Politics and social media

15 March 2011 |permalink | email article

Democratic consultant Joe Trippi has always been ahead of the political game, notable as the mastermind behind Howard Dean’s Web-centric 2004 bid for president. Speaking at a South by Southwest Interactive conference Sunday in Austin he suggested, Politico reported, it’s only a matter of time before a third-party presidential candidate comes from nowhere to upend a presidential front-runner – boldly suggesting it could happen next year to President Barack Obama.

The edgy Trippi said some underdog candidate is going to seize the social media tools in a way that no one has even thought of. Conventional wisdom aside, “Some guy out there, some candidate, some woman running, who doesn’t have much of a chance. It will be one of the big frontier breakthroughs in 2012 or 2016.
His theory is some independent candidate is gonna come out of nowhere and raise a billion dollars on the Internet.”

Social media has played a big part in Arab revolutions and revolts in 2011. A Cairo activist nailed it, “We use Facebook to schedule protests, Twitter to coordinate, and YouTube to tell the world.” But despite Trippi’s theory, the extent to which social media and the Web can kill the two-party system, remain elusive.

Democrats strike back

Signs mount that the Wisconsin GOP’s quick passage of a bill to roll back collective bargaining rights is only causing the battle to escalate. Greg Sargent’s Plum Line blog in the Washington Post reports that the Wisconsin Democratic Party has collected over 45 percent of the signatures necessary to hold recall elections for eight GOP senators.  Put another way Democrats are reporting they are nearly halfway to the finish line, with roughly three-fourths of the remaining time remaining. I suspect fraidy cat Gov. Scott Walker is in a state of shock.

Read ‘em and weep

“There are some really good people running. I like them all. I’m hoping that our party will simply step up to the issues of the day, and it could be any one of these folks.” – Indiana Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels, on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” sounding coy about his presidential ambitions, agreeing “to consider a presidential bid,” but “committed to the job I’m in now.” On a scale of ten, a weak five. 

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