From a reader:
Hi Jonah,
I’d be careful before I start declaring Dean and his “internet revolution” dead just yet. I live in MA and I’ve been sure for some time that Kerry was long dead. Dean had/has double digit leads in MA and NH and had raised 10x the cash here that Kerry had. I know its your job to do that sort of thing but, easy there.
ME: Oh I don’t think Dean is dead. I know he’s got a lot of money and a lot of die-hard supporters. But that’s because he’s got a lot of money and a lot of die-hard supporters, not because we’ve entered some grand internet age. Of course the internet is changing things, but not all changes amount to a “revolution.”
The Dean camp did some smart things on the web, obviously, but here’s Goldberg’s Rule of the Internet and Everything Else: Quality Matters. If Margaret Cho ran for president with Dean’s internet organization, she’d go nowhere.