Former US senator John Edwards officially launched his presidential campaign last week with hints of a strategy of giving access to high-profile bloggers and targeting the tech community.
The charismatic former senator and running mate of John Kerry launched his campaign in New Orleans. He had hoped to get some extra ink by launching in the usually quiet week between Christmas and New Year's only to overtaken by events: the death of former president Gerald Ford and the execution of Saddam Hussein.
He will have to do something to rise above the chattering class din about Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama. Of course, Obama may just be the "flavour of the month", as one blogger put it, but Obama momentum and buzz, which at this point matters.
It is still the beauty contest for the '08 primaries shortly to be followed by the mad dash for cash. Right now, it's about press coverage and mindshare. By and large, unless you live in the early primary and caucus states, you don't see candidates and don't care, but the focus on early fund raising means that some candidates, like Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana, basically quit before they started.
In 2004, Edwards ran on the strength of his personal story and his "Two Americas" message:
One America that pays the taxes, another America that gets the tax breaks.
What is his strategy this time around? You've heard of the Republicans' vaunted Southern Strategy. Maybe John Edwards is trying a Silicon Valley strategy? He reached out to high-profile blogger Robert Scoble to cover his campaign launch, and he's already appeared on the vlog (video blog) Rocketboom.
Cynics might say that he is trying to rip a page out of Howard Dean's playbook. Some bloggers were impressed and others were not. But it's not just about blogger outreach; Edwards seems to be reaching out to the broader tech community. Last summer, he spoke at Gnomedex, a "hard-core" tech and business conference. It's not where you'd expect to find a politician.
I followed John Edwards around on campaign appearances in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina in 2004. He definitely had spark and a great stump speech, but he didn't seem to improvise very well. The inability to go off-script was especially apparent in his debate with Vice President Cheney, where he seemed unable to do much more than cut-and-paste soundbites from his "Two Americas" speech.
He was asked about it at Gnomedex. "Do you hear it in your own voice when you slip into politician robo-voice?" someone asked. To which Edwards responded, "It's a long period of conditioning. You need to shed it to become normal again."
With the blogger outreach, maybe Edwards is just following this blogger's advice, who said that he should get an ordinary citizen along on his campaign to blog honestly about the campaign. Maybe he sees blogs, podcasts and vlogs as a way to do an end run around the mainstream media.
I'm sure that this is just part of a wider strategy. He was the senator from North Carolina, and one of the economic engines there is the Research Triangle, not as well known as Silicon Valley but definitely one of the tech centres in the US. It makes sense for him to reach out to the tech crowd. Besides, it's hard to see him developing a winning strategy based solely on reaching out to the tech community. Geeks - and I count myself as one of them - do have some political similarities, but it's not a homogenous political constituency. They tend to be libertarian, believing in civil liberties, small government and less regulation, but after that, things get more complex.
John Edwards is about where he was in 2003: Not a front runner but at least in the running, if polls are to be believed. It's still very early.
