Much was made earlier in the Democratic primary over the amount of money that was being spent by the Edwards campaign, being highlighted by the former senator's $400 haircut. But as stated on nyt.com today in an article entitled "Edwards’s Campaign Tries to Harness Internet" the use of the internet by the Edwards campaign is front and center.
The Edwards campaign made on of the greatest moves of the democratic primary race when bringing in Political consultant Joe Trippi. For anyone who had read Trippi's book "The Revolution Will Not be Televised" you should know the genius behind the 2004 Dean for America campaign's use of the internet to propel the relatively unknown Vermont governor to presidential front runner in only a few months. Now Trippi has to deal with an even more interactive and online group of voters for the 2008 primary season and different type of campaign and candidate then in 2004 as stated here in the nyt article referenced above,
"Yeah, there are a bunch of differences," Mr. Trippi said in an interview at the headquarters in Chapel Hill. "It was — it is — a more traditional campaign than the Dean campaign. The one thing is in a strange way, Edwards and Elizabeth — Elizabeth in particular, but Edwards, too — get it that the old way doesn’t work. That you need to use the Internet, blogs, technology, YouTube, to reach out to people."
"She’s much more into it than he is, but he gets it in a way that Howard didn’t," Mr. Trippi said. "I mean Howard got it, but he didn’t get into it. You would never get a call from him saying: ‘Should I call Ann Coulter? Or should I blog on this today?’ What I’m trying to say is she and John think about it more."
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And so far I think he has done a great job especially using YouTube to the Edwards camp's advantage. This can be seen through the infamous "hair video" that shows there are bigger problems out there to deal with then the price of a haircut. That video has had over 200,000 viewings since it was put on YouTube last week. Also when one sees the success of Edwards in the YouTube debate and the overall effectiveness of the Edwards website, one can see an online campaign for today succeeding. And the internet is vital to Edwards who must spread his word and remain to stay out of the shadow of Clinton and Obama, and the internet is just the tool to succeed in this task. Not only with contributions, but with diaries, blogs, multimedia, and finding people in your area that want to organize for Edwards are just some of the things that the website offers. In conclusion with Trippi on boards it is hard to see how Edwards could get beat online, now he just needs to not to get beat in Iowa.