During Warren Harding’s 1920 presidential campaign, Boise Penrose, the Republican boss of Philadelphia, is reputed to have said, “Keep Warren at home. If he goes on tour, somebody’s sure to ask him questions, and Warren’s just the sort of damn fool that’ll try and answer them.” The risk in answering questions is, of course, giving an answer that loses more votes than it gains. Harding, the frontrunner in that contest due to public disapproval of outgoing Democratic President Woodrow Wilson, won the election, though how many questions he answered in the process is less than clear. It is usual for incumbents to keep a low policy profile, already possessing sizable advantages, and having nothing to gain by sharing their opinions. The wise strategy in an open-seat election is less obvious, but the Minnesota Third District was Republican territory, and the smart money had voters defaulting to established partisan tendencies.

There is another way to handle policy. A candidate could run by poll, attempting to position him- or herself in agreement with the public on as many issues as possible, but that’s hard to do in a congressional campaign. Public opinion on a wide spectrum of issues is difficult to gauge among voters within a congressional district. Both parties conduct polls to gauge voters’ preference of candidates, as do independent research firms, but getting a clear answer to district voters’ opinions on this or that issue is beyond what a survey could realistically accomplish. The news changes at an ever-increasing pace, and as voters do their best to keep abreast of the emerging details, their opinions can change equally rapidly. Candidates could make issue-by-issue decisions based on the most recent polls, and not, in the end, find themselves on the more popular sides of many issues.

Advice on how to handle policy issues in a campaign, when not contradictory, presents a tightrope that is nearly impossible to walk. Since knowing the respective positions of the district’s voters is impossible, and convincing voters to adopt the candidate’s position is just as unlikely, the only remaining approach seems to be to convince voters that they have been in agreement with the candidate all along. A campaign strategy paper once succinctly advised, “The goal is not to change people’s attitudes, but rather to define the choice so that a vote for the candidate is consistent with existing attitudes.” Given the constant fight for scarce media resources that a congressional campaign finds itself involved in, such a goal is quite unrealistic. Campaigns are often preoccupied with whether average voters will remember the candidate’s name.

There are issues, as well, that resist the taking of a clear stance. Everyone likes a fiery candidate who takes a clear stand, but a congressional representative has to deal with policy issues that are intricate, as everyone in Congress, and everyone who wanted to be, found out last fall. When Wall Street firms began to fall like dominoes last September, the White House and both congressional parties agreed that an emergency had occurred that would require congressional action. That’s about as far as the agreement went, even within the party caucuses. The parties bickered between and amongst themselves over the amount of the bailout, where the money would go, who would be responsible for its disbursement, the degree of oversight, and countless other details. It’s frustrating to observe–and exactly how the process is supposed to work.

An immensely complex piece of legislation concerning levels of finance few of us understand was produced, and Congress was asked to pass it with maximum haste. For a candidate to take a public position on the bailout that was responsible and clear was a little like explaining how to tie a shoe to someone who’s never seen a shoe. Still, the press and the public demanded to know, rightly so, where the candidates stood. At a debate on September 22, with the package still under discussion, Ashwin Madia saw the inevitability of the passage of some kind of bailout, and said, “Unfortunately I don’t think there’s a choice when it comes to the package, so I support it, but I’m not happy about it.” When the first bill failed to pass, Madia issued a statement pointing out the bill’s lack of bipartisan support, and stating that his criteria for passage would include protections for taxpayers, prohibitions on Wall Street bonuses, and greater scrutiny of investment banks. When the compromise bill was passed and signed, the candidate issued another statement, this time stating that he was, “Pleased that a significant bipartisan compromise has been achieved. However, I am disappointed that compromise required more than $100 billion in pork barrel spending.”

To read Madia’s remarks now, it sounds like he was hedging his bets on the issue, never quite getting around to mentioning how he would have voted, but that’s not entirely fair. The candidate made clear that he thought the legislation necessary, and what his expectations of the bill would be. The bill fell short of those expectations, as well as being laden with measures he deemed wasteful, but was still being taken up by the Congress as an emergency measure. So should the hypothetical representative vote yea or nay? All we can reasonably expect of a representative is to advocate for the issues he deems appropriate, and vote his best judgment. The standard for candidates, however, is stricter than that. The deliberation you would wish for in a congressional representative seems like dodging the issue when done by someone running for the office.

In the election season, the greater concern seemed to be convincing the public that there was a campaign at all. In the case of an unknown candidate like Ashwin Madia, there was little to be lost in demonstrating his issue positions to the public. Just getting noticed amongst the extensive buffet of political information in a presidential year is the major, ever-present issue of the day. The mainstream media ignored most of the campaign’s issue-related releases, and showed little interest in covering policy-based events. By Election Day, despite the campaign’s best efforts, most voters likely walked into the booth with little knowledge of either candidate’s specific positions. In the end, candidates are often judged on something more intangible, as one political scientist put it, “Less by what they say than how they say it, less by their achievements than by their personalities.”

The Madia for Congress campaign’s approach to policy–making the candidate’s positions as clear as possible–was a clear strategy to appeal to voters who might be sympathetic to that candidate’s positions. It probably made little difference, though, in the final outcome. Of course a candidate could always attempt to pander to voter preferences, going public with only the most popular of initiatives, as Dick Morris, former strategist to President Clinton has advised.

The key is to advertise your positions only if the public agrees with them. If the public won’t accept your basic premise, it doesn’t matter how much you spend or how well your ads are produced; they won’t work.

That is an ugly sentiment, one that places winning the election as an absolute goal, and gives cause to wonder what the point is in running for office in the first place. At any rate, there seems to be little evidence indicating that this cynical approach leads to electoral success, at least at the level of a congressional election.

The Madia for Congress campaign went out of its way to make its policy positions as clear as possible. To the degree it succeeded in portraying the candidate’s governing philosophy, it was the right approach, if for no other reason than because it was the right thing to do. Policy position may not, in the end, change the minds of very many voters, but voters who take an interest ought to have access to their potential representative’s opinion, and know who they’ll be voting for. Running for Congress is a massive undertaking, and when all is said and done, you might lose. You may as well lose being what you really are.

The day before the election, I was leaving the Madia for Congress office to prepare for the candidate’s visit to a community college that I had arranged, and on my way out, overheard a colleague from the campaign’s finance office down the hall, saying, “You know, I feel like this whole campaign has been a loud argument on about ten blogs between a bunch of people who already had their minds made up.” He might have been right.

After an exhausting campaign that, between the endorsement and the general election, lasted over a year, Ashwin Madia lost the 2008 congressional election in Minnesota’s Third District to Erik Paulsen by over 7.5%. The most frustrating aspect of losing an election is never quite knowing the full reason for the loss. The campaign might have been a failure, or, perhaps, it was a waste of time from the outset, never having the ghost of a chance of picking up a Democratic seat in a traditionally Republican district. There is no clear answer, and for all I know, the results might have had nothing at all to do with effectiveness of the either campaign.

Some time ago, I attended my soon-to-be ninth grade daughter’s registration program at our neighborhood high school, at which teachers from various departments presented what the school had to offer. A couple of dozen parents were in the small auditorium, and the teacher from the Social Studies department decided to liven up the proceedings by asking questions about the recent election, rewarding correct answers by throwing candy. “Who is the new President of the United States?” he asked, and a woman in the sixth row answered, “Barack Obama!” The teacher asked the name of the current winner of the hairpin-close Minnesota U.S. Senate race, and an eighth-grade boy in front got his candy for answering “Al Franken.” “Here’s a tough one,” the teacher said, “Who is the newly elected U.S. Representative from Minnesota Congressional District Three?”

Silence filled the room. The two major party candidates had spent a combined five million dollars running for congress, not counting the campaign of the third-party candidate and the millions of dollars in resources the two major party congressional committees had poured into the race. Untold volunteer hours had been donated. Doors were knocked on, phone calls made, TV ads run. This was a room full of active participants in the community, parents who most likely voted, many of whom probably voted for their new congressman whose name they did not know, much less the name of his defeated opponent.

Finally I could take no more. “Erik Paulsen,” I called out, and was dully rewarded with a strawberry Starburst. It was like some kind of bitter joke. If a congressional candidate falls in a district where nobody much is paying attention, does it make a sound? Apparently not. The time, effort, and resources poured into convincing voters in the district to have an opinion on who represents them in Congress had no effect at all, at least not among the parents of eighth graders in East Bloomington. They may have simply been among the nearly 12,000 voters in the district who cast a vote for President, and didn’t bother with the election for the U.S. House.

The contest for the congressional seat in Minnesota’s Third District had the attention of two major political parties, the national press, and political watchers all over the country, which is to say the contest was watched by everyone except the people who mattered most, the residents of the district who would cast a vote for the seat. Those are the people the campaign competed for, and those people have other things on their mind. The campaigns are left with one comprehensive communications strategy to capture the attention of voters: Try everything.

It’s a new age of politics, and you have to campaign using every new piece of technology that comes along, but that doesn’t exempt anyone from using the tried and true methods of campaigning that candidates have always engaged in. Your supporters might be posting on blogs, but they’d better not neglect to send letters to the editor of their local free weekly paper. You might have a slick website, but don’t forget to knock on doors. Email your supporters, and anyone who might possibly become a supporter, but you best send a bulk mailing, lest your name become lost in the spam filter.

While you’re in the middle of a congressional campaign, that campaign seems drastically important, and truly it is. This is a representative democracy, and elections decide who makes the nation’s important decisions on all of our behalf. Most people don’t think about that every day, though. They don’t wake up every day and check their email to see where their candidate’s name has been mentioned. They don’t care how many people showed up at the West Minnetonka Rotary Club last Wednesday morning to hear his speech. They don’t have a bumper sticker. So the campaign does what it can to bring it to them, and so does every other candidate campaigning for every other office.

It’s all background noise after a while. The commercial break during every local TV news broadcast is filled with one political ad after another–the Presidential election, Senate contest, House races not just in your district but all the others that are in the same broadcast market. Mailers arrive from candidates, parties, interest groups. You get phone calls, people at the door, fliers on the stoop if they miss you. The state house candidate shakes your hand at the local farmers market. Your friends send you emails. Pundits on the radio handicap the races. The parties send you sample ballots. After a while, no one can distinguish one candidate from another. Ashwin Madia, right. Remind me what he was running for again?

It’s a couple of months after the election, now. My candidate lost, and life seems to be going on, my family currently escaping the clutches of the looming economic crisis. The Presidential candidate I supported won, and I have enough distance from the disappointing election to see that President of the United States is probably more significant than a freshman representative in the U.S. House, even if that’s not the campaign I poured my energy into. I won’t be voting for anyone for anything for a couple of years, so my attention can drift back to the concerns that make up life for normal people–who’s making dinner, whether the kids got their homework done, how to handle the latest car trouble, how stable the Twins third base situation is. It’s enough to fill up the days, and then some. If someone wants to tell me they’re running for Congress, well, they’ll have some work ahead of them to get me to notice.

Perspective gained, politics can resume a more reasonable role in life, as it does for most people. No more Google Alerts in my inbox. Well, that’s almost true. My state senator is up for reelection in 2010, and I do have an alert for his name, as well as the three prominent Republicans in the district that might consider challenging him. This morning, I saw that one of them is giving a talk at a meeting next week. I wonder if anyone should be taping that.

It seems like a simple and obvious application for the web’s most successful brand-named search engine, but its implications are dramatic. The Madia campaign had a subscription to the local daily newspaper, but really, it was a wasteful and anachronistic expenditure. Every day I would pick the Star Tribune up off the sidewalk in front of the office door and pitch it into the paper recycling bin beside the office copier. It was already well after 7 a.m., and to anyone who had checked their email since dinner the evening before, whatever was in the morning daily was old news.

The technology available to the campaigns constantly improves with new applications that make communications faster and cheaper. Tracker footage gets posted to YouTube within minutes of an event, and campaigns have begun to produce viral video ads specifically for the site. It’s much less expensive than TV, simpler get the content to the target audience, and of course, faster. Blogs with relevant stories feature updated postings, minute-to-minute, that you can check from your Blackberry. All of it happens at digital speed, and campaigns do what they can to keep up.

And you have to keep up, and use the available technology at least as well as your opponent, or give away an advantage. The idea is to make use of these resources for the campaign, but you start to wonder if, in some perverse way, it’s become the other way around, and the resource is using the campaign. Are candidates truly building a campaign online, or are they just not giving ground, worried that the opponent will come to dominate the medium, as Republicans have taken over the talk-radio airwaves and the Obama campaign claimed ownership of text-message communication? If daily newspapers don’t get stories to us fast enough anymore, how far does this go? Will the 2010 midterm election feature frazzled campaign staffs obsessively checking for new scandal updates on Twitter? Will campaigns turn the cameras on themselves to defend against trackers taking remarks out of context? There is not a clear answer, but you have to wonder how much video footage of candidates is floating around YouTube, every tracker looking for the next macaca moment.22 How many political blogs would have given up on posting into the unread void of cyberspace without candidate supporters attending to their day-to-day postings? We don’t know, and won’t, because no campaign can afford an experiment in conceding the electronic battlefield. Doing so would render the November election a referendum on whatever issues your opponent selects, on terms defined by the other campaign.

A key moment in the campaign?

On September 30, the Erik Paulsen campaign called a press conference in which Senator Geoff Michel, a Republican member of the Minnesota Senate, was the only speaker. Press conferences exist to get attention for the candidate, and are, as a rule, heavily promoted by campaigns. Attention from mainstream news sources is desired, and TV news coverage is the Holy Grail. It was odd, then, that Erik Paulsen, himself, did not appear at all on that day. For a press conference, the atmosphere was markedly low-key.

Senator Michel, as it turned out, was there to point out the differences between Erik Paulsen and Ashwin Madia. “Raising a family in the district, sending your kids to the public school, owning a home, working in the Third District, paying property taxes in the Third District. Erik Paulsen has done all these things,” the Senator told us, “and Ashwin Madia has not.” “I don’t want to use the word ‘carpetbagger,’” Michel went on to say, though of course he just had. Madia is a 30-year-old bachelor who rents an apartment. Representative Ramstad, who had served the district as a Republican congressman for nine terms and had endorsed Paulsen, also had no children, but that was hardly the point.

The Paulsen campaign, taking care to speak through their surrogate, made the point on that day that Minnesota’s Third Congressional District is made up of, and should be represented by, a certain type of person. The district is suburban and its residents are, for the most part, white. Ashwin Madia, the dark-skinned son of Indian immigrants who had left the district to be educated in New York City, was not these things. Erik Paulsen, by contrast, very much was, as Minnesota GOP Chairman Ron Carey later, explained, noting that, “Erik Paulsen … really fits the 3rd District so well, as one of them.”

It was an old school campaign play, updated. The Paulsen campaign did not invent the tactic of pointing out the otherness of a political opponent as a negative. Dividing the electorate between us and them has been one of the defining tactics of American politics since World War II. The acknowledged master of the tactic was Richard Nixon, whose campaign slogan for his first successful congressional run was, “One of Us.” Paulsen, like Nixon before him, was attempting to tap into the way suburban homeowners in his district see themselves.

William Schneider examined the suburban ethic in a 1992 Atlantic Monthly article, noting, “The prevailing life-style in all these places remains distinctively suburban, meaning home-owning, homogeneous, and largely white.” Schneider interviewed Dan Walters, a columnist for the Sacramento Bee, who further explained, “The theory…is I bought this house. It’s mine. This is my little preserve.” In the suburban preserve, as Senator Michel seemed to suggest, people are like you. They are from the neighborhood, and they stay there. Their family looks like yours, their job is similar, and they do not look like their parents came from another part of the world. The Paulsen campaign was tapping into the same impulse then-Vice President Nixon had in 1952 when he gave his infamous “Checkers” speech, as Rick Perlstein notes in his book on Nixon’s lasting political legacy.

To a new suburban middle class that was tempting itself into Republicanism, admiring Richard Nixon was becoming part and parcel of a political identity based on seeing through the pretensions of the cosmopolitan liberals…The America over whose direction they struggled for the next fifty years, whose meaning they continue to contest.

Senator Michel, on that day, made the case that it should be obvious who we are and just as obvious that Ashwin Madia is something else altogether. Covert racism is no small part of this tactic. Dan Carter, in his book on the 1968 George Wallace campaign tips his hat to Nixon’s (and later Ronald Reagan’s) mastery of subtle race-baiting.

Nixon had taped a television commercial attacking the decline of “law and order” in American cities…Nixon did not have to make the racial connection any more than would Ronald Reagan when he began one of his famous discourses on welfare queens using food stamps to buy porterhouse steaks.

There are votes to be had by distinguishing yourself from your opponent in this way, but it needs to be done with great care. A risk is run that you will offend the public, losing more votes than you gain. Erik Paulsen wanted his suburban pedigree on his candidate resume, but only to be read by the people who would appreciate it. The strategy was to call attention to it, but not too much attention. Have it said, but not by the candidate. Get some news coverage, but not too much. If the press conference stays off the TV, but shows up in the online publications and the blogs, the right people will see it and internalize it. Those people are already voting for you, but now they have a clearer picture of why, an identity that they might pass along to their social groups. Anyone who finds it and takes offense wasn’t going to vote for you anyway.

Ashwin Madia called a press conference the following day, essentially asking his opponent to campaign by discussing the issues. Senator Michel and Minnesota Republican Party Chair Ron Carey were present, though again, not Representative Paulsen. Each of them, in turn, took the microphone after Madia left the room, and tried to clarify, or perhaps distance, the remarks of the previous day, ensuring that Paulsen was not portrayed as an overt racist. Carey began, pointing out that, “From a demographic standpoint, Erik Paulsen fits the district very well.” Senator Michel spoke further about Mr. Madia’s fit for the district, using the phrase, “When you look at the candidate…” Then, when asked by reporters about the racism implied in the words they chose, both Republicans representing the Paulsen campaign denied using them.

As the questions from reporters became somewhat hostile, Carey and Michel became visibly agitated, apparently not having expected a backlash from reporters concerning what appeared to be underhanded tactics. Michel began to phrase more carefully, now explaining, “If you look at the candidate’s resume…,” and Carey became almost incoherent, rambling something about what a good soccer coach Ashwin Madia would, indeed, make, as he was clearly in good physical condition.

It was a strange moment. The Paulsen camp seemed genuine, simply expressing what, to them, was their candidate’s fitness for public service and not possessing the self-awareness for it to occur to them that their comments might be offensive, until they had already made them. They were just stating the obvious–a certain kind of person lives here, and Ashwin Madia is not our kind. It was, again, more than a little Nixonian, as Perlstein, examining Nixon’s definition of the “silent majority,” recalls.

Nixon made political capital of a certain experience of humiliation: the humiliation of having to defend values that seemed to you self-evident, then finding you had no words to defend them, precisely because they seemed so self-evident.

Given the energy the campaign put into the two days of press conferences, Erik Paulsen’s absence continued to confound, though in retrospect it seems like a shrewd decision.

The controversy was, in the end, largely ignored by the mainstream press, as was, it would seem, its intent. Minnesota Public Radio’s politics blog covered both days of conferences, and the Minnesota Independent posted the videos. Minnesota Democrats Exposed was present and did the obligatory blog postings. The Paulsen campaign likely made their case successfully, to exactly the audience with whom it would resonate.

The internet takes the communication between a candidate and a voter inquisitive enough to seek information about a candidate to a more intimate level, one in which television crews and newspaper editors are absent. The public seems to be responding. A 2008 survey reported that 39% of internet users (29% of all adults) have gone online to read or watch “unfiltered” campaign material, which includes candidate debates, speeches/announcements, and position papers.

My own tasks at the Madia for Congress headquarters were ample evidence of this. Each day, the Communications Director would send me e-mails from web users who had clicked the link on our website to ask policy questions, and I would respond. The issues in question were all over the board: same-sex marriage, energy policy, the Iraq War, gun control, the financial services bailout, and so on. Questioners would give their email address, and I would reply with the candidate’s position. Usually the questioner would then reply to my response. While I would get the occasional angry reply from voters who disagreed with Mr. Madia’s position, or from voters with whom the campaign’s position was aligned but not strongly enough to satisfy them, the vast majority of emailers were grateful for our attention, and for being taken seriously, even if the candidate’s position was at odds with their own.

Giving voters this kind of attention was, in itself, the point of the exercise, and a luxury for the campaign and voters alike. The campaign received some extra assurance that policy positions were being accurately articulated to voters who were truly interested in a specific issue. Voters got answers to their questions, quickly and with little effort. A worker who came home from the second shift and wanted to know Ashwin Madia’s position on the Employee Free Choice Act could Google the candidate’s name, bring up the website, and send us as nuanced a question as she wished, right then, at 4 a.m., while it was still fresh in her mind. That’s easier and less intimidating than taking to the microphone at a candidate forum, to which she likely couldn’t make it anyway because she needed to get supper on the table and run her kid to basketball practice. This way, she knew she’d get an answer, quickly and easily.

Online interaction between campaigns and voters has increased consistently over time, every election producing a larger, more impressive statistic of internet use among voters. In the 2008 election, 46% of Americans (up from 31% in 2004) used the internet, email, or cell phone text messaging to get news about the campaign, share their views, and mobilize others. That is a big number, almost half the American public and probably closer to 80% of those who vote. There is every indication that there will be a new statistic after the 2012 election that will make this one seem relatively unimpressive.

Accessing candidate websites is far from the only manner in which voters search for information on the web. There are uncounted numbers of online news sources and political blogs on the internet, open to anyone with a connection and the inclination. Just as users of candidate websites interact with them directly, users of online news sources have a much more immediate relationship with their preferred websites than consumers of traditional media can expect. Gary Selnow calls this “up-lining,” the ability of web users to respond to the initial information source in a manner that renders their response as a part of the content. “Up-lining topples the traditional hierarchy of sender and receiver,” argues Selnow, “and in the years ahead, it is destined to have a profound effect on political communication.”

Indeed, it seems it already has, especially when the phenomenon of blogging is added to the on-line mix. A blog was initially a sort of online diary posted by a single host, but has become something quite different. Blogs, today, especially those that concern themselves with politics, are daily postings of whatever news items the host deems relevant, followed by (usually, but not necessarily) brief responses from readers that can number into the thousands per day, depending upon how well-trafficked the blog, and perhaps to some degree, how inflammatory the initial posting. Andrew Sullivan, a writer who stumbled into the form partly by accident, and in the process helped to invent it, appreciates the style of immediate feedback as a sort of hyper fact-check.

Unlike newspapers, which would eventually publish corrections in a box of printed spinach far from the original error, bloggers had to walk the walk of self-correction in the same space and in the same format as the original screwup. The form was more accountable, not less, because there is nothing more conducive to professionalism than being publicly humiliated for sloppiness. Of course, a blogger could ignore an error or simply refuse to acknowledge mistakes. But if he persisted, he would be razzed by competitors and assailed by commenters and abandoned by readers.

Due to its emphasis on immediate feedback, a blog, though in print, is not a printed medium in quite the same static way as a newspaper or a book. Sullivan continues, “The key to understanding a blog is to realize that it’s a broadcast, not a publication. If it stops moving, it dies. If it stops paddling, it sinks.”

There is no arguing that online blogs have a loyal, even a fanatical, audience. There are not many indications, however, that those dedicated online reader/responders add up to very many people. Only an estimated 4% of online users read blogs. The few vigilant blog readers are then divided up among the multitude of competing blogs, and traditional news sources, having brand names and websites of their own, retain most of the market share.

Due to the type of user that blogs draw, there seems to be little likelihood that readers are open to persuasion by either candidate. On the web, as in other walks of life, people like to have conversations, political and otherwise, with people like themselves who will validate their opinions. Web users looking for political content find blogs with a supportive audience that will confirm already held beliefs. At the end of the day, blog readers very likely hold the same political positions they did at the start, now with a greater degree of certitude.

Blogs are an irresistible venue for campaigns. If they don’t directly change the mind of voters, they affect the campaign in a more subtle way. Campaigns have a narrative, and any public policy issue has a vocabulary. It is difficult for an elected representative to vote against something called the Patriot Act because of a concern for civil liberties—one does not want to be bogged down in nitpicky issues of constitutional law at the expense of a perception of being lacking in genuine patriotism.

Much as right-wing talk radio shows do little to convince anyone who does not already subscribe to their point of view, blogs give supporters a productive way to stay engaged, lend a general atmosphere to the campaign, and most importantly, define the terms of the debate. If a campaign is a public conversation about who should govern a society, the framing of that conversation is a way to influence its outcome. Campaigns fight hard to determine the political vocabulary, and blogs are good places for supporters to make the campaign’s case, on the campaign’s terms.

Also, blogs are cheap. Blogs already exist that are friendly to the issues that make up a candidate’s platform. All that needs to be done is to develop the relationship and send supporters to the site to post comments, which doesn’t cost a nickel. The Paulsen campaign went a step farther than that, putting an established blogger on payroll. Michael Brodkorb owns and operates a blog called “Minnesota Democrats Exposed,” its obvious raison d’etre to attack Democratic officials and candidates. The Paulsen campaign wrote several thousand dollars in checks to MDE, with the expense identified in Paulsen campaign expense reports as “Public Relations Services,” The actual service rendered was to turn the blog’s attention to attacking Ashwin Madia on an almost daily basis. A few thousand dollars is not chump change, but it is a small fraction of the cost of producing and airing a television ad buy. Of course, the blog only reaches a fraction of the number of voters televisions ads do, but that’s beside the point. The Paulsen campaign was paying for the attention of an already assembled audience, an audience that would be willing and able to take direction, internalize the campaign’s talking points, and work on the campaign’s behalf to define the terms of the debate. While energizing supporters, a blog like MDE casts a wider net, as political reporters follow the daily postings as a potential source of leads for what might be legitimate mainstream news stories.

… continued …

There was an election in November of 2008, but you probably knew that already. You cast a vote for a presidential candidate, and if you were especially interested, put a bumper sticker on your car and a sign in your yard. If you’re a typical Minnesotan, somewhat more engaged in the process than is usual with Americans, statistically speaking, you also voted for a U.S. Senate candidate, and you remember who it was, even if your candidate didn’t win. That’s already quite a bit going on for one election cycle, but of course there was also an election for the U.S. House of Representatives in your district, and at least two candidates who wanted your attention, badly. Those candidates had plenty of help from staff, interns, and volunteers who wanted your interest and your vote. The technologies used by the campaigns to get your attention are changing rapidly, and so too are the effects of those technologies on a rational, responsible political discourse, or as 2008 often proved, a lack thereof.

A congressional campaign is a curious thing. Stakes are high, and resources pour in. Typical citizens might notice, but among the day-to-day of making a living and building a life, the race for President is plenty of politics for most of us to follow. Campaigns do everything they can think of to get noticed, and get people to care about who represents them in the U.S. House. The congressional election in Minnesota’s Third District was especially heated. Jim Ramstad, the Republican who had represented the district for the preceding nine terms, was retiring, leaving his seat in the U.S. House of Representatives open and worth a serious campaign by the Democratic Party (locally known as the DFL). The national press was watching the contest, regarding it as one of the closest in the country. Donors from all over the country gave large sums to candidates. The two major parties and their congressional committees poured resources into advertising. Political activists in the district donated thousands of hours of their time.

Minnesota’s Third Congressional District lies immediately west of Minneapolis and includes the Twin Cities’ western suburbs, hooking eastward at its north and south borders, giving it the resemblance of a giant “C” on a map. The combination of wealthy communities near Lake Minnetonka and conservative small towns to the northwest has rendered the district a solidly Republican area. The district has not elected a Democrat to Congress since the Eisenhower administration.

Jim Ramstad had served the district in Congress since 1991, and was generally considered to be unbeatable as a candidate. Besides possessing the advantages of name recognition and fund raising abilities typical of long-term incumbents, Representative Ramstad’s moderate views on social policy made him an acceptable candidate even among many Democratic voters. Representative Ramstad had not won an election with less than sixty-five percent of the popular vote in the past decade.

On September 17, 2007, Jim Ramstad announced that he would not seek another term in Congress, bringing what had been an unwinable seat for the DFL within the realm of electoral possibility. DFL Chair Brian Melendez noted that U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar had won 56% of the Third District vote in 2006 and that DFLers had picked up nine state legislative seats in the District over the previous two election cycles.

Clearly, the district was in play.

Ashwin Madia took notice. Madia was the son of Indian immigrants who had grown up with an inclination toward public service. Mr. Madia joined the U.S. Marine Corps after receiving his law degree, and served in Iraq in 2005 and 2006. Following his service, he returned to Minnesota and took a job with a prominent law firm. When Representative Ramstad announced his retirement, Ashwin Madia turned his gaze to politics full time, leaving his attorney job to declare his candidacy in the fall of 2007 and earning the DFL endorsement on April 13, 2008. He would run in the November election against Republican Erik Paulsen, a former Ramstad staffer and Minnesota House Majority Leader. I was a supporter of Madia’s almost from the inception of his campaign. From Labor Day to Election Day my role was more defined as a Communications Assistant for Madia for Congress, a campaign that was scrutinized by political watchers nationwide but had to constantly strain to gain notice in the district where it took place.

While most of us go about our lives, barely taking notice of the flurry of campaign activity happening in our midst, people working on a congressional campaign have little time to think of much else. Campaign workers’ days are narrowly focused on convincing the people around them to not just vote, but to move their pen down the ballot to the race for Congress and to have enough of an opinion about it to choose the right candidate. How to do that is the operative question, and if there was ever a clear answer, it no longer exists. Candidates, today, communicate with the public using every means at their disposal. At the most basic level, office-seekers and their surrogates shake hands, knock on doors, walk in parades, send mailings, and do all the work politicians always have. That work expands with the available technology. Voters have telephones, so campaign workers call. They have radios and televisions, which campaigns employ by running paid advertisements and seeking news coverage. Now most American voters have a computer on their desk, or even in the palm of their hand, rendering the question of how to reach voters vastly more complicated and the answer even more temporary.

The 2008 political season was unlike any before it or any that will come after it, and not only because its substance was unique. Communicating with the public is what a campaign does, by definition, and how that task is best accomplished changes constantly, election cycle to election cycle and almost day to day. Campaigns reinvent themselves and their method of presentation as technology changes, and technology is changing at such a pace, today, that in every election, voters will get a new version of what a campaign is, as the campaigns desperately compete for those voters’ eyes and ears.

By 2006 the practice of “tracking” ran into the practice of filming everything, and the presidential aspirations of one candidate were destroyed by the time he finished uttering one fateful, regretful sentence. If there was a defining moment in the age of high-speed campaigning, it might have occurred on August 11, 2006 when Senator George Allen (R-VA) referred to S.R. Sidarth, an Indian-American man filming one of his campaign events as “Mr. Macaca.” Senator Allen denied that it was his intent to use a racial epithet, though the fact that he added “Welcome to America” after the initial remark made his excuses seem weak. The Senator’s career had been thriving before that day, and he was presumed to be running for the Republican presidential nomination, having made several trips to Iowa and New Hampshire. The incident gained national news coverage immediately, and Senator Allen lost an election in which he had been leading in the polls. His prospects for a future presidential run appear dim.

Mr. Sidarth, the target of the Senator’s remark, was employed by Jim Webb, Allen’s opponent, as a “tracker.” The tracker’s job is to follow a candidate to public appearances, and capture everything he does, every word spoken to a crowd, and every conversation with every individual. The constant presence of the tracker evidently irritated Senator Allen to the point of provoking his uglier side, which was then captured on film, lest the Senator try to deny the incident.

The 2006 Virginia U.S. Senate contest was not the only campaign featuring trackers at the time, but since what has entered the political lexicon as the “macaca moment,” few campaigns of substantial size are without them. Trackers were employed by both the Minnesota State Democratic and Republican parties in the 2008 election cycle. The Republican tracker appeared very early in the election cycle at debate forums featuring Ashwin Madia and his opponent for the Democratic endorsement in the race, Terri Bonoff. No party had yet endorsed a candidate for the open House seat, but both were getting an early glimpse that this was going to be a new kind of campaign, one heavily influenced by the cheapness and availability of technology, in this case a hand-held video camera. All candidates were on notice that every word spoken, indeed every facial gesture, every breath taken, would be recorded. The margin of error for misstatement was reduced to zero. The following October, a week before Election Day, footage from a Madia-Bonoff forum was featured in an Erik Paulsen attack ad. The footage consisted of Madia saying the words “increase taxes,” which the ad repeated several times. The actual recorded footage lasted less than two seconds, but the two words spoken by Ashwin Madia more than half a year before votes were cast may have played a decisive role in the election’s outcome.

Video cameras aside, the obvious new frontier for campaign communication is in cyberspace. There is little question, at this point, that the internet has and will continue to affect nearly every aspect of how the public receives news and information, and as its presence increases, the web has more and more influence on the substance of the campaign. As far back as 1994, Vice President Al Gore was predicting (notwithstanding whomever might deserve the credit for the internet’s invention) the sea change that was coming to politics, foreseeing the web as a tool that would “promote the functioning of democracy by greatly enhancing the participation of citizens in decision making.”

Political organizers took notice of the internet as an organizing tool in Minnesota’s 1998 Governor’s race, as Jesse Ventura’s successful third-party campaign for the post gave much credit to online organizing. The New York Times saw the Ventura victory as a sign of things to come, noting, “The Ventura race is also being hailed by observers outside Minnesota as the first major election in which the Internet made a difference.” Phil Madsen, the director of then-candidate Ventura’s website said, “The Internet for us served as the nervous system for the campaign. The Web site was not the difference; it was the mobilization.”

Ralph Nader’s Green Party presidential campaign of 2000 seems to have been the first to harness the internet as a grassroots organizing tool. His webmaster, Jonah Baker, declared that the internet “was our ultimate means of communication with people.” Four years later, Howard Dean used the internet for fundraising and for arranging physical meetings of his supporters, and since then the use of internet technology has spread down the ticket to practically every campaign. The 2008 Minnesota Third District contest was typical. Both candidates hosted websites that featured biographical information, enabled potential volunteers to provide contact information, allowed donations using a credit card, and provided event schedules. Madia’s page also provided issue papers on various policy positions and included a link to a form that users could fill out in order to ask policy questions of the campaign.

While the medium used to communicate is novel, the substance of what it carries is not. Candidate websites are effective clearinghouses for the same information candidates have always made available, but that information is now more effectively managed. Computers, much as they do in so many other realms, simplify the organization of the data, and make it simpler to use. Even as the new medium adds no particular new thing, its availability changes the character of a campaign by giving the campaigns the power over the information. A website is created and maintained by the campaign itself. The campaign chooses what content to include and, just as importantly, what not to include. No consideration need be given to boiling policy positions down to TV-friendly sound bites. If the candidate wants to write a ten-page policy memo on health care policy, the link can be posted on the homepage, a click away. The campaign is in fully in charge.

This newfound control over information works both ways, enabling web users to access exactly the content they want from the campaigns without the need for media to choose for them. Matt Drudge took notice early in the game and has made a living linking from his “Drudge Report” website to other information sources. In 1998, he told a National Press Club audience that, “Now, with a modem, anyone can follow the world and report on the world—no middle man, no big brother.” That was a decade ago, and of course the world can now be followed on a Blackberry, no modem necessary. As the campaigns choose the content to put forward, the public gets to choose what it deems relevant.

What about the public, the voters? What new role might they play on this altered political landscape?

… to be continued …

U.S. Representative District 5 (Vote for 1)
Barb Davis White, DFL Party

X Keith Ellison, DFL Party

Gregg A. Iverson, DFL Party

Why: Fairly frequently, I run into people who try to tell me that all politicians are corrupt or inept. I tell them I’m represented by Keith Ellison and Al Franken and that perhaps they should fix their own situation. They shut up. Note also that this is not a safe race to skip in the voting. Barb Davis White is a Tea Party candidate who has realized she has no chance in the general election and is trying to sneak in through the primary. Don’t let that happen.

Governor and Lieutenant Governor (Vote for 1)
X Margaret Anderson Kelliher and John Gunyo, DFL Party

Peter Idusogie and Lady Jayne Fontain, DFL Party

Mark Dayton and Yvonne Prettner Solon, DFL Party

Matt Entenza and Robyne Robinson, DFL Party

Why: Dayton and Entenza both have plenty of experience, and I won’t cry if either of them wins the primary. However, there’s a lot of work required to reverse the damage Pawlenty (and others before him, but mostly him) have done. I really want a governor with experience getting the legislature to produce working bills. Kelliher did just that.

Secretary of State (Vote for 1)
X Mark Ritchie, DFL Party

Dick Franson, DFL Party

Why: Dick Franson is a perpetual candidate for any office. Ritchie is the only serious candidate.

Attorney General (Vote for 1)
Leo F. Meyer, DFL Party

X Lori Swanson, DFL Party

Why: “My brother was a highly decorated officer” is not a qualification for this office. Swanson is the only serious candidate.

Minneapolis School Board Director, District 3 (Vote for 1)
X Hussein Samatar

Why: There may be only one candidate in this race, but he’s well worth voting for.

Minneapolis School Board Director, At Large (Vote for 2)
Rebecca Gagnon

Chanda Smith Baker

Steven C Lasley

X T. Williams

James Everett

Mohamud Noor

Doug Mann

R.E. “Dick” Velner

X Richard Mammen

Shirlynn Lachapelle

Why: School board elections in Minneapolis are interesting. Almost everybody is saying the right things about what needs to be done, so it comes down largely to demonstrated competence. My two choices have the most board experience directly related to schools.

Hat Tip: Crooks and Liars

Hellier had previously accused the Meffert campaign of misconduct because a volunteer staffer with the campaign had modified Meffert’s Wikipedia entry. It is my understanding that people who have Wikipedia entries (and are alive and stuff) often correct errors or otherwise make appropriate modifications of the entries. Indeed, that is the how and why of Wikipedia itself. In this case, the staffer clearly updated the entry to be more detailed and more accurate. In “exposing” the staff member, Hellier also published private information about her on the MDE site, which is potentially problematic.

But the more interesting, if also much much dumber accusation Hellier made has to do with a Meffert ad using a clip of opponent Erik Paulsen babbling about something on the House floor. Hellier accuses Jim Meffert of violating House rules regarding the use of another member’s footage on the House floor in campaign ads. Such a rule does exist.

Luke Hellier is confused. Jim Meffert is not (yet) a member of Congress. He, like any other American citizen, is not bound by the House rules. The House rules are for sitting members of the House of Representatives (and the Senate has their rules, and so on).

I doubt very much that this is a case of incompetence or ignorance on the part of Hellier, though there is that possibility. I think, rather, that this is Hellier making stuff up in order to have something bad to say about Meffert, who, unfortunately (if you are a Republican) is not an easy person to make bad stuff up about.

But, I also hasten to add another suspicion I have: I think it is possible that Hellier did not think of this dirty trick all by himself. It has been tried before, in very similar circumstances, and as documented here. It would appear that Luke Hellier was following marching orders from HQ, or perhaps bumped into this particular dirty trick and decided to ape it.

Interestingly, what might (or might not) be an item from the Republican Playbook (accusing a Democratic candidate who is not in the House of violating a House rule) is in the Republican Playbook in a different form: Terry Lee, a Republican member from Nebraska apparently is in violation of said rule.

I should point something out regarding these House rules. If you read the relevant parts of the rulebook and not just the part quoted by Hellier, you can see why Meffert not only did not violate House rules (not being in the House and all) but that he also did not violate the spirit of the House rules. The point of the rules regarding a “General Prohibition Against Using Official Resources for Campaign or Political Purposes” is to avoid having members of the House use their official government budget to run for re-election. This stems form the old days when members of the House had, for instance, a “stationary budget” which allowed them to send “informational letters” out to their constituents, and used their travel budgets to stump on their campaigns, and so on and so forth. Not only is that misuse of government funds, but it also sets up a situation where powerful sitting members of the House or Senate can, essentially, manipulate campaign funds of other members. And so on.

But a person who does not hold elected office can grab a clip off C-Span (or whatever) and do pretty much anything with it. And they often do. And he did.

You would think Luke Hellier would know this. Well, he probably does. And now you do to, so he can’t fool you any more!

A military that forgets its place and decides that it should make the decisions on where to fight comes too close to a dictatorship to protect a democracy. There are far too many countries run by Generalissimos, Supreme Commanders and Sergeants, countries whose people have been disappeared, tortured and imprisoned because they don’t share the enlightened vision of their military.

The recent history of the United States illustrates just how important it is that the civilian authority are in charge.

During the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962, the top military were aghast at Kennedy’s unwillingness to risk war with the Soviet Union by invading Cuba. After Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev found a way to stop at the brink of nuclear catastrophe, both saw more clearly than ever a mutual interest in preventing another such occurrence. This led to a sustained back channel dialog from which the JCS were excluded, and of which they were highly distrustful.

“When all that you have is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail.” The military approach to conflict is to effect a military response, to use the tools of war. However, the defenders are not in charge of the republic. If they were, we would be in a perpetual state of war. The military would be used for more than defense; it would be a tool for expanding the empire. We would be preemptively striking against countries that might, in the future, mean to harm us. As we all know, this is not what the United States is all about. We are a peaceful, freedom-loving people who only attack to defend ourselves and our allies’ interests.

In Iraq, for example, we have fought for seven years and three months to prevent the terrorists from invading the United States. Since the start of the Iraq War, there have indeed been no invasions by the terrorists and so the strategy is working. There have been some foiled terrorist attacks on our soil, but the terrorist on the plane to Detroit and the terrorist in Times Square bungled their attacks because of our presence in Iraq. This is a simple matter of reviewing cause-and-effect, people.

In Afghanistan, we are there for a different reason. We sent our troops there to unseat the Taliban, a truly horrific organization of misogynists. These men find any excuse that they can to kill or disfigure women for violating societal norms that keep women in their place. Women under the Taliban’s government were not allowed to see gynecologists because they would then have had to disrobe before a male that is not their husband. Women were not allowed to be doctors. Girls under the Taliban were not allowed to attend school, to learn to either read or write. Schools for girls were burned with children inside them. Girls on their way to school were splashed with acids to permanently disfigure them, to teach them and the women around them that learning is only for boys and men and that their purpose is solely to bear and raise children for Allah’s glory. The Taliban clearly needed to be ousted.

We have also been in Afghanistan for other reasons. We have been there to assist in creating a democracy, a western-style democracy to restore Afghanistan’s rich parliamentary history. We removed the Taliban, but now what? The Afghanistan government is not in control of their country seven years later. Our military is asked to keep things in order until a freedom-respecting government is in place and in control. And our leaders do not know what it will take to achieve such a goal.

I think it is clear that a military mission in Afghanistan is not able to strive for much more than temporary truces, respites that will only last as long as our military is there being asked to surge and strategize indefinitely. How can our generals be asked to do what no other world power has ever been able to do, how can our military subdue Afghanistan? We can’t and we shouldn’t expect them to do so.

General McChrystal has a big mouth. He and his drinking buddies openly mocked the civilian leadership (their bosses) to a reporter for Rolling Stone Magazine. But that is not the problem. It is the reason that McChrystal’s resignation has been accepted by President Obama, but it is not what he is truly guilty for doing. His cadre told the truth about Afghanistan:

McChrystal’s closest advisors speak openly in the article that they do not believe the war in Afghanistan is winnable. Here is how McChrystal’s Chief of Operations told Rolling Stone‘s Michael Hastings that the war in Afghanistan is going to end: “‘It’s not going to look like a win, smell like a win or taste like a win’ said Major General Bill Mayville, ‘This is going to end in an argument.’”

As Hastings writes: “So far, counterinsurgency has succeeded only in creating a never-ending demand for the primary product supplied by the military: perpetual war.” And that is what key figures in the military have in mind, notwithstanding the president’s commitment to begin withdrawing US troops in July of next year. According to a senior military official in Kabul: “There is a possibility that we could ask for another surge of US forces next summer if we see success here.”

Another surge? Without a clear exit strategy from Afghanistan – and 96 Members of Congress are demanding one by co-sponsoring legislation sponsored by Jim McGovern in the House – senior military leaders are conducting operations in Afghanistan as if escalation, not withdrawal, could very well be in the cards. And why not? McChrystal backed the administration down before, why not again?

This makes a vet with head trauma feel better

Obama fired McChrystal and people applaud, and say that Petraeus is the great choice to replace him in Afghanistan, to turn things around and get some victory going out there in that quagmire that is starting to look increasingly like Vietnam.  It is an unwinnable war, which is something that the military likes because they get to keep on fighting and it keeps them from getting bored. The patriots like it because it gives them more reason to cheer on the troops and put yellow ribbon magnets and stickers on their cars.

We aren’t supposed to allow the military to dictate policy.  After eight years of a Bush/Cheney administration that was more than happy to drop bombs and drag our allies into war to protect us from people who “hate us for our freedom,” we had expected a president who would work towards ending our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan and we are not seeing that happen. Instead we are seeing renewed calls for more, more, more money and troops to fight a war with no clear objective.

I am not a fan of McChrystal by any means.  He thought he was the tail that could wag the dog, to tell the President how high to jump. I do think that he is not in charge any more in Afghanistan because he and his drinking buddies spilled the beans about an unwinnable war.

You talk a mite too much, General.

What do you give to a corporation that has cut corners, ignored warnings, skimped on safety and relied on old and inadequate spill cleanup technology when you think that the President of the White House is being mean to them? If you are Joe Barton, Republican from Texas, you give them sympathies and apologies for a government that expects said corporation to take responsibility for its recklessness.

Okay, accidents happen. We understand that. We get it. There are no guarantees that risky oil-extraction ventures in mile-deep water, drilling 13,000 feet through rock, will not have some occasional problems. It ain’t easy to get oil out of there. We are even aware that we need the oil.

Despite the promise of limitless energy available through alternate sources, a transition to a solar and wind economy is many decades away. You and I and our other readers can cut down on our electric usage with the right kinds of bulbs and judicious usage of air conditioning. We can drive fuel efficient cars and take fewer trips. We can use public transportation when possible. We can shop for goods that use less plastic and plastic packaging. We can make these little efforts to cut down on the need for oil. As consumers we can make a small, conscious dent in the demand and thirst for oil, but as consumers we are not going to be able to do enough to reduce demand so that offshore drilling is not necessary.

Given the dangers and risk of drilling, and given the steady demand for petroleum energy and petroleum-based products, I feel no sympathy at this point for the British Petroleum Corporation. They are not suffering. Nor do I feel compelled to “like” them on Facebook. This is a company that recklessly engaged in practices to speed the process of drilling and extraction in an area of the ocean that should be approached with great caution.

Now we have a bunch of oil spreading around the Gulf of Mexico, pluming deep and spreading wide and killing birds, fish, mammals, crustaceans, krill and jobs.

Representative Joe Barton, who along with Minnesota’s native daughter Michele Bachmann has felt the strings of sympathy tugging his heart for BP, apologized for Obama’s strong-arm tactics in getting BP to agree to a 20 billion dollar fund to recompense those who have been financially damaged by the leaking oil. While he has since unapologized and said that absolutely BP needs to be held responsible for their mess, he only did so to stem a political embarrassment. He does feel sorry for them. He weeps for them and the troubles they have faced.

He weeps for BP as they accept deposits from continuing contracts from the United States Military. BP is not going to disappear under the weight of excessive demands from the United States government for money. From the Truthout.org article (originally published at TomDispatch.com):

In 2009, according to the Defense Energy Support Center, the military awarded $22.5 billion in energy contracts. More than $16 billion of that went to purchasing bulk fuel. Some 10 top petroleum suppliers got the lion’s share, more than $11.5 billion, among them big names like Shell, Exxon Mobil and Valero. The largest contractor, however, was BP, which received more than $2.2 billion — almost 12% of all petroleum-contract dollars awarded by the Pentagon for the year.

Does anyone else notice the amount of oil that is used to protect our energy dependence?

They are going to come out okay, financially, despite their track record of safety violations. Consider that they are extracting, recovering and selling oil from the spill, to the tune of 15,000 barrels per day:

It couldn’t be worse, could it? In the Gulf, BP now claims to be retrieving 15,000 barrels of oil a day from the busted pipe 5,000 feet down. That’s three times the total amount of oil it claimed, bare weeks ago, was coming out of that pipe. A government panel of experts now suggests that the real figure could be up to 60,000 barrels or 2.5 million gallons a day, the equivalent of an Exxon Valdez spill every four days — and some independent experts think the figure could actually be closer to 100,000 barrels a day.

I don’t think we need to cry for poor British Petroleum getting fleeced by the government. I think that we need to be tougher with them, to make an example of them so that we scare all of the deep-sea oil extraction concerns. It needs to be more expensive to cut corners than to do this the proper way if we are stuck with offshore drilling.

Don’t cry for BP, Joe Barton. They’ll be okay, even if they get shaken down.

Here is a video of Bachmann, on the floor of Congress, explaining her dramatic and drastic new policy recommendations:

More details here.