Senator Barack Obama is leading all presidential candidates in visitors to their campaign Web sites, The Nielsen Company reported today. According to Nielsen//NetRatings, BarackObama.com had the most unique visitors in July, with 717,000. Obama readily outpaced fellow Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Edwards, who had 437,000 and 348,000 unique visitors, respectively.
Earth Times 9/6/07
http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/news_press_release,172710.shtml
In the campaign’s early days, the media breathlessly covered the campaign’s online know-how and swallowed the hype that Edwards 2008 would be Dean version 2.0 —bigger, smarter, and better at using the Internet to harvest money, volunteers and votes.
Things haven’t quite turned out that way for Edwards. True, he posted decent online fundraising numbers by raising approximately $3.3 million via Internet donations in the first quarter of 2007, out of an overall haul of $14 million. But in the second quarter, Edwards’s figures dropped, as his $9 million total came up $5 million short of what he was able to raise from January through March.
snip
It’s not for lack of trying to recreate Dean’s magic that Edwards is coming up short in the fundraising department. Edwards has signed up several veteran Dean staffers, including Matthew Gross, who ran the Dean campaign’s blog, and Dean campaign manager Joe Trippi. In a July 1 profile, The New York Times’s Adam Nagourney reported Elizabeth Edwards had advocated hiring Trippi “in large part to address her concern about lackluster fund-raising by the campaign.”
Another of Edwards’s major Internet hires was Ben Brandzel, formerly advocacy director for MoveOn.org, and an organizer for Dean. Brandzel’s arrival was followed by a stir when the campaign’s online team asked anti-war Edwards supporters to stage protests at Memorial Day events.
The idea drew fire from veterans groups and newspaper editorials. Elizabeth Edwards wisely amended this plan by asking supporters not to protest on the Monday holiday, only the weekend before, because “Memorial Day itself is not supposed to be a day of protest. It’s a day of honor.” Lesson? What works in an advocacy group’s e-mailed action alerts, directed at a narrow group of activists, doesn’t always translate into effective ways to promote a presidential campaign.
snip
It may be that Team Edwards, despite their Dean campaign experience, aren’t doing anything groundbreaking with their Internet strategy. It’s possible that the self-inflicted wounds Edwards has suffered over supposed issues like haircuts and hedge funds have dented enthusiasm for his candidacy online, just as they’ve dragged down his standing in national polls.
Or it could just be that Edwards is not the freshest face in the race. In 2008, it’s Obama who’s the newcomer, and the
candidate most likely to inspire passionate involvement on the part of folks who have never worked on or donated to political campaigns before, whether online or off.Ironically, only days after announcing the hire of yet another Dean campaign veteran, Joe Trippi protege Paul Blank, Edwards told reporters they should look to Dean’s implosion as a reason not to count him out of the race. “Remember Governor Dean who out-raised everyone else by more than 2-to-1 and wasn’t able to win the nomination,” Edwards said in an AP interview. In order to avoid Dean’s fate, Edwards had better hope his campaign learns a lot more lessons fast about how to compete in the YouTube era.
The Hill 8/1/07
http://thehill.com/op-eds/john-edwards-needs-a-netroots-reboot-2007-08-01.html
The video about Mr. Edwards’s hair, shown at a debate where most of the other candidates made more conventional appeals for support, suggested the extent to which Mr. Edwards was willing to take risks.
Among those arguing against the effort, campaign officials said, was Harrison Hickman, Mr. Edwards’s pollster. Mr. Hickman did not return calls. The video was met with perplexed silence from Democrats sitting in the hall in Charleston, but Edwards aides declared victory the next day after noting that 124,000 people had watched their video on YouTube, far more than clicked onto the Clinton or Obama videos.
“The hair commercial was Joe’s idea,” Mrs. Edwards said. “Your choice on the hair stuff is to say this is not important, or make a joke at yourself or get angry at it because you know who is pushing it — we know who is pushing it and what campaigns are associated with it,” she said, without elaborating. “He thought of a 30-second way to make the point.”
New York Times 8/1/07
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/01/us/politics/01edwards.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
• “Democrats lead Republicans in using their Web sites to get visitors involved in the campaign (both engaging in the dialogue and participating in grassroots activity). Barack Obama is the clear leader here, followed by Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Bill Richardson.”
• “Perhaps the most fundamental grassroots activity of all, getting people to register to vote, is surprisingly lacking on these candidate sites. Only four candidates — Hillary Clinton, John Cox, John McCain and Barack Obama — feature information or tools to register to vote on their sites.”
snip
“Savvy visitors may even be able to determine leading candidates from the so-called lesser ones,” the report states. “The top candidates — those with the most money and poll popularity — have the most technically sophisticated sites, update more often, use more video and include more news articles. They also focus on fewer issues.”
It adds that Edwards looks at the fewest issues, with six, and Dennis Kucinich has the most at 91, noting he is the only discussing hemp and animal rights.
Editor & Publisher 7/12/07
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003610959
Transparency in elected officials is not merely a virtue worth admiring, it’s a practical necessity for the proper functioning and stability of a democracy. Accordingly, I put the current field of presidential contenders to the test by checking to see if they currently allow their campaign websites to be archived. Fortunately, I was not able to locate any current major or minor candidates that block the archiving of their campaign website, with one exception: John Edwards.
A search through the Wayback Machine for John Edwards’ website, produces the following message:
Robots.txt Query Exclusion.
We’re sorry, access to http://www.johnedwards.com has been blocked by the site owner via robots.txt.Further investigation led to the discovery of the robots.txt file and the line that was inserted to prevent archiving of JohnEdwards.com:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /archiveWe find it odd and somewhat troubling that Edwards’ campaign would block such a useful resource. We’re unable to think of any legitimate reasons why someone running for public office, let alone president, would refuse to allow their campaign website to be stored for future reference. Given his previous statements regarding transparency and honesty in politics, our confusion is only compounded by the fact that it’s John Edwards who is refusing to allow his site to be archived.
Requests to Edwards’ campaign for information regarding this matter were not responded to; we’ll be sure to provide updates as they become available.
MyDD 7/11/07
http://www.mydd.com/story/2007/7/11/19521/8067#59
iCrossing estimates Democratic presidential hopeful Edwards’ campaign spent 64 percent of all issue-based paid search spending in May, according to its “How America Searches: Election ‘08″ study. In contrast, Republican Senator McCain’s camp accounted for an estimated 29 percent of issue-based paid search ad spending in May.
-snip
Edwards’ ads were highly visible only in results for searches on “Iraq” and “war in Iraq.”
-snip
The study finds ads for Senator Barack Obama, whose campaign accounted for 4 percent of spending, appeared in searches for “Iraq” and “war in Iraq.”
-snip
Most searches followed party lines. Democratic hopeful Senator Barack Obama was the most-searched candidate of all, prompting searches by over 50 percent of all people using search engines for election information, and 60 percent of Democrats in that group. Forty percent of all election searchers sought for information on Democratic Senator Hillary Clinton, and about 57 percent of Democrats in that segment did.
ClickZ News 7/3/07
http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3626324
John Edwards campaign damage control on David ‘Mudcat’ Sanders anti-blogger tantrum has not mollified netroots concerns over Sanders or the Edwards campaign. In defense of Sanders, Edwards aide Joe Trippi blogged at MyDD: “Mudcat is…well he’s Mudcat. I am not sure if he considers me one of the “Harvards” or not. But I consider him one of the best rural strategists in our party — we can probably learn a lot from each other’s strengths and weaknesses.”
TPM Cafe’s Greg Sargent quotes Edwards spokesman Eric Schultz in a similar vein: “That?’s just Mudcat being Mudcat. He speaks for himself.”
Reactions to the reactions include:MyDD’s Matt Stoller: “And as for Joe Trippi and the Edwards campaign saying ‘Oh Mudcat’s Mudcat’, what is he, seven years old? That’s ridiculous. This is an adult man, not a child. And this is a Presidential contest, not a playpen.”
TAPPED’s Garance Franke-Ruta: “People who are working for presidential candidates — and this goes for all of them, and not just John Edwards — are ill-served by engaging in anything but the most innocuous personal blogging efforts. They’re likely to get their candidate in trouble if they speak freely but in a way that’s off-message for the campaign.”
Jane Hamsher at firedoglake: “Mudcat’s half-hearted apology for telling liberal bloggers to “go to hell” did not appear quite so deeply held as his interest in perpetuating the kind of class warfare that has been a hallmark of Republican talking points for decades, one that Edwards himself has suffered from mightily. … Saying that “Mudcat will be Mudcat” is not enough. I invite Senator Edwards to appear on a Blue America session with Howie Klein to distance himself from Saunders’ comments and give his liberal supporters the reassurance they deserve that these attitudes will not be reflected in his Presidential campaign as it goes forward.”
National Journal/Hotline Blog
http://blogometer.nationaljournal.com/archives/2007/06/613_distinction.html
I’m playing with a new tool called Political Monitor that lets me monitor the email campaigns and Web site traffic of all the political campaigns and contenders. Here are some early results.
Frequency: It’s interesting to compare the frequency of email messages sent out by the various campaigns, both Republican and Democratic, and to compare frequency with Web site traffic numbers.
Top of the list is John Edwards, with 11 email drops over the past 30 days. As I reported in my blog, there is also some interesting affiliate links driving traffic to the Edwards site as well, specifically an email newsletter called The Freebie Swamp that offers a link to a free “Stop the War” bumper sticker that goes directly to the Edwards Web page.
*** insert from blog: With political monitor you can keep tabs on both the internal mailings of the various candidates, but any 3rd party link, ad, or newsletter that is driving traffic to their Web sites. For instance, did you know that there is a link on an email newsletter called “The Freebie Swamp” that drives traffic to John Edwards web site. The link doesn’t mention John Edwards but says: “*Free* ‘End The War’ Bumper Sticker”
http://billmccloskey.typepad.com/ ***Next on the list is Joe Biden, with nine campaign emails in the last 30 days, followed by Barack Obama with seven, Hillary Clinton, five, Bill Richardson and Chris Dodd with four each, and Mike Gravel at zero.
As far as Web site traffic goes, though, Hillary is way out in front, dwarfing everyone else. Take Hillary out of the equation and Obama and Edwards pretty much are battling it out for a far distant second and third place. It will be interesting to see how this changes as things heat up.
email insider
http://blogs.mediapost.com/email_insider/?p=440
John Edwards for President Web site, you’re invited to send a sympathy note to the Edwardses. And tens of thousands of well wishers have done so since that heart-wrenching news conference two weeks ago at which Elizabeth Edwards courageously discussed her incurable cancer.
What those well wishers get in return — e-mail messages soliciting contributions to Edwards’s campaign.
Visitors to the Edwards site who choose to “send a note to Elizabeth and John” are first taken to a heartfelt letter from the candidate that was written the day after he learned that his wife’s cancer had returned. Edwards thanks readers for their “prayers and wishes,” vows that he and Elizabeth will “keep a positive attitude always look for the silver lining” and declares that “our campaign goes on and it goes on strongly.”
Anyone who then chooses to send a note of sympathy to the Edwardses — and, thus, provide his or her e-mail address — automatically becomes part of the Edwards campaign’s online e-mail database, a list that is crucial to any campaign’s ability to raise vast amounts of money over the Internet.
Snip> But petitions are one thing, said some Democratic critics of Edwards’s fundraising practices. Cancer is another.
Snip> One Democratic operative, citing comments made by Edwards, charged, “There’s a certain inconsistency to, on the one hand, going out of his way to say ‘don’t vote for us because of this tragedy,’ but then using it to solicit funds.”
Snip> Another Democrat, who asked to remain anonymous because of the issue’s sensitivity, said while it’s understandable that campaigns use e-mail addresses they acquire through their Web sites for fundraising purposes, “there should have been an exception in this case.”
washintonpost.com
April 4, 2007
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/sleuth/2007/04/edwards_raising_money.html
Instead, the Democratic presidential hopeful faced an unusual and extraordinarily personal grilling: Does he spend enough time with his children? Would his wife’s cancer take precedence over his official duties if he became president?
By his own admission, Edwards is tracing “uncharted territory” as he campaigns for the most powerful job in the world at the same time his wife, Elizabeth, wages a public battle for her life.
The promise and perils were quickly evident within the confines of a packed hotel conference room: More people than ever are paying attention to Edwards — but they’re not necessarily interested in hearing his campaign positions.
The candidate and his wife have drawn an avalanche of publicity since announcing Thursday, in a joint appearance broadcast nationwide, that Elizabeth Edwards’ breast cancer had returned. There have been front-page headlines for days and a Sunday night appearance on “60 Minutes.” CNN even broadcast live Elizabeth Edwards’ stop Monday at the City Club of Cleveland, in what appears to be a first in the annals of presidential campaign coverage.
Therein lies opportunity.
Edwards has been running third or fourth in national opinion polls and far behind Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois in the coverage given the Democratic contestants. A new Gallup/USA Today poll showed Edwards’ support ticking up in recent days and Americans, by more than 2 to 1, supporting his decision to stay in the race. (More than a third, however, thought he may eventually have to quit the campaign.)
Edwards Internet fundraising also has spiked in recent days, growing by about 50% — to more than $1.6 million — on the pro-Democratic website ActBlue.
Los Angeles Times, 3/28/07
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-edwards28mar28,0,1200480.story
