of influence, especially with the media; but there are as many problems with this new phenomenon as there are advantages. These limitations will quickly become apparent once the Democratic primary is concluded and the official 2004 election campaign begins.

Why do I say this? Let me ask a couple of questions first. Are Dean's blogging efforts the only reason he raised more money than any of his Democratic rivals? Are they even the primary (no pun intended) reason? We really don't know for sure, rather, this is all just conjecture. Perhaps Dean has raised more money than his rivals because he's managed to craft the right message for voters within his party.

In Rice's White Paper, he mentions that "The use of blogs has brought supporters together to form a new online community and reinvented campaign fundraising, shifting it from a few big donors to countless small donors." I have two problems with this statement.

First of all, this is only true of Democrats. The Republican Party has, for many years, received most of its campaign donations from a host of small donors while Democrats have long been overly reliant on very large donations from a few wealthy individuals. This is why campaign finance reform hurt the DNC far more than the GOP. So, if Rice's statement is true, it means only that Democratic candidates can finally do what Republican candidates have been doing for quite a long time.

Secondly, online political communities were already in existence well before blogging began its rise in popularity. As a matter of fact, these communities have been legion for several years now. The difference today, however, is that campaign sites are working harder to connect to those communities and harness their zeal to serve the needs of a campaign.