Back in the dark ages before news became an instantly available commodity online, populist political campaigns had to struggle to get coverage. Column inches and airtime were limited, and the main criterion media outlets used to figure out what was worth covering was mainly the amount of money available for advertising. It was a tough time for a scrappy candidate with a good stance on the issues to make a enough of a dent in the public consciousness that they could hope to get elected.
but...
All of those limitations made it possible for savvy and creative campaigns to use a sort of media jujitsu to make their mark anyway. Now, with unlimited space and a lower bar for entry online, anyone can get a message out. I think that has actually made it harder to reach voters if a campaign isn't rolling in cash.
Consider for a moment what advantages we have now- instant communication with potentially thousands of supporters, easy coverage in publications available worldwide, cheap and simple airing of video through youtube and other sites. Campaign managers from 1988 would be messily drooling all over themselves.
What's so bad about having such amazing organizing tools? The big drawback is that EVERYBODY has them and uses them all the time. One of the advantages us scrappy populists had in the pre-internet era was that we had brains and muscle and shoe leather and frankly not very much pride. Putting together a scathing press conference on financial corruption (complete with giant charts), packing public meetings with supporters, or even dressing up in a silly costume to make a point were all tactics that were beneath those that could afford to simply pay for advertising and events. Now, every local campaign has the same worldwide reach. Scrappy populists from all over are competing with each other for attention- you don't just need a youtube ad that makes your opponent look stodgy and out of touch, it also has to be better than the ones from geniuses in upstate New York or Oregon. Worse, the big moneyed interests have realized that grassroots movements are worth something and the coordinating power of the internet means that they can just buy a movement off the shelf instead of actually needing to have boots on the ground locally.
Instead of intriguing an editor at a local or regional media outlet to get a message out, in order to gain the same degree of attention for our issues locally we now have to go viral and gain national traction. Local media is now a national phenomenon. Sure it's gratifying for your issue to gain notoriety around the country, but it makes it so much easier to get lost in the noise. I routinely see critical issues here in Colorado that don't get much local attention at all until there's a national spotlight.
Two examples: The Denver school board race and the Colorado Secretary of State
Emily Sirota's race to get on the Denver school board has sparked national coverage because her opponents have fielded vast, record-breaking amounts of money funneled in from "education reform" interests. Without national coverage of the problem, and without it being emblematic of a widespread issue, she'd be screwed. There's no way her campaign would be able to battle against the tide of money that's funding the negative attacks against her. How many other city council and school board campaigns are there in the same boat that didn't manage to make national headlines and just have to scream on street corners?
Scott Gessler, the Colorado SoS, issued a ruling that ballots in this year's all-mail election couldn't be sent to "inactive voters." This is a radical change from past practice, and it would've just been settled through quiet court action between county clerks and the SoS office if it hadn't gained national interest with coverage from Rachel Maddow. Sure, those of us that are political news junkies would've done our best to bring the issue to our neighbors and online but the local paper didn't carry a news item until the story broke around the country. What if this bit of partisan chicanery hadn't fit into a national narrative of Republican vote suppression? Would there have been any attention until after the election when people looked up and said "hey! wait a minute!"
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There's a story that Jim Hightower tells about Paul Wellstone's first run for Senate. Wellstone put together a camera crew and bird-dogged his opponent, Rudy Boschwitz. They put together the footage into an ad and called a press conference to announce its release. The campaign couldn't afford to put the thing on tv, but it was so good that it made nightly newscasts around the state anyway.
In theory that sort of thing happens all the time now. Sure, local newscasts rarely cover that sort of thing without the prodding of national interest, but shows like Rachel Maddow routinely highlight quirky stunts like that. What are the odds that it will happen for any individual campaign? When John Hickenlooper first ran for mayor in Denver, he put together a series of ad spots showing him feeding quarters into parking meters for people. This was to highlight the difficulty there was at the time in parking downtown and how that affected businesses. That's hardly a pressing national problem, and local news these days would probably take a pass unless it could be tied in to some nationwide narrative but at the time, the local media ate it up.
Perhaps it's all moot. Local news is dying and has long ago lost relevance to most voters. The internet at least offers the ability to organize locally if you can cut through the noise. It's just a pity that we're edging past the days where being right, being brave, and being a little bit silly could tip the balance against big money in ways that the moneyed interests couldn't fight.