Slashdot Mirror
Joe Trippi Interviewed
MikeCapone writes "Mother Jones and Alternet interviewed Joe Trippi,the guy behind the Howard Dean campaign ('the candidate lost but the campaign won'). He has a new book out, 'The Revolution will not be Televised' (click for excerpt), about how the Internet is radically changing the way politics is done. Choice quote from the interview: 'The open-source stuff was amazing. I mean, 650,000 brains are a lot smarter than the 50 [...] They spotted stuff that we didn't see, came up with ideas we wouldn't have thought of, and made the campaign a lot stronger. Just like how open-source works in running software -- it's the difference between Linux and Microsoft.'"
'the candidate lost but the campaign won'?
And not one of them thought, "Hey, Chief, down the volume on that scream..."
W = (-president)^1/2
650,000 brains are a lot smarter than the 50
ummm... Windows was made by using fifty brains?
when a policial canidate uses it.
... for Open Source.
Seeing how Dean got his ass KICKED and all that.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
It means that "he fired up all the troops in the democrate party, before he was stabed in the back." (this is actualy a quote from Rush)
... it makes me just want to
r gg ggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!
yyyeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeearrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Of course, I think it's a bit strange to be comparing political issues with open source... but whatever floats yer boat. I'm just glad to see open source getting some press. Any press is good press.
Joe Trippi--heralded on the cover of The New Republic as the man who "reinvented campaigning"--was born in California and began his political career working on Edward M. Kennedy's presidential campaign in 1980. His work in presidential politics continued with the campaigns of Walter Mondale, Gary Hart, Richard Gephardt and Howard Dean.
He's got quite a bit of experience as a campaign manager - maybe he just needs to be a little more selective in his employers...
"If you think you have things under control, you're not going fast enough." --Mario Andretti
I'm not sure Howard Dean is the best "horse" to hook the open source wagon to! We already have to overcome the linux is only for geeks issue. Do we want add on the screaming fanatic with no grasp on reality issue as well.
I understand that the Howard Dean scream was to motivate his people. It doesn't mean he's insane. yada yada yada. It doesn't matter what I think, I'm already on our side. What do the big companies decision makers think? In the USA they tend to be white, middle-aged, conservative (Republican).
All I'm saying, right or wrong, Howard Dean may not be a good influence on the Open Source acceptance in the mainstream.
Of course, Gil Scott Heron popularized the phrase 'the revolution will not be televised', in the album of the same name.
And here is the blog for the change for america guys Joe Trippi is hooked up with.
----------------
ChipotleLovers.com
Chipotle food, locations, pics, links, polls and discussion!
The Establishment wanted Kerrey to win so they found something that Dean that turned voters off. The Establishment press ran it enough to ensure the sheep, er .. ah ... voters reacted how they were programmed to. Coaches scream at their tired players who are down by 7 points at half time. Dean screams "Let's go out there an win" at his tired volunteers and suddenly he's a dangerous maniac?
Dean may have lost personally, but he showed the Democrats how to raise money using the internet. Because of Dean, the Democrats have raised almost as much as Republicans for the presidential race, a fact which was INCONCEIVABLE a year ago.
He convinced a bunch of fools to part with their money using the Internet just like the Spammers and he didn't even promise to get make their dick bigger! The Dean campaign was the great Internet swindle of 2003. Just like the Dot Com boom companies and their IPOs. Thus making Howard Dean the Democratic version of the Pets.com mascot.
Dean's Newbie-ism:
JT: When we started, Howard was sort of a technophobe; he'd barely just begun using e-mail. He didn't know what a blog was. He went from "What's a blog?" to coming into headquarters saying "I want to blog today." And by the end of the campaign, he was asking, "Why doesn't the White House have a blog? If I'm elected president, I'm going to have a blog."
Problems of scale:
JT: As we grew to 650,000 people, the site was still an amazing self-policing thing. The problem was, once you get to 650,000, how do you communicate with them personally the way I, as the campaign manager, or Dean, as the candidate, had been communicating with 432? I used to answer every email personally, and suddenly I was getting 10,000 emails a day. That's the thing I'd like to figure out for the future. It was the one big problem we had, because we'd built this thing on personal communication and connection.
Solution to problem of scale:
Obviously, they just need to run slashcode.
-------------------
ChipotleLovers.com
Chipotle food, locations, pics, links, polls and discussion!
503 Service Unavailable
The service is not available. Please try again later.
Anyone else notice?
I can count to 1023 on my hands. Ask me about #132.
I think that Mr. Trippi misses the gist of Gil Scott-Heron's lyrics to 'The Revolution will not be Televised'.
Have you Meta Moderated t
It's interesting to see Trippi himself say it so nakedly. Of course, I don't see him talking about the other big conflict of interest: the millions of dollars in advertising kickbacks he walked off with.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Expropriating an old catchphrase on the cover of his book, and then expropriating free software concepts inside it. Both, badly.
B
"I'm payin' taxes, but what am I buyin'?" -- James Brown
Just like how open-source works in running software -- it's the difference between Linux and Microsoft.'"
All these years I have been half expecting RMS to shout "YEEAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!" to conclude a Linux/GNULinux rant.
It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. -Frederick Douglass
Last I checked, Linux has yet to win the OS wars.
What success did his campaign really have? Aside from charging up the angry Bush-haters, he made no headway with the mainstream. When the primaries came, he couldn't manage to win even one. Even John Edwards came up better than Dean, and now he's the Vice-Presidential candidate.
This open-source nonsense is just that. Outside of the liberal, techy crowd, Howard Dean and his movement is a distant and faded memory.
Slashdot Moderation: From positive to terrible in 2 "insightful" posts.
Think of seeing an opera star on TV. In person in a crowded hall is one thing. With a televised close-up, suddenly the big stage acting becomes grotesque. That's what happened to Dean.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
I don't what to read about left or right politics when I'm trying to read about technology.
You should demand your money back.
Having been a sysadmin during the campaign I can't help but question most of the words that come out of Joe Trippi's mouth. The sad truth is that if half of the people here, Trippi included, focussed more on the campaign than on their personal career, we might still be in a campaign now instead of the political action committee, Democracy for America.
The truth is hard to find in Trippi's book. Even in my personal case; I built blogforamerica.com and Matt Gross gets the credit because that's the way the political game works.
Joe can be right just as often as not, but before we go taking his words as gospel I suggest we look behind them a little more.
the only thing anyone will remember is Joe Trippi and blogs and the cult-ish atmosphere the Dean campaign constructed.
This assumes that:
a) You know WTF Joe Trippi is,
b) You care, and
c) You were aware of any kind of tech. shit surrounding the Dean campaign. Until I read this article, I didn't know Kerry had had a webpage, much less a forum / blog / internet cult following.
It can't be all that successful of campaign if nobody has frickin' heard about it.
Well he took alot of spotlight from Kucinich and Nader - two guys with a lot more going for them than the media will appreciate.
I don't think he did much at all. He and Hillary will never be president.
By the way, stand up guy Dennis Kucinich threw shis support behind Kerry now. Looks like it's all over for the Repugnicans until 2012.
Jusy be sure to vote in Novemeber AND to vote for Congressmen.
Stuff that matters.
Actually, this is not a politically slanted article. The point is that Open Source principles (many eyes make all bugs shallow, etc) aren't just for software. This is as much about politics as the GNU manifesto is about C code.
/. readers and editors are left-ish. Read the FAQ entry on why it's US-centric; the same arguments apply.
Now for the potentially flaming part: open source principles may be more useable by the left than the right ("command and control" issues, as he says in the interview), but that hardly means this is a politically biased article. And yes, the majority of the
I would rather have 50 known productive workers than 650,000 unknown hobby-hackers...
I have just finished "The Success of Open Source" by Steven Weber. (I found out about it in a Slashdot book review.) He pretty much proves that open source methods can outcompete top-down management models. He also points out that just being open source doesn't guarantee success. Figuring out how to make open source work is quite tricky.
Having said the above, the internet will change political campaigns just as surely as the advent of television did. Of course, the nature of that change isn't clear to most of us yet.
If you received the campaign's email messages, you know that Joe Trippi is not a good campaign manager or writer. He was disgustingly terrible.
The Dean campaign was a mess. There was too little guidance to the people who wanted to help. People were pretending to be part of the campaign who were just pushing their own agenda. There were "Dean Campaign" groups who were gays looking for other gays. There were "Dean Campaign" cross-dressers, looking for other cross-dressers, I suppose.
Joe Trippi was fired, as he should have been.
Here's a sample Dean Campaign email message, sent on January 27, 2004. It's pointlessly rah-rah. It is mostly wasted verbiage -- things you probably already know if you are subscribing to the Dean Campaign email letters. There is no useful information. There is no information about what one person can do, other than contribute money. Note that he asks twice for money:
Dear Michael,
Contribute Now! New Hampshire is the only state in the country where a campaign can turn on a dime. Voters in New Hampshire don't like to follow trends -- they like to start their own.
And New Hampshire is beginning to turn around. It's been a rough week, but in the last several days voters have been coming out in droves to see Governor Dean on the campaign trail in New Hampshire. They are hearing his message -- not what the media wants them to hear -- and they are responding.
Even the reporters are starting to say what we already know -- we're making a comeback. But we need the resources today to take advantage of the momentum we're seeing on the ground. Please contribute any amount that you can afford -- New Hampshire is only 48 hours away, and we have seven more states to compete in just a week after that:
http://www.deanforamerica.com/contribute
I've worked on campaigns all my life and one thing I know is true: You cannot win without surviving the inevitable blows. We took a blow in Iowa. But we're still here and we're still fighting.
The fact remains that our campaign is the last best hope to change Washington and to remove the special interests and the power of big money from our government.
And the fact remains that Howard Dean is the best candidate to take on George W. Bush and defeat him, because he's spent a lifetime of doing what's right, not what was popular.
But he needs your support today. We are bringing out the comeback bat to show the country that we are not giving up:
http://www.deanforamerica.com/contribute
We are going forward -- and we will succeed -- because we must. Because there is no other candidate and no other campaign that will bring real change to Washington and return real power to the American people.
Thank you for everything you do.
Joe Trippi
Campaign Manager
Dean for America
don't you remember how the brave Howard Dean lead the lower classes to overthrow the upper class? Just like in the American Revolution!
Casual Games/Downloads
Slashdot spends a lot of time discussing open source software. This article is about open source software.
A political candidate (only you pointed out his political persuasion) becomes the first vocal backer of open source software and uses it better than any candidate ever.
Politicians are the principle creators and destroyers of your rights. So a politician who backs open source has an influence on society's impression of open source software and thereby society will have a more favorable opinion of open source software. The next time a bill comes up in congress that limits open source software, the open source politician (if elected) or the newly open source educated society may be more likely to step in and protect the rights of open source.
Not to mention the number of people who learned of Dean's campaign and who had not heard of open source software. This campaign has helped educate the country on the legitimate uses of open source software.
Any questions?
Last night's edition of "Nightly Business Report" was saying just the opposite, that the Internet's effect if pretty minimal overall and the biggest results come from good ol' rallys, picnics and door to door volunteers talking to everyday people in the street. Web sites could be rallying points for the jacked-in crowd, but the vast majority it's still just AOL/MSN, pop-ups and spam, with a few emailed photos from relatives and offspring at college. However, NBR was emphasizing personalized, point-casting the message toward individuals over the mass media network broadcasting as a winning strategy.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Ok the candidate lost, but the way in which the conducted the campaign was a sucess - and likely to be emulated in the future.
But did the technology win, or did the people? This is an old debate, the one concerning technological determinism. I think that what enabled the win was the people, the decisions people made. Not the technology, because "technology" IS the decisions people make.
It's a subtle distincion, but democracy is a form of "technology" and this is the very reason why open source is so sucessful.
Open source realises technology is a social thing, based around communities, not a product. Hence it succeeds against an inferior mechanism.
In the end, open source becomes more like nature than capitalism. In the end the natural flows cannot be easily grasped but are always the best because they are based around people's needs and desires.
I had a debate the other day over BSD vs GPL. And this stuff is the very reason why I support the GPL over BSD licences. The BSD may be, in terms of engineering, better in places for the moment. But this is irrelevant, because there is a fundemental distinction in the way the BSD and the GPL view the world. The BSD plays into the engineering viewpoint, one of commodity capitalism in which there are "authors" and "owners". The GPL usurps this paradigm because technology never was, and never will be about *engineering* technology is a series of methods and choices. And in this, community will prevail.
Thus the GPL, in envisaging a community, takes a massively radical step further over other licences because it redefines capitalism, technology and the very future in which we will live.
Yeah, it might be fashionable to diss out the GPL because it has "too many n00bs" and go to the BSD because it has more "elite sysadmins and coders" etc. etc. but all of this misses the point that the GPL proposes something radical which understands the nature of technology as something social. Not something mechanistic.
Democracy is a social technology that will prevail.
The GPL (resubmission of changes to the community) is also a social technology that will also prevail.
Some people will call this a GPL-troll. But it is simply an argument about the very nature of technology. Those who wrote the GPL appear to be some of the few in the open source world to understand that nature.
that like direct mail, like radio, like cable, they'd start to throw zillions of dollars and resources at it. But the Republican Party is the supreme command-and-control party. They're so disciplined about how they deliver their message. The orders always come from the very top and go down to the next level and down to the next. It's a very top-down, almost military-like organization in terms of how they do that. And that's anathema on the Internet.
A number of publications blame this kind of rigid heirarchy for the failures of American business to respond well to off-shore competitive threats. Now it looks as though that same rigidity, applied to political campaigns, inhibits effective response to new ways of conducting campaigns.
All too true. Once the media got that video clip they just wore it out playing it over and over and over again. Dare I say they were politically motivated to do so? I think so.
Sorry, the DMCA, software patents and similar legislation have demanded that nerds get political. It's not about left or right. It's about freedom. For too long nerds have relied on just doing the tech., while politicians have put obstacles in the way. In my opinion you are beginning to see the nerds fight back on the politician's own ground. Let the battle begin...
Here's a link to the book over at Amazon. It sounds like a good book. It's going on my wishlist.
I've become weary of such declarations. Ironic that the 2004 primary season paralleled the dot-com boom: In both cases the Internet created a tremendous amount of "buzz" and everyone said "The Internet has 'radically' changed the rules and the old model is obsolete" -- yet when all was said and done, "buzz" did not translate into stable business models nor votes, and the declaration of the total death of the old order and conventional wisdom turned out to be premature. (The scream was only part of it.)
The Internet brings incremental changes. "When it comes to technology, most people overestimate the impact in the short-term and underestimate it in the long-term." -- Arthur C. Clarke
Brent J. Nordquist N0BJN
(650,000 * Brains) * Dean = Elected Where Elected = 0
Ah, yes, that's oh so different from the usual political bumblethink.
it's the difference between Linux and Microsoft.
Not a bad analogy seeing as "Microsoft" got all the votes. :-P
This election can make a grown man weep. An ebola derived pox on you Party-liners for giving us yet another choice between shit and shat. *shrug* Dean was just another flavor of excrement.
--- Ban humanity.
Hey Slashdot , stay out of politics , it's unbecoming. :(
...and it makes your hips look big
I hate to say this, but "open source," will become the hot new buzzword (if it already hasn't). Think back to the glorious dot-com days, where we learned such great words as "synergies," "i-this," "e-that." Someone I know (with no coding experience) had a coding problem which was most likely JavaScript-related. The first thing out of his mouth, "Can open source help us fix this?" Kind of frustrating.
Anyway, as bad as a tech sector is, there are still plenty of people who want a piece of the action. A lot of people look at IT knowledge as a way to differentiate themselves from the crowd. Not from the crowd of other IT guys, but from the crowds of people in management, government, law, etc.
Anyway, it's great to see open source getting more attention, but prepare for some more growing pains. :)
And look, there's an option for "open-source" in the Web Bullshit Generator!
If all you have are silver bullets, everything looks like a werewolf.
Howard Horsey!
He may have initially been the man behind the Dean campaign, but for those that don't know, he was fired rather unceremoniously after Dean's loss in Iowa. Trippi is great at making a big splash, but not great at cleaning up.
He also has a major ego, and loves attention and publicity...
Anyways, I still don't see why this is on slashdot. Where are the SCO stories?
YOUR RIGHT!!! Slashdot linked to mother jones!!!! OMFG!!!!!! It's just one step away from BABY EATING!!!! Why oh why wont Our Lord And Savior help us in this dire time of need? Spite the slashdot editors for linking to a site that expresses a different opinion from ours!
Outside of the "media country", the screaming thing was just anecdotic and a lot of people like Howard Dean.
His campaign was followed (and liked) by a lot of non-american people outside of the US... I think the use of Open Source software and method by someone like Howard Dean may be mostly positive.
Maybe less in the US but outside the US, without any doubt.
Another point is that Open Source can't aim at big companies (yet). The real audience is small to medium companies which are looking for cheap, secure and efficient solutions. And those kind of companies may most likely contains all-colored, all-aged, democrat decision makers.
I agree with mchadwick, having been there as well as mchadwick's helldesk assistant(later sysadmin Iowa). I think that personal ambition on behalf of many upper level staffers(Trippi, Paul Blank, Kate O'Connor, Jeannie Murray etc) was what ultimately destroyed the campaign. If it wasn't for their ambition the "scream speech" would have been a rousing victory cry rather than the last gasp of a dying candidate. As it was the campaign was sunk when Trippi was on more talk shows than Dean.
As far as the open source analogy goes, many of the revolutionary things the campaign did were inspired by comments on the blog or e-mails to the campaign. The "People Powered Howard" slogan springs quickly to mind, along with side projects(the open office to the campaigns Distro) such as Dean Corps.
And to everybody out there saying "he lost, he sucks, who gives a shit" remember that he was an underdog with the chances of Kucinich, Braun, or Sharpton that broke all democratic fundraising records, changed the tone of the debate, and gave Kerry the opportunity to defeat Bush. When Kerry/Edwards wins in November they should say a quiet thank you to the man that got them out of spending limits, energized the base, and defused Ralph Nader.
Yah, "The Establisment" sure was scared shitless after he LOST TERRIBLY in IOWA.
I know, I know, it was a conspiracy. "The Establishment" is to blame. Blah blah, war is bad. Blah Blah.
Before you go mod this post down, let me summarize what I saw from outside the democrat party.
Howard Dean was the only candidate that had real support from the people. I saw it around me - people were genuinely excited about the guy. Even though I thought he was looney, misguided, etc... his supporters didn't think so and could argue about him and why they liked him. It made for some really interesting and competitive debates that I enjoyed tremendously.
I heard this fervent support on radio shows when real callers would call up. These were real callers - they weren't paid-for goons. They had a sincere desire to see Howard Dean get nominated and elected. I remember hearing more than one conservative talk show host say that the only real candidate was Howard Dean - the rest were robots or politicos who have worked their way up the ladder and now it was finally their turn. Only Howard Dean was the people's candidate.
But watch what happened to him right before the primaries started. Literally out of the blue, the most favored (by the party leadership) rose in the polls. Where were John Kerry's supporters? No one could find them. I remember Rush Limbaugh, who allowed plenty of air time each week to go to the Howard Dean supporters to debate the issues, trying to get a single sincere John Kerry supporter. At first no one called in. Then the robots with scripts called in. And then a few "I like him because he's our last hope." called in. But no real supporters!
My conclusion is that the candidate that won the primary was the candidate appointed by the leadership, not the one who was popular. Even now, we can't find true John Kerry supporters - those who support them because they are excited about him and his ideas. We instead have two classes of supporters: Paid goons who read scripts and talk like the candidate, and those who support him because he is the only hope for the Democrat party, not because he is good or anything.
As a strong, passionate christian and conservative, I was looking forward to a campaign between Bush and Dean. President Bush really inspires me, and I want him to win because I really think he is doing an awesome job. I would have loved to debate people who feel the same way. Instead, all we have to debate are a bunch of people who don't even like their candidate! There's no fun this election.
Go ahead and mod me down now, but that's the way I feel and that's what I observed even though I despise the Democrat Party.
Now for the conspiracy theories. Two years ago, in the New Jersey race for the senate, the democrat candidate got replace by someone who didn't even run in the primaries. If I were a democrat, I would be fuming. "HEY! THAT'S NOT THE GUY WE NOMINATED! WHAT THE *** ARE YOU DOING?" But that's not the way the democrat party works. It's a top-down structure. "You little people better fall in line or you're not getting anything from the soup kitchen." "We're only doing this in your best interests. Remember, you're too stupid to make these kinds of decisions so we make them for you."
And two years before, the senate candidate running against John Ashcroft, probably the most conservative candidate to run for office since the 1800's, mysteriously dies in a plane crash. Interestingly enough, several of Clinton's associates have died in plan crashes since he was elected.
One of the most notables was Ron Brown, who, during the autopsy, an X-Ray was taken by one of the physicians and used as an example for a classic gunshot to the head. He'd point out the bullet fragments and the patterns. Except the archived X-Rays went missing. He happened to get the X-Ray because he was teaching a class that week or something and he decided to use Ron Brown's X-Ray because it was the clearest example he'd ever seen.
But my point is, if you want to find corruption, look to the top of your party. Sandy Berger's recent behavior is only a small example of that.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
It's a political movie that the Venezuelan goverment did to blame the United States on the coup on 4/11/2002.
More info on http://www.chavezthefilm.com/
Open Source Java Web Forum with LDAP authentication
While I understand and even applaud his warm&fuzzy feeling about what might better be called participatory democracy, the campaign's openness to public input is merely an *analogue* to OSS.
Whether or not it was an "OSS campaign" (whatever that might mean) is determined by the software choices they made, and nothing more.
Furthermore, even it was truly a "grass-roots" participatory campaign in those senses, I'm skeptical that the campaign strategies and decisions and post-mortems were conducted in the same way that Debian or Mandrake or Slackware or X-window or kernel development are managed.
Let's not make OS into a label so general as to be meaningless.
Excuse me, how is Dean in touch with the lower class? Dean and Judy together earn a small fortune annually. The last time I saw Howard Dean, 6 years ago on the docks in Burlington, VT, he and several businessmen (lobbyists?) were on their way to some expensive lunch awaiting them on a nearby chartered yacht. Fancy, I say.
That is all.
95% of them used Internet Explorer and Outlook, I'm sure...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
We already have to overcome the linux is only for geeks issue. Do we want add on the screaming fanatic with no grasp on reality issue as well.
Well, Microsoft have Steve Ballmer - perhaps the OS game requires you to be linked with a sweaty screaming guy?
I was one of those people that was all gung ho to get an outsider running in the fray. Then I realized that Howard Dean didn't really *get* anything about technology. He was just another boob that has a handler, just like the boob we have now.
d _d ean_to_scream/
Joe Trippi was Simon Wormtongue to Howard Dean. Joe was Mordred's most willing agent for the implentation of TCPA.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/01/27/who_tol
Good riddance to them both.
Both parties work in the the way you described. It's funny- I started going to the Dean meetups in the early fall of 2003, and the energy and excitement was enormous. It was a very casual environment, and people of all ages were there. The meetup started with a few announcements, but after that everyone was around seeing where they could help, and finding a place where they could do something. I ended up going to New Hampshire and canvassing for Dean. The entire experience was excellent, and I was able to use organizing skills I had to help others in the campaign do better.
But I went to a meetup recently that was held for a current, long time Democratic officeholder, and the atmosphere was completely different. The crowd was completely "young professional", and there were a few major local stars of the Democratic Party present. The meetup started with a speech by a party official. Then another person got up and made a speech. Then the mayor made a speech. Then yet another person made a speech. And then the meetup was over. It felt more like a networking event for young Democrat professionals rather than the campaign-focused Dean events.
That's what happens when you get close to the structure, it seems- and I think I'm more comfortable outside of it.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
...that the Dean campaign didn't pay nearly enough attention to what their supporters were saying.
Dean's TV ads were significantly worse than those made on an amateur level by supporters- and yet nothing was done.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
lower class economically or low class (need a shower now!) as in Michael Moore and Whoopi?
Join Team Mozilla #38050 Folding@home
Great Troll !!! Both sides do it. Really sad but don't just pick on the Democrats.
Dean's 650,000 spiraled into ga-ga land because the Internet created a mob-on-a-dark-night environment for them. Through the wonders of modern technology, a group that represented a tiny fraction of one percent of the population came to believe it was a nation of almost 300 million. That's where their silliness about "taking back" the country was born.
In reality, Dean was too strange to win the support of most registered Democrats, much less the nation as a whole. Unfortunately, in rejecting Dean, a weird and insular sort of New Englander, the party turned to Kerry, a cold and arrogant New England brahmin whose only talent lies in marrying rich women. And thanks to the silence of the party leadership, all the conspiracy thinking of the Dean campaign has entered into the party's campaign rhetoric, as you can see in Michael Moore's film. Liberals are now as crazy as the MacCarthy right was in the 1950s.
No, delete that. Today's left is much more mixed up than the anti-commie right of half a century ago. The latter at least had a coherent idea who their enemy was. Today's left can't decide if Bush is a puppet of Jewish "neos" manipulating US foreign policy to serve the interests of Israel, or if he's controlled by rich Saudi oil shieks. In fact, from the New York Times on down, they can't even decide if he's a dumb puppet or a clever and scheming Machivelian. All they know is that they hate him.
Liberalism has, in fact, become the nation's premier hate group. They hate Bush. They hate Texas. They hate the all the people who get mushy when they see the flag. They hate those who're proud of their country for unseating the bloodiest tyrant in the Middle-east. They hate those who think what's in a mother's tummy is a baby, They hate, they hate, they hate.
There's an old proverb that runs, "Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad." Taking "mad" in both senses--angry and crazy--that's what's happening to the Democratic party. And both Dean and the Internet played a role in that decline. Technology does have its down side.
--Mike Perry, Inkling blog , Seattle
i think open source ideas point us towards a different style of democracy. Right now, with a small number of "architects" in the legislatures of various countries, we're closer to the "Cathedral" model. They're making decisions that they like, and the rest of us have to live with them.
Instead, i think we'd get better (and fairer) decisions if vastly more people were involved in the decision-making process. I think we should have the ability to participate in decisions that affect our lives in proportion to how much we're affected by those decisions.
for one example of how this idea could work in practice, i recommend reading about the city of Porto Alegre in Brazil. They have a system called the "participatory budget" where thousands of people can take part in the decision making instead of just city council members. (after a really quick search, i found this article about it, but there's probably a better explanation around somewhere)
-- Doviende
"The value of a man resides in what he gives,
and not in what he is capable of receiving."
--Albert Einstein
All you have to do is keep looking up the ownership and control economic food chain with the various very large broadcast and print media, and you can see there is one (1) globalist corporate "party". They always make sure their guy, the puppet, gets in, and it doesn't matter if it's a D or R, the globalist transnational corporate party always "wins". And now that they have almost total remote control hacking ability over the vote, they don't have to sweat the explosion in third party and independent/alternative candidate interest, even with the internet, because they control the count, they control who gets "picked" to allegedly "run" in the biannual political melodrama. It's beyond ludicrous now. They have the ability to have any vote "count" being pushed as "true facts" and no one would know any better except the people doing the count, and they won't be telling obviously. And they are masters at keeping the population dumbed down, brainwashed and split into the phony left/right D & R paradigm. Remember, the broadcast and print media are also the primary users of sophisticated advertising, they know what works and what doesn't work to get people to do things using sound and images.that's their job, and they have been successful at it for generations.
I feel kinda sorry for the dean people,well meaning as they were they just didn't "get it". The PTB will "allow" the illusion of choice, and let various candidates run-for awhile, but they are never going to allow anyone who isn't a hand picked puppet of the globalist goons to actually "take office" anyplace very important in the federal government, especially in the executive branch, which anyone can see now is where the real power is. checks and alleged balances are long gone. No dictatorial government has ever "voted" itself back to any sort of true freedom or representative democracy or anything like that. Once it gets to the point that virtually everything in any random government xyz is corrupt and rigged, then there's only one way those governments ever "change". Anyone may look to history books to see how that works out.
Sucks, but that's the way it is.
Not to be too conspiratorial, but in my opinion Dean's campaign, which was successful up until Iowa, was executed by a terrified Democratic National Committee. They knew he had the charisma and the message to energize a new kind of Democrat that would radically skew primary voter demographics to the far left of center, and easily win the nomination.
The problem is that Far Left, and Far Right are pretty balanced in percentage and pretty much guaranteed to vote for their respective candidate. The middle of the electorate somehow lacks the brain power to make a decision until the day of the election, and it is the middle ground voters that both Republicans and Democrats have to convince for any hope of winning a national election.
The crux of the matter is that Democrats were too afraid that Dean would alienate this middle ground who would then flock to Bush for safety from the scary leftist man. It is, in my opinion, a symptom of the larger problem Democrats have which is A LACK OF BALLS, political gumption, willingness to take risks. It makes their politics bland and in most cases its hard to tell the Democrats apart from Republicans. The Democrats wanted a safe choice for candidate; and so they chose John Kerry, who for all the Republican ads proclaiming him as liberal as Ted Kennedy, has all the charisma of a chia pet and is only slightly more inspiring than the wooden Al Gore was in 2000.
In some ways, I suppose Kerry is the perfect candidate for the Democratic Party. In one body, he sums up the total lack of direction the DNC has at the moment. He just complains that things need to change without really putting forth any plans for doing so. And in the rare instance that he does, its a weak and watered down idea designed, once again, to avoid alienation of that key center of the electorate.
Its a shame that Dean had to be brought down in this election cycle. I really feel like he had the will and the ability to make a change in American politics. For once, there was a candidate who appeared to have a strong message and mostly non-compromising stand on issues. I think that if he had been allowed to run he might have brought some sorely needed new life into the Democratic Party, maybe even enough to offset whatever segments of the middle ground he might have alienated with his Progressive ideas.
Democrats could learn a thing or two from Republicans in the area of taking risks. In the 90's, Republicans figured out that there was a base of rabid Christian conservatives begging for recognition, and they effectively leveraged their fanatical conservatism to win both the House, the Senate, and later the Presidency (though the term winning in that case is subjective and open for interpretation). The Republicans took a risk of alienating the key center ground with a Far Right enhanced agenda with the hope that any losses would be offset by their new Christian Coalition friends, and their gamble paid off in spades. Democrats could learn a thing or two here.
While I understand that the issues on the left are generally more emotionally charged (gay rights, abortion, etc.) and carry a greater risk of alienation, there is a huge pool of apathetic potential voters out there with a Progressive mindset that would vote if they were stroked in the right way with some political attention to things other than social security (THEY WILL NEVER SEE IT). It's no wonder voter turnout has been declining for decades. People feel zero connection with politics anymore because it's only peripherally connected to any concerns they have, and they are cynical that politicians only care about votes (which is true). I also believe people have a greater understanding of how politics really work now, that is to say that your elected representatives do not represent YOU, they represent the goal of their party to stay in power. It's sad, and it weakens our republic. This is the other part of why Dean had to go--he wouldn't necessarily tow the party line.
Kerry may be a dull candidate
Having volunteered in Iowa for 10 months prior to caucus I watched the campaign rise and fall from the inside. Here's just a few points:
Bad data management. While you could easily see all the kids with their "coding skills", up-all-night work schedule, and Mountain Dew were writing and re-writing database structure to help target voters, someone with very good database experience was hard to find. As such, we were contacting some people numerous times and not contacting others at all.
Bad communication with supporters, would-be supporters and lay people. The campaign decided the best method to communicate with supporters was the blog. While it was nice for insider news, it was terrible at motivations, suggestions and direction. The television ads to get as many onto the idea of Dean as possible were TERRIBLE. I felt like I could have produced better ads. Also Dean wasn't exactly media-trained. He didn't realize the power of the media and didn't conduct himself the best while in interviews on TV.
The campaign peaked too early. Although this isn't something the campaign could really control at that point. For the media and the competition at some point the appeal of the guy on top is lost. Media over-scrutenizes and the competion attacks. (Let's see if this happens again in Kerry-Bush.)
Lot's of supporters, lack of direction. While this is related to my earlier point, it deserves a follow up. With an army of 650,000 the campaign may have been able to counter it's other problems. However they didn't know how to take all of the resources they had available to them and really make it work FOR the campaign.
What the Dean campaign showed was that the internet can be a political magnifying glass. It lets a fringe group (radical, anti-war Bush-hating liberal democrat zealots) seem much more influential and powerful than they really are.
This is catalized by the early primaries, which tend to attract the more zealous members of a political party, but as the time comes to select a candidate that can grab enough votes to get a majority of electors, the fringe group and their candidates vanish in a puff of reality.
This is what happened to Dean. He appealed to a radical fringe. The Internet made the fringe seem louder and more powerful than it was. Once Dean had to step into the real world, just how weak his support was became apparent.
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.
Excuse me, how is Dean in touch with the lower class?
IT WAS A JOKE, IDIOT.
Casual Games/Downloads
The powers that be did not like Dean because he
1. was not an insider
2. talked seriously about health-care
3. rejected the iraq war (the first public person I know who did it.
The media is owned by 2 or 3 corporations. Dean looked like he was going to shake up the status-quo.
You do the math.
PS. try doing something other then repeating what you hear to TV or Radio.
HaHaHa. Someone is talking seriously about matters that are important (NOT flag burning, NOT gay marrage, NOT partial birth abortion).
Media is clearly out to sink him. Media - the backbone of an informed public - is owned by a few big corporations.
Funny. sad. really sad.
Michael Badnarik Blog, he is the Libertarian Party presidential candidate. He uses b2evolution, a free GPLed blogging system.
The Badnarik campaign has also been reaching out to voters through Friendster.
I was heavily involved with the Dean campaign here in Brooklyn and New York. The "many eyes poring over the code" aspect of OSS was very helpful to the campaign, not just in terms of the great ideas that were generated, but in the sense of personal investment in the process that resulted. That is, you felt like you, Joe Q. Public, knowing nothing about politics and never having been involved before, could show up at a campaign event, express a good idea, and have it be taken up and acted upon immediately. Likewise, bad ideas weren't. But at least they too were listened to. It was like a massive peer-review system, and that is why those who worked on the campaign were so excited about something that most Americans couldn't be bothered to think about: the democratic process. Of course, that same unique political culture that sprang up around the Dean campaign was also reflected on the technical side by the fact that 99% of all the software run was Linux/OSS, but that's really incidental to the point.
So, why did the campaign fail? If this OS-like culture was so great, then why did it not capture the nomination? There are two main reasons.
First, although there were hundreds of thousands of volunteers around the country, individual state campaigns were run by the same old-school political consultants who run traditional campaigns for every other candidate out there. They too had never seen anything like the Dean volunteers, and had no idea what to do with them. Scores of people would pour through their doors every day, wanting to do something terrific for their country, only to be told to go lick envelopes.
Soon volunteers figured out that working at the official campaign headquarters was not the best place to apply their energy, and they left to start their own grassroots groups. Thus they continued to operate with great enthusiasm, but with no or little informed training.
The paid political consultants perhaps did this out of confusion about what this grassroots thing was, but there was probably also a cynical component. To wit, political consultants make their living by being the gatekeepers to political involvement where they are. It does not pay to train hordes of regular citizens how to work the levers of power, because political candidates will shortly realize that they don't need you to get elected. To put it in tech terms, the political consultants were like the closed source Microsofts of the world who don't want you to understand how the source code works, but pay them handsomely to make the magic work.
Most tragically, the political consultants, while remaining MS in their souls, took up the rhetoric of Linux in that they eschewed building the working relationships with elected officials and other operators in the local political milieu, saying "they don't need them, because they have these ravening hoardes of volunteers." Thus they had neither the trained, effective legions of volunteers, nor the strength of the traditional players to get the job done.
This disconnect between the closed source political consultants and the open source volunteers converged disastrously in Iowa. The Iowa caucuses are manipulated and won by skilled political operators. They could also have been won with properly trained volunteers. The Dean campaign had neither, and Kerry, who went the old skill route with the paid political operators, walked away with the prize. In the end, the thousands upon thousands of Dean volunteers who travelled to Iowa were like a Formula 1 engine, racing at a million rpm, yet not engaged to the drive train.
The second factor in Dean's loss was that the media did a hatchet job on him. They tried and tried for months to find something, anything to render him unfit for office. All they could come up with that he was 'too angry.' That didn't really hurt him, though, because millions of Americans are also angry at the direction this country is headed in. So then they took to digging up closets in Toronto to find an old video of De
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Shut up you fucking kike. The U.S. should just bomb the fucking middle east and rid the world of your scourge.
Revolution is not an AOL Keyword.
(I'm not the author of this piece, but I thought it was quite appropriate in this context)
The scalloped tatters of the King in Yellow must cover
Yhtill forever. (R. W. Chambers, the King in Yellow
There is a great article on the caucus in Iowa that basically decided the Democratic candidate with quotes from a lot of the people involved including Kerry, Dean, and Trippi.
Quick summary: Dean lost way before "the scream." His campaign was disorganized, dysfunctional, and too inexperienced.
In A.D. 2003 war was beginning.
Dean: What happen?
Trippi: Somebody set up us the bomb.
Trippi: We get support.
Dean: What!
Trippi: Main Dean turn ons?
Dean: It's you!!
Kerry: How are you gentlemen!!
Kerry: All your votes are belong to us.
Kerry: You are on the way to destruction.
Dean: What you say!!
Kerry: You have no chance to survive make your time.
Kerry: Ha ha ha ha...
Trippi: DEAN!!
Dean: Take off every 'blog'!!
Dean: You know what you doing. Move 'blog'.
Dean: For Open Source.
Required reading for internet skeptics
This site has a video of what the speech sounded like from the crowd.
"The scream" is all but inaudible. In case you can't hear it, "the scream" happens at about 1:14 into the video.
HTH
Frogs are primitive animals - so the occasional extra toe is not that unusual. But this is very unusual.
Anyone noticing how johnkerry's website is running openssl 0.9.6d, I hope it is patched.
dismal@wowway.com
Lots links/info more at this blog entry
Heavy handed but interesting piece here:
Why would Open Source principles be more usable by the left than the right?
As a political professional, I have been referring to this as distributed campaigning. For the last few cycles, political types have been aware of the internet, but for the most part candidates and the parties did not seem to be able to move beyond sem-static webpages and god forbid, spam. Grassroots political activists on the other hand have been utilizing this tool much more effectively. There are of course the bloggers, but even more important are the numerous list-servs and other impowerment tools which sprung up, with MeetUp.org being the most famous tool.
For decades, voters and activists have felt increasingly marginalized. As the two parties have increased their stranglehold on political power, and as the powers-that-be at the top of those parties ruled with iron fists, grassroots activists have felt powerless. What Dean and his distributed campaign represented, was a return of power to the people. Your average Joe was empowered to hold a house party and spread the message. They became a partner and player in the campaign, their voice counted. Dean's campign was not just for the Presidency, but for outright control of the Democratic Party. The powers-that-be could not and would not countenance this loss of power. They did everything they could to stop the Dean Juggernaut. Of course, this was ably assisted by the Dean Scream and a media willing to play it to death. The Democratic Party was not afraid the Dean would lose the presidency, they were scared he would win. This would end their stranglehold on power. They would rather detroy the Party, than lose control.
Now that they are aware of the power of Distributed Campaigning, the powers-that-be will do everything they can to co-opt this strategy. However, I predict this will be to little avail. The internet makes it possible for underfinanced candidates to reach a large vetting audience. this audience in turn can raise awareness and more importantly, the almighty dollar. Large amounts of small donations, where before, a candidate was beholden to a few wealthy donors.
This new campaign paradigm gives the best hope in recent years of the voters shattering the shackles of two party oppression. It is possible splinter parties might easily arise in the next few cycles based on this model. For the Republicans, christian fundamentalists and fiscal conservatives may find in this decentralized world, that they are unble to maintain the "big tent." The same should be considered for Democrat liberals (greens) and centrists in the DLC. As these and other factions wrestle for control of their respective Party systems, they may find it viable for the first time to create a sustainable third party.
This is not the sig you are looking for...
This statement is preposterous, but I think I know what he means:
The best counterexample of Trippi's original statement is the chess match between Kasparov and "the world" in 1999.
The world was voting on their moves, and the majority of average players often won out over the best players, thus lowering the level of their play.
HCG 50a = 2MASX J11170638+5455016
11h17m06.4s +54d55m02s
The Television will not be revolutionized
Thanks MICHAEL for more arch-socialist topics.
Yeah, lets see here, a Democrat says 'Linux' and we are supposed to fawn over them, lavishing them with praise and preening.
The man is a Socialist. He wants to hurt computer people in a big way, dragging them down to the level of "everyone". This is accomplished by taxing the smart, strong, affluent, etc. Beating them into submission. No thanks, I respect myself too much.
I actually think less government meddling / interference is a good thing.
Thanks for that thoughtful piece. Of course it had to be "surpressed" on this board. Yawn. I remember when Slashdot mattered. Now its been overrun with useful idiots and other people who are not mentally rigorous.
I've been attacking other centers of liberal thought lately, focusing my time to write such opinions directly in the center of the nest (moveon.org / airamericaradio.com / etc).
I've found that they have become extremely weak, unable to repell the tearing down of their ideals. I believe this is the nature of modern liberalism.
So, I would encourage you to seek out new frontiers and help vanquish this thinking once and for all. We are close, but we need to keep demoralizing the enemy.
i got those too. terrible writing.
sham con artist.
Thank you for saying it.
JY BAY-BE IS Another F*^*%&$% CON MAN from MARKETING-WORLD.COM
Foo.
I can not afford the co-pays on the health insurance.
The bus/train funding is cut.
My coworkers get to work LATE.
EVERYTHING is TENSE.
USA where 1% control most of the capital,
where 10 LIVE WELL
where 33% live WELL TOO
where 66% make $10. an hour or less.
and it doesn;t pay for anything DUE TO THE PRIVATIZATION of GOV SERVICES !
HELP!
HELP!
I know every liberal wants to believe that 99% of the country is liberal, and it's rich white New York Republicans than control the otherside, but it's mind boggling. The sooner the left understands this, the sooner they can stop losing election after election (the country is swinging Right, even if Bush's recent screwups cost them the campaign).
The GOP is EXTREMELY grass-roots, but its grass roots are in rural Christian areas. It's popular in small towns, etc.
The Democratic party is no more grass-roots oriented... If it was, then the Candidate of the people (Dean, or even Edwards, who finished #2 in Iowa) would have one, instead the power brokers and the media conspired to put their good ole boy Kerry in.
Part of the GOP's political effectiveness is a simplified platform and support among the rank-and-file, hence Republicans stay on talking-points, which I guess is command-and-control. In the past 10 years, the left has gotten so used to losing that they now only look out for themselves and don't maintain a consistent message.
The LAST time the Democrats had a consistent message was Bill Clinton in 92 (which brought Democrats to power), "It's the economy stupid," and "Make the rich pay their fair share." It wasn't this soak the rich mentally that Kerry has that attacks upper-income producers, it was always "fair share" (whether you agree with what he considered fair).
In 1994 the GOP started "staying on message" with their "Contract With America" and pulled the country to the right.
There is a LOT of grass roots AND top-down behavior for both parties.
The Democrat's CURRENT grass roots activities REALLY hurts them, because the GOP puts "good Christian men & women" on the street, and the Democrats end up with young, starry eyed fanatically hippies... Who do you think appeals to your swing voter or those that don't always show up to elections?
I watched the speach that night (live) because I found Dean fascinating (despite being a conservative Republican). He was a moderate/conservate Democrat that opposed the Iraq war (a reasonable position that I disagree with), but was extremely entertaining.
The screaming noise was disturbing NOT because of the volume/noise (at least to me).
He lost an election badly that he was supposed to win. He came out and sounded delusional. It was SUPPOSED to be a concession speech, and when he came out, he rambled about how a year ago who would have thought that they would come in third (true, conventional wisdom is that the top 3 survive Iowa, top 2 survive New Hampshire, then off to the raises).
Had he began on a more somber note, admitted their disappointment, but that they would have kept fighting, I would agree with those that the out of control media was unfair.
However, he gave an EXTREMELY absurd "concession" speach that sounded like a high school pep rally, which scared the powers that be... Sure the media/Internet junkies went nuts with the scream, but the speach was EXTREMELY undignified and inappropriate for a nationally televised political speach.
This was a concession speach AFTER an ACTUAL election, not a rally-the-base before the vote.
Alex
(skipping the part about this guy's fondness for OSS, and how he and the whole Dean campaign tried to have its perceived "coolness" rub off on them -- anyone can see that)
There was a documentary about the attempted US-backed coup in Venezuela a couple years ago and that film has that exact title. The guy may not even know where the popularized TRWNBT line came from let alone appreciate the irony. It certainly isn't original. Admittedly, it may rub off some more of that perceived "coolness" on him.
BTW That film has been shown on tv stations all over the world (except the US I assume). Democracynow.org has it in its archives I think.
Oh, you must have meant f allacy. Sorry.
You argue that because Trippi would have gotten a percentage whether he was campaign manager or not, it would therefore not be a "kickback" and there was no wrongdoing. What you fail to register is that it is a conflict of interest, and therein lies the wrongdoing.
It's a conflict of interest. If you're a campaign manager, and you have X money to spend on either additional ads (for which you get a percentage) or on something else like more literature, grassroots organizing, website, etc. -- which do you have a monetary incentive to do?
You then argue that "that's the way it's done in politics." Are you saying that all other campaign managers are affiliated with media companies, and that the decisions of those campaign managers can similarly result in an increase in their take, by spending more on ads instead of elsewhere? I doubt it. Joe Trippi's position of getting a monetary percentage from a media company and as a campaign manager who is directly responsible for channeling money to that company is different.
It may not be a "technical" kickback, but the dynamic works the same. Just like if Cheney held stock in Halliburton and was responsible for awarding government contracts.
Mod parent down.
That's what he did, and he got DECIMATED FOR IT.
If reality and your views are in conflict, what makes more sense to reconsider, your views or reality?
Alex
Finger slipped onto touch pad, accidentally sent it too soon. Here's the rest, starting from the second last paragraph, which I changed somewhat.
And oddly enough, that threat you mentioned? The one that was so dangerous it fell in less than two weeks? The one which we STILL haven't found any proof of actually being even remotely close to the threat the president and the Republicans kept hollering about? Well, it's gone, but some of the terrorists who are there now are going to be beheading an american citizen every 72 hours.
In other words, shut the fuck up, you ignorant fool, and learn about current events before you try to lionize Bush based on information which is now YEARS out of date.
It's been a long time.
If you are the real Joe Trippi, I have a suggestion for you. I suggest that you don't try to help in any more campaigns. You simply showed no understanding of political campaigns or marketing or advertising copywriting.
You made yourself and your amazingly mundane and pedestrian ideas the focus of the campaign.
As a 26+ year Vermont resident...
Much as I enjoyed the Dean candidacy, I do not feel that he would have made a good President.
Principally, he ran Vermont in a rather autocratic fashion. While I admire the fact that he left Vermont as one of three states in the black after the dot-bust, he did so by brow-beating the legislature into some sort of fiscal restraint. I fear running Vermont did not require that he develop the political machine skills necessary for running the Nation. I suspect he would have had a presidency similar to that of Carter, in many respects, for that reason.
Second, his campaign spending profile was all wrong, and it showed in how things unravelled after The Shout. These two things were independent, but coincidentally occurred about the same time.
That said, I'm not excited about Kerry.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Patton was right. We should've gone in an kicked the crap out of the USSR while we had them down. MacArthur was removed from commanding the Korean conflict because he had a plan to not just conquer the North Koreans, but the Chinese and USSR as well.
When I say that, I mean do not underestimate the difficulties involved in invading Russia. Napoleon tried it and if he hadn't he might have taken over the world. Even with higher technology you still need some sort of supply line. Sorry, but containing them and letting them collapse under their own economic weight was a better strategy.
It might have been a good thing to save the Chinese from the Cultural Revolution, but with the history of US foreigh politics, I just wouldn't trust our government to do the right thing. I imagine invading China would have some of the same issues as invading Russia, and a much bigger population to contend with. Confronted with an outside enemy, they probably would have united behind their communist overloards, as bad as they are/were.
I hate Liberals and Conservatives.
If you are a Liberal or a Conservative, then HAVE A NICE DAY!
Courage.
How does an interview with a failed left-wing nutcase of a presidential candidate relate in the slightest to technology in any way?
/. is populated by left-wing freakazoid Deaniacs who wet their pants every time Dean farted.
Wait, I forgot -