I love this quote from Professor Ganz: “On the progressive side, everybody had become marketeers. Everybody’d been marketing their cause or marketing their candidates as if it was another bar of soap, transforming people from citizens into customers.What we did was bring the citizenship back in and put the people back in charge, and then put the tools in their hands.“

Netsquared also rounded up Lessons from the Campaigns with its Think Tank.

I like this quote from Shari Ilsen, of Great Nonprofits: “[Obama] took technology that had been around for a while and used it in a new way. He applied web 2.0 to a realm that had never met it before, and in so doing he changed the face of modern politics.”

Turn out was low, perhaps because folks were exhausted after since a lengthy campaign. I did meet some interesting folks, including the founders of these two great political action websites (click on logos for more info):

Putting aside the public’s prurient concerns, I’m most interested in how Hunter managed to convince the campaign to hire her and what they hoped to achieve with the technology. Apparently Hunter met Edwards in a bar and some cynics might argue that the video contract was a way to formalize their relationship. But I think they were genuinely interested in using video to reveal something about Edwards.

Webscout says that “The four short episodes are usually referred to as “campaign videos,” which might explain why they have not drawn much of a crowd.” But why weren’t they successful? It seems that even though Hunter and the Edwards campaign were interested in new technology, they still had a very “top down” way of using it. Instead of something dynamic, they went for some sort of stale “Reality-TV” style.

Ultimately Webscout thinks that Hunter used video as an excuse to get close to Edwards:

Hunter is revealed as not simply a videographer hired by the Edwards campaign but a member of a much older profession: a groupie. And “Inspiring Politics” represents one of the most inventive ways a groupie has ever gained unlimited access to the power guy of her dreams.

Watch the videos and decide for yourself:

• Episode 1, “Plane Truths”
• Episode 2, “The Golden Rule”
• Episode 3, “Plight of Uganda”
• Episode 4, “Plugs”

Immigration has been a thorny issue for John McCain. Over the past few months, he seems to be playing both sides of the issue. As co-author of the 2006 “McCain-Kennedy” bill , his primary opponents assailed McCain as being for “amnesty”. To counteract this perception, McCain was often quoted as saying that he would secure the border first before making any other immigration reforms. Now that he’s wrapped up the nomination, the Republican Party is casting him as pro-immigrant. National Public Radio broadcast a story this past week suggesting that Latinos might support McCain because of this. Also this week McCain met with Latino leaders on Wednesday in Chicago. One Latino Republican in attendance was quoted as saying, “He’s one John McCain in front of white Republicans. And he’s a different John McCain in front of Hispanics.”

Obama on the other hand has promised immigration reform during his first 100 days in office. Even so, Latino congressional reps are worried that Obama isn’t doing enough to court Latinos.

There was also news this week that Democrats are playing both sides of the issue by pushing for more funding for strong-arm enforcement measures.

Immigration is one of those “Alice in Wonderland”-type policy issues where normal positions seem to warp and change at random. With the national elections less than five months away, we’re sure to hear a lot more about the issue.

ACTION STEPS: Check out your candidate’s website to see what he says about immigration policy: McCain or Obama . Contact your candidate and tell him what you think of their position: Obama or McCain

For more than fifty years, advertising and marketing experts have conceptualized trend setting with the “Influentials” frame, based on the research of Paul Lazarsfeld, Elihu Katz, and colleagues. Proponents claim that highly connected individuals facilitate a “two-step information flow” (see left) between message-generators and the general public. Further propagating this thesis, Malcolm Gladwell in his bestselling book “The Tipping Point” claimed that “some of us count more than others” in developing trends. This conceptualization is part of the foundation for the concept of “viral marketing” in which advertisers target the most effective “carriers” for their viral message. In many ways, Progressive advocates have cast themselves in the role of “Influentials” in propagating a national “trend” that results the recognition of human rights and true opportunity for all.

Recent research by Duncan Watts and Peter Dodds refutes the idea of “Influentials” and claims that trends are started much more randomly, much like wildfires (see left). Watts and Dodds argue that we do not discuss the quality of a match in starting a fire but whether or not the conditions are right to make a fire spread quickly and broadly. Certainly Nativists and others are capitalizing on national conditions (i.e. fear over terrorism/crime and economic decline) that permit their messages to be disseminated effectively. In order to create a reverse “progressive” trend, it seems to me that we need to engage fully with new forms of collaboration. Watts calls his approach the Big Seed, which is basically mass marketing with a word of mouth component. I wonder if it’s about creating the right sort of platform where the conditions are created for a human rights wildfire.