The ’08 presidential campaign is in full swing and the web is front and center.  Already there have been debates on YouTube, Rudolph Giuliani has suffered the slings and arrows of Facebook, where his daughter signed up for an Obama Supporters Group; Bill Richardson and Mike Huckabee are getting generally good notices for funny viral ads; Mitt Romney’s use of ad networks led to his ads appearing on Gay.com (and it was the folks at Gay.com who asked that they be removed); Ron Paul had an incredibly successful online fundraising event organized by an individual supporter; Clinton has fared poorly on the authenticity meter with over-scripted web content… and we’ve got a good solid year to go.
 
Most of the candidates’ online campaigns, though, are pretty old school.  They post their tv spots on YouTube and alongside the usual glossy brochures and scare-mailers they post their positions on campaign websites.  Where digital has come into play most forcefully is in spreading the now-generic “Macaca moment”.  You can fake all the flag-waving, your-pain-feeling sincerity you want, but you wouldn’t fake a mistake, so the mistakes are where we see candidates at their most authentic. 
 
In an effort to put the gotcha cameras on its rivals, the Democratic National Committee has launched a new site: www.democrats.org/flippertv.  Here, you can download hours and hours of video the DNC shoots of Republican candidates as part of their opposition strategy, and edit it into your own campaign propaganda.  I’m assuming that supporters of GOP candidates can use the video to put halos over their candidates’ heads just as easily as Dems can demonize them, so it probably winds up being a relatively non-partisan effort even given its origins and intent. 

This is one of the first efforts I’ve seen that really acknowledges how politics has (so far) played online.  Official candidate sites are preaching largely to the converted… no one knows whether a candidate who has more Facebook friends gets more votes… online dirty tricks tend to be unmasked and embarrass the handlers (if not the candidates) who use them.  It acknowledges that the “Macaca” who gave George Allen his moment was a “tracker” – a supported of Allen’s Democratic opponent who had been sent to get potentially damaging video of Allen at campaign events.  It’s too much to think that the trackers themselves will again become the story, and equally easy to think that knowing of this effort will inspire rival camps and freelance haters to try and create gaffes, but what really bears watching is whether any of the videos that users create out of these raw materials has an effect on an election.
 
Matt Rosenberg