John Edwards: "It's the Internet, Stupid"

Presidential wannabe John Edwards thinks that he can gauge his prospects for success by monitoring traffic to his website.

From The New York Times:

Most presidential campaigns mark their progress by how they are doing in the polls and how much money they are raising.

John Edwards’s campaign has another barometer of success: a 90-day calendar that tracks, in a jumble of red, green and black numbers, the spikes and dips in traffic to the campaign’s Web site. The calendar is taped on the wall of Joe Trippi, a senior campaign adviser, who can connect each spike to some effort to stir voters, including the video Mr. Edwards showed at a Democratic debate mocking the media for writing about his $400 haircut, and the time Elizabeth Edwards confronted the conservative commentator Ann Coulter on television.

After running a decidedly traditional race for the White House in 2004 and in the early stages of this contest, Mr. Edwards has quietly overhauled his campaign with one central goal: to harness the Internet and the political energy that liberal Democrats are sending coursing through it. In a slow but striking power shift, advisers who champion the political power of the Web have eclipsed the coterie of advisers who long dominated Mr. Edwards’s inner circle, both reflecting and intensifying his transformation into a more populist, aggressive candidate.

...“The Internet is the principal way we are communicating with voters right now,” Mrs. Edwards said in an interview.

...These days the Edwards campaign has taken on the appearance of Dean 2.0, and listening to Mr. Edwards is often akin to reading the postings on an angry blog.

...“Yeah, there are a bunch of differences,” Mr. Trippi said in an interview at the headquarters in Chapel Hill. “It was — it is — a more traditional campaign than the Dean campaign. The one thing is in a strange way, Edwards and Elizabeth — Elizabeth in particular, but Edwards, too — get it that the old way doesn’t work. That you need to use the Internet, blogs, technology, YouTube, to reach out to people.”

I love this statement: "[L]istening to Mr. Edwards is often akin to reading the postings on an angry blog."

Edwards projects more than just that foaming at the mouth anger of Lefty blogs. He taps into their extremism, their love of socialism, their anti-Americanism.

I think it's funny that The Times does this long piece on Edwards and the Internet without even mentioning the Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan fiasco.

Read about the slimy cyber-trail that caused these two bigoted, vulgar bloggers, hired by the Edwards campaign specifically for their Internet skills, to resign in shame.

Yes, that ugly episode was conveniently omitted.

There's another thing that's a bit odd about all this talk about the 2008 Election being the first presidential race to be run on the Internet.

It's very elitist.

When Edwards went on his Poverty Tour, did the people he talked to all have laptops? While there are millions of voters that do a lot of living online, they're offset by the millions of voters that don't have access to computers or don't care to use the Internet.

Edwards should know better. There are two Americas. One is online, and one isn't.

If the Edwards campaign thinks that hits on his site are a measure of people buying into his message, then I'm afraid he's in for a disappointment.

Based on Internet traffic, I think Paris Hilton would be the front-runner right now.