January 27, 2004
Follow-up: Libertarians Finally Gain Momentum
I mentioned earlier that Gary Nolan (L) was in a close race in what some may call the “Amazon Caucus”, he was trailing John Kerry (D) by a mere $600. Now it appears that Nolan has rallied his troops and is trying to position himself as the Internet Libertarian in the same way Howard Dean rose to become the “Digital Democrat”. Nolan has managed to become Amazon’s top campaign recipient and appears to be on course to continue to a dominant lead against the Democrats.As a more centrist party, the Libertarians may pose considerable problems — not only for fiscal conservative Democrats — but for socially liberal Republicans who are dissatisfied with George Bush’s policies that some call “No Tax and Spend”. Read on for an updated table of Amazon.com contributions and what this may mean in the 2004 election:
Numbers current as of: 1/27/2004 4:07PM EST
| Candidate | # Cont | $ Cont |
| Gary P. Nolan (L) | 286 | $9,095.99 |
| John F. Kerry (D) | 291 | $8,904.58 |
| Wesley K. Clark (D) | 230 | $5,735.00 |
| Howard Dean (D) | 210 | $4,632.25 |
| John Edwards (D) | 158 | $4,400.01 |
| Michael Badnarik (L) | 57 | $919.00 |
| Dennis J. Kucinich (D) | 59 | $897.00 |
| Al C. Sharpton (D) | 18 | $410.00 |
| Fern Penna (D) | 8 | $47.00 |
The curious nature of this groundswell of support for Gary Nolan can be attributed both to an intense email campaign, which I have been monitoring (amongst the other campaigns for political insight), with what has gone from a trickle of one or two per month over the past year, to almost two per day since Amazon launched it's contribution service. One can almost forgive Nolan for what has so far amounted to ignorance of the Internet's potential (and a website that screams "1998" and "FrontPage"), as his campaign seems to finally rolling thanks to this invigorating injection of emails and communication. One thing that candidates can certainly learn from Dean is that the Internet (blogs, meetups, and informal communication) is required to run a successful media campaign: communication to (and from) supporters means communication to the media, which in turn leads to more coverage of the candidate, which is undeniably what most candidates are seeking, second only to votes.
Nolan may have gotten a Amazon(ian) push against late-comers to the Internet realm, but his campaign still 3 steps behind being truly Internet savvy in it's approach to the political forum.
Posted by SoL at January 27, 2004 04:30 PM
Appears the lessons to be learned from this kind of data will not be assimilated until the next election cycle. Everyone is too busy to try to extend their internet campaign to the internet and there is a bit of learning curve and development cycle that will prevent those extensions now.
But, man, talk about spam, wait till the next election cycle hits in two years, and then in four. It is going to inflame a lot of internet email box owners fingertipped callouses deleting it all.
This should open up some key jobs for IT and Web Development people however, a few thousand anyway and steepen the competition for such jobs.
Another prospect is that such inexpensive and readily available publicity for campaigning will extend the election cycle since relatively no cost will be associated with maintaining a campaign presence from election cycle to election cycle. If that occurs, then it is likely those continuous campaign sites will be pressed to make headlines with those sites in order to draw attention to them.
It is likely, given the even split between the major parties and the level of rancor and mistrust between their electorates, a demand for such continuous campaigning could be generated. If that occurs, we are really going to have a media, journalism, information credibility crisis, since the generators of the ampaigning ‘news’ will be absolutely biased in order to gain competitive edge on information and market share for that information.
Posted by: David R Remer at January 27, 2004 06:25 PM$9,000???
Howard Dean burns through that much money on an hourly basis. Dubya will probably spend that much when he takes a bathroom break. Is there some cosmic significance to this that I am missing?
Most importantly, when will Fern Penna pay me that twenty he owes me? (Just kidding.)
Posted by: Woody Mena at January 28, 2004 04:11 PM
