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Is the Dean Campaign Spamming?
bluelark writes "A few days ago, a friend of mine fowarded to me some spam apparently from the Howard Dean campaign. The sender's return address, however, was dean@america.propulsive.net. In addition, this is not the Texas email we've all heard about. Being bored, I did some research, and I found some intriguing results. If you are interested, I've posted the the technical details and the the spam. Even though the images in the email are being served from Venezuela, the links in the body of the spam are actually redirects from a marketing partner called eScriptions.net to a Dean for America registration page. It appears that the campaign is outsourcing their email with some dubious marketing partners who are then using notorious spamhauses to send out the actual email. Why does a supposedly "net savvy" campaign even think for one second that this approach is acceptable?"
Probably for the same reasons spammers everywhere continue to do it: some people will click on the pretty colors - they get results.
Do you really think he was being malicious as opposed to someone in his team being moronic?
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In essence you bring up a lot of good points. Your style is a bit bombthrowing, but you are telling it like it is. One thing you neglect is that, while the Democrat party is a 'big tent' with lots of little constituencies, they generally come together for a sufficiently charismatic candidate. Also, Democrats can win on the back of a big scandal. Take a look at the last two big Democrat victories in 1976 and 1992.
In 1976, Watergate was the issue, and Carter promised us he would 'never lie to the American people'. Therefore, we elected him. He was right - he wouldn't lie to us. He was just kind of ineffectual at governing.
In 1992, there was no governing issue beside the economy, and Clinton ran with it. He was the best politician I have seen in my life, and better than anyone noted in history since FDR. He played the game like a skin flute, welding together the disparate elements of the Democrat 'constitutency' into a single bloc. Also, Perot helped by drawing off moderate votes. I think Clinton would have won anyway in 1992 even without that, though.
I can't see any of these candidates in 2004 pulling either of the previous tricks off. Maybe they can come up with a new one. Not likely.
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