Spalpeen

David Cameron just said at his speech that he expected to arrange a “Confidence and Supply Arrangement.” What the hell is that?

“We ran Barack Obama’s fanclub”

Thomas Gensemer, Managing Partner at Blue State Digital which ran Barack Obama’s pioneering web campaign during the 2008 US Presidential Election, came to talk at City University. I made some notes from the last few questions, specifically why he thinks Twitter is a gimmick for political campaigning. City should be posting the video of Thomas Gensemer’s talk pretty soon.

UPDATE: Read The Guardian’s great interview with Thomas Gensemer. He has some great tips for Labour! Listen up Tom Watson and Derek Draper!

How do we shake it up in UK, and get broader adoption by politicians for new online tools?

“You can’t create a Howard Dean moment in the UK.” Instead, you’re got to start a small project, and show quick results. Spread “buy-in” from constituencies to other constituencies. Not helpful to think of a top down perfect solution. Best to say, here’s the budget, here’s the goals, here’s the community we’re mobilising. Best way to grow an idea is to start small and let it spread.

How do you manage expectations and prevent later disillusionment?

No possible way to have 15 million mobilised people at the end of first year to be as gung ho as they were in the days after the election. But, can identify niche issues and mobilise people. Segment out who are health care advocates and build something for them deeper than the campaign rhetoric. Understand that the other 80% will be less responsive (but build niches for them too). If you keep core bases of support alive, there’s no reason why it won’t turn into 15 million come campaign time again.

Why do you think services like Twitter are gimmicks?

Let me say that I think there are interesting consumer applications. Will be interesting to see Facebook’s biz model, and to see if Twitter has a business model [implication being it might not get one].

The problem is that the new tool on the block tends to distract. It’s easy for a lazy and unimaginative campaign flack to sell story of “politician on twitter!”. Case of shiny object moving to shiny object. For organisations that need to invest in deep relationships, new services like twitter are scattershot and dizzying. They burn political capital. Besides, they don’t talk to the people you want to talk to [case of early adopters not being very useful to political campaigns? I'd still consider Twitter to be an early adopter service - won't change until it has 60 million users, not just 6 million].

Catch21 got Emily Thornberry MP, Mark Field MP and Nick Harvey MP on to talk about Boris Johnson’s off-hand suggestion for National Service for young people, knife crime and how to encourage young people to volunteer.

I support Obama for President (the opponent would be a disaster for America and the world), but this video the campaign aired recently is essentially propagandist drivel. Who would in their right mind sit through a 30 minute commercial?! I expect that it’ll come off cheesy for uncertain voters, and probably patronising for most supporters of Obama. The only group I can see actually sitting through it are hardcore fanatics of Obama, but they would have watched this if it had been published solely online. Seems like a waste of money to broadcast this on the networks. Then again, most of this $1 Billion “race” to the White House comes off as a waste sitting from all the way over in the U.K.

“Mr Blair says he has not kept a diary of his time in Downing Street, but hints that once he leaves he will try to understand the world of the iPod and text messaging which, he acknowledges, is also changing the medium of political debate.”

Wow, just wow. Is there really hope for any kind of integration of a democracy that utilises the web when dinosaurs like these are still in power? If he can’t grasp the concept of text messaging or iPods (this quote is from the middle of a podcast, no less) then the prospect of concepts like blogging becoming integrated into the political process don’t look too great!

Read - The Guardian

I’m loving this blog, and that’s my fave entry on Beau’s homepage at the moment. The Guardian seems to link there, so maybe I’ll do some myself and see if I can pull some readers my way.

I’ve always hated it when politicians refer to “evil”. It sends shivers up my spine when the people that have/could potentially have a degree of influence over the actions of the state use the word evil to justify their beliefs or actions. The reason for my trepediation whenever a politician brings up evil can be traced back to when I attended a lecture by the shadow home secretary, David Davis. He referred to the detainees at Guantanamo as “evil” individuals. David Davis certainly isn’t the first person to say this: Blair has said it, and Bush has said it repeatedly. In fact, I blame Bush entirely for the increase in popularity of this simplistic word. Search any of his speeches, and you’ll find multiple mentions of “evil” this, “axis of evil” that. Frankly, I think it’s probably one of the most worrying linguistic trends in politics for a while. Rejecting the concept of right to a fair trial and using some arbitrary idea of “evil” to justify your stance is dead wrong.

Anyway, this rant was inspired by Randall.