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.'"

Comments

Similarities between democrat party, communists

[jgardn]

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.