Thursday, November 29, 2007
HORSERACE
There Are Two Americas: Online and Offline
Talking before the debate with an adviser to one of the Republican campaigns, we wondered if one of the themes that might come out of the evening was the difference between Online America and Offline America.
I’m a guy who spends probably way too much time on the Internet, so I guess I’m part of the online one. But the kind of people who hear about the YouTube debate, and who go and get a web camera or digital recorder of some kind and record themselves asking a question and then hope that it gets used… it’s a certain kind of person. Engaged, probably passionate, perhaps outspoken, enjoying the spotlight. Perhaps a little smug admiration in their own self-evident cleverness.
I’m not certain that this pool of voters is brimming with GOP primary voters. I suspect you would find certain groups disproportionately represented – probably libertarians, probably males, probably young people, etc. Am I crazy for thinking that a reference to “Halo 3” would have gone off like gangbusters with that crowd? (At this moment, more than a few Campaign Spot readers are asking, ‘What the heck is Halo 3?’)
In other words, it’s a completely different crowd than, say, the Ames, Iowa straw poll.
Before this debate, I was in Patrick Ruffini’s camp, in that I thought a YouTube debate was worth trying. But afterwards, I’m skeptical that this needs to turn into a new campaign tradition. The freakishly-bizarre-to-valuable-question ratio was all out of whack, much worse than the Democratic debate, I would contend.
And I would have liked to see a Republican candidate rip into CNN for using a cartoon that mocked the sitting Vice President to ask a question. I don’t care if his approval rating is at 2 percent, you don’t mock the number two man in government as a power-hungry paranoid snoop at a GOP debate. You just don’t.11/29 10:02 AM
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