1. Just because Edwards’ Web 2.0 strategy didn’t translate into as many votes as he would have hoped, Obama certainly credits the web for a great deal of his momentum (particularly on the fundraising side). From the same speech where he made the “bitter” comments, here’s what the news didn’t cover:

“I want to make a point about fund raising because I think it is illustrative of what else is going on. We raised 55 million dollars last month. … I’m sorry. We raised 55 million in February; we raised 40 million that last month. Now, these are gaudy numbers. But, what’s interesting is not the amount raised. 90% of what we raised came over the Internet. 50% were for $50 or less. Our average donation is less than $100.

Now, essentially what we’ve done is we’ve created a parallel public financing system. That using the Internet and mobilizing people all across the country – over 1.3 million donors – we’ve created a system where ordinary people can actually finance, can fuel, a campaign at the highest levels.

Why is that? Essentially, groups formed themselves using technology. We have an Open Source system. For people to just grab onto good ideas. They start organizing their neighbors, organizing their friends. And, next thing you knew, we’d built the best political organization in the country. And that’s what we have. I mean, we have the best national political organization that anybody has seen in a generation.”

Sure, fundraising success might not make Boyd or others feel as warm and fuzzy, but you could argue that it’s the best way (short of eventual vote counts) to measure reactions to online appeals. For what it’s worth, I’m a Second Life doubter myself…but it’s clear that these strategies can have an impact. Just maybe not without some momentum from elsewhere.

2. To be fair to Boyd (who admittedly goes pretty far over the top in this post), he’s not asking for continued web engagement on the same level that the Edwards campaign managed with an army of college interns. But just as Edwards would NEVER have ended his campaign without an announcement speech, plugging health care and poverty as he bows out, he shouldn’t have simply stepped away from the keyboard without some kind of similar “I hope you’ll follow these sites,” “I’ll be posting when I can on this blog,” or even just “thank you, internet denizens, for all the love” post. I think that’s a fair–if perhaps shallow–expectation from folks who really felt that this online engagement was genuine.

3. I think ultimately the important argument here is not that Edwards should feel bad for hurting Steve Boyd’s feelings, but that he’s wasted an opportunity to maintain relevance and connection with his supporters by walking away from a web infrastructure that could be sustained–without much or any staff–in an abbreviated or less regular fashion.

Boyd’s self-laudatory whining glosses over one pretty important fact: despite having the most plugged-in campaign with (I suspect) the most support in progressive “web culture”, John Edwards’ campaign never gained any traction. His Campaign 2.0 strategy, for all its success at wooing bloggers, failed at the vote-getting part of the election. Combine that with the proliferation of horrible nonsense on the web (Strongbad, Hannah Montana semi-topless, Second Life [call me a curmudgeon but I see no point now or in the future of this Second Life thing], etc.) and it’s pretty obvious why a politician might shy away from “web culture” in favor of the “old politics wolf” that, you know, actually works.

(This should be obvious but I’ll point out anyway that it costs money to have a staff cover all your web bases. After you drop out you become more concerned with paying off your debts and disassembling your campaign than with continuing your campaign. And the staffers themselves I’m sure are more interested in scoring a paycheck with the Obama campaign than with sending encouraging texts to Stowe Boyd.)

Boyd loses his last shred of credibility with this line: “Or a friend who moves away for a new career in a distant city, and then never, ever calls.” Silly blogger, no one calls their friends anymore; they write on each others’ walls.

http://www.mergerecords.com/news.php?month=Apr%202008#372

Keep the campaign bus running!