Back in the 1960s, there was a major upset in the political landscape. From the mid-30s until that point, politics had primarily been carried to the people by way of radio. During the 1960 election, most who heard the debate by way of radio thought that Nixon had won. But those who viewed it by television broadcast found Kennedy much more impressive, which is generally considered to have swung the election his way. This was the dawn of the "Television Strategy" in politics. In the 2004 election, we're looking at the dawn of the "Internet Strategy".
Just as television changed the way politics was done in the 1960s, the Internet is doing so in the 2000s. During the 2000 election, both candidates - Gore and Bush - gained quite a bit of visibility using their campaign websites. But they used them primarily as an auxiliary to their traditional "television" strategies, to provide an easy way for interested, involved individuals to read up on their platforms. Many technologists had predicted that the Internet would change politics, increasing the participation of individual citizens and decreasing the centralization that had developed with the move from newspaper to radio to TV. The 2000 campaign was widely regarded as disproving this prediction.
Skipping over two intervening years, we find ourselves in early 2003. The Democratic Primary seems flat, lifeless, and boring. The usual middle-of-the-road, toothless candidates (Gephardt, Lieberman, and, to a much lesser degree, the others) had been running traditional campaigns and avoiding criticizing Mr. Bush's policies. These policies were, at the time, widely seen as popular - or at least, impossible to challenge, given the uniformly positive coverage on national TV. A few left-wing candidates were speaking out against them, but they were widely regarded as minor, without any real influence.
Then the Dean campaign did something very unusual. They started an official campaign "blog", where their supporters could not only read but discuss news updates and, in fact, anything they wanted to. They also started fishing for contributions online, instead of (as was traditional) relying on big donors and the occasional mail-in from devoted followers.
Somehow, this, combined with actually criticizing Mr. Bush, rocketed Dean up to first place in the polls. His competitors - namely, Edwards, Kerry, and Clark - quickly followed suit. They were rewarded with similar substantial leads. None of their blogs were ever as active as Dean's during the primary.
Unfortunately - or, depending on who you listen to, fortunately - Dean lost. Why he lost is still in dispute, but its almost certainly not because of his Internet strategy. To see why, let us turn our attention to the Presidential election.
Here, we have Mr. Bush, the incumbent, employing the standard TV strategy. In fact, given his past victories and success at suppressing negative news coverage, one might call his campaign manager, Karl Rove, the master of the Television Strategy. Mr. Bush's campaign is very obviously a classic television campaign. His web site is mainly focused on presenting his platform, with a tiny "Blog" link. His blog appears to lack any sort of public comment form. His site focuses on his speeches, his plans, his accomplishments, his smears.
In contrast, Senator Kerry's site seems to emphasize volunteers and community. It has a large, prominent "take action" section with resources for volunteers and a Blog with about 200-400 comments per entry. Yes, the blog link isn't exactly more prominent, but that's a minor quibble. (IIRC, it wasn't on DeanForAmerica either)
So now that we've got these data points, why is this important? Because Kerry's adopted the Internet Strategy used by Dean, and Rove's Television Strategy just can't keep up. Just as Nixon dominated the radio coverage in 1960, Bush is dominating the television coverage in 2004. Negative stories about him get very little play, and his party's smear tactics get extensive free airtime. Kerry's platform - his greatest strength - gets very little airtime, and the news anchors try their hardest to hit him in subtle ways.
Despite this, Kerry's easily keeping up with Bush in the national polls, and is tied and ahead among independents in several important swing states. He and Edwards have been focusing almost exclusively at the local level. They've been making appearances in small towns that no-one else has visited in decades. They've been talking with people instead of talking at people. And they've been using the Internet to stay visible with their supporters, just as candidates in the past used national TV. Only instead of just delivering a message from on high, they're encouraging their supporters to discuss, collaborate, and get to know each other.
In short, they're trying to return to the "personal politics" of days of yore, only they're using the Internet to do so on a scale never before imagined. By using their campaign site as a blog, Kerry/Edwards encourage their supporters to form their own blogs, to get their thoughts out. While this does have a few downsides - freeper infiltration and constantly second-guessing the candidate among them - it has many more advantages. Witness the recent Faked Memos smear, where blog entries here on Kos extensively debunking the smear were linked to by Salon and other borderline mainstream media.
If I'm wrong and Kerry loses, feel free to disregard this diary. But I predict he's going to win - not big, but by a comfortable margin. And, as Zackpunk pointed out in a reply to one of my comments, this will result in the same throwing out of the playbook as happened back in 1960. The Television Strategy will be gone, and we'll be trying to work out what, exactly, the Internet Strategy is and how it works and what it relies on.