Thinking back over the six years I have spent full-time in politics, there have been only three occasions when I was a part of a campaign that seemed to legitimately frighten powerful interests. Here is what comes to mind:
That's about it. There have been many other good, creative, insurgent efforts of which I am proud to have played a part--No residual forces, Bush Dogs, Donna Edwards, Use it or Lose It, Freeze Out Fox News--but nothing else that really seemed to get under the collar of powerful people and institutions over a long period of time.
Thinking about all of this, I can't help but wonder--weren't the best efforts, even if they did not directly lead to either electoral victory or immediate legislative action, the ones that really scared the bejeebus out of powerful interests? Aren't the best indications that we are really onto something as progressive activists when Village media, Democratic Party leaders, and moneyed corporate interests all freak out over what we are going? Unless they are scared, how do we know that our actions hold the potential for real change?
I came across this piece from Anna Quindlen (who I don't know much about) in Newsweek, it is well-written and does a good job illustrating McCain's flip-flopping and pandering. More importantly it documents his voting record and some of his own quotes about his compromising his principles. The piece effectively debunks the moderate/maverick/principled myth, and I think it would be a good candidate for a McCain googlebomb.
Here's some selections:
What's interesting about all this is not the flip-flopping. All pols flip-flop: if they're Republicans, they describe it as "evolving," and if they're Democrats, they get pounded for it. (If either Clinton or Obama had followed the trajectory described above on an important issue, it would be running on a continuous loop around the digital news wire in Times Square.) And McCain's voting record on abortion is clear. He has a zero lifetime rating from the Planned Parenthood Action Fund because of his opposition to, among other things, family-planning funding and sex education. When benighted friends used to suggest that McCain was a stealth moderate, I urged them to look at his voting record, which was about as moderate as Strom Thurmond's.
But now even his record has become irrelevant, since to become the front runner McCain has jettisoned many of his past positions. The Bush tax cuts: McCain voted against them as a senator, but now says he would make them permanent as president. Immigration: he cosponsored a bill in 2005 to make it easier for those in the country illegally to become citizens, but now says that if his own bill-his own bill!-came to a vote on the Senate floor, he would vote against it. After Columbine, he called for more gun control; after Virginia Tech, he said more gun control was unnecessary.
...
Sen. James Webb has been trying to nail McCain down on a revamped GI Bill that would fund education for veterans. But the closest McCain has come to a position is to say he needs to examine it more closely. Both Obama and Clinton support the bill, and it's fair to assume that neither senator has any more leisure time than McCain. If the point is that the Republican candidate is incapable of multitasking, that's something he might want to lick before he becomes president...
In 2000 he was asked about the Confederate battle flag, which flew from the capitol dome in South Carolina. McCain first called it a "symbol of racism and slavery," then backed off with a "clarification" that described it as a "symbol of heritage." Later he admitted, "I feared that if I answered honestly, I could not win the South Carolina primary. So I chose to compromise my principles."
He has done that over and over during this race. The Straight Talk Express is all over the road.There are those optimists who like to believe that once elected, McCain would again emerge as a small-government progressive who would set his own course. But it is the greatest of illusions to believe that a man will masquerade to win, then revert to his authentic self - after all, there is always another election coming.
It is time to start bomb bomb bomb, bomb bombing again. No, not Iran, but John McCain's Google ranking.
In looking for a search engine optimization against McCain, the first step is to choose good websites to optimize. Here some criteria for good websites:
The website should already be in the Google top 100, for searches on John McCain, making it easier to increase the ranking over time.
The website should have the word "McCain" in the title of the search result making it easier to optimize.
The website should be from a well-known news source, making is less obviously a partisan attack.
The website should have a long life span, and not in danger of being removed before the general election.
The website should be a negative news story on McCain, not an opinion piece.
With those criteria in mind, here are six best possible options I see for a McCain Googlebomb search engine optimization campaign:
John McCain. You Tube showing John McCain as a flip-flopper. Current Google rank:12. Is not a news site.
John McCain. Anti-McCain attack site featuring videos and McCain's connection to lobbyists. Current Google rank: 22. Is obviously an attack site rather than a news source.
John McCain. The original McCain Googlebomb tying McCain to Bush on Iraq. Current Google rank: 26. CBS News is the source. Title comes off as garbled in the Google search. Also, McCain is going to make this connection the basis of his campaign, so it might not be necessary.
John McCain: Crooks and Liars tag for John McCain. Current Google rank: 30. Will be constantly updated. It is a blog, but one with a great title when it comes to attacking a Republican nominee.
John McCain: Mother Jones article about McCain wanting to keep troops in Iraq for 100 years. Current Google rank: 76. Negatives: long and somewhat garbled title.
Let me know what you think of these options. Also, if you have any more candidate websites, especially some of the juicy lobbyist stuff of late, please list them in the comments.
Over the next couple of days, we can whittle down the choices, put it to a vote, and start the campaign in earnest.
These are the ad variants Blogpac is running. Each of them links to a news article from a neutral source of information.
Back on Friday, BlogPac purchased educational Google Ads on Bob Latta. These ads appear only in Google searches for "bob latta," and a few related keywords, that were conducted within fifth congressional district of Ohio. The ads were designed to serve two purposes. First, they were designed to educate interested potential voters in the special election on Bob Latta by directing them to relevant local news articles in the Toledo Blade. Second, they were designed to measure how many people in the district were conducting Google searches for Bob Latta during the final weekend of the campaign.
On the second point, the numbers so far are decent. From 4 p.m. Friday through 2 p.m. Monday, there were a little more than 200 Google searches for either Latta or Bob Latta were conducted in the fifth congressional district of Ohio. Overall, across all searches and related content on the broader Google network, the ads have generated over 25,000 impressions. From noon through 2 p.m. today, there were 1,800 new impressions, or one over four seconds, and all of them within the fifth Congressional district of Ohio.
On the first point, the Googlebomb search engine optimization campaign initiated on Friday has been quite successful. The targeted Toledo Blade articles have risen from outside the top twenty, all the way to #6. Simultaneously, MyDD's Bob Latta tag has risen to #2 (passing the Bob Latta campaign website), Swing State Project is at #7, the Stakeholder is at both #8 and #9. The more than 200 people in OH-05 who have Googled Bob Latta since Friday have seen their results dominated by progressive blogs and negative local news articles on Bob Latta. Also, no one else appears to have even purchased Google Ads on this campaign, except BlogPac.
There are a couple of lessons to be learned from this, as I discuss in the extended entry.
Want to conduct the easiest Googlebomb search engine optimization ever? If so, then I say we target Bob Latta, the Republican candidate in the special election for Ohio's fifth congressional district. This really will be easy. Currently, a Google search on Bob Latta turns up his Ohio state legislature page as the first result, his campaign website as the second result, and this as the third result:
Casas Elegantes is a small, very personalized rental agency.
We specialize in the finest vacation rentals in San Miguel de Allende. The business is owned and operated by retired Gringo, Bob Latta, who lives full time in San Miguel. Bob, an Arkansas native, retired after a successful 33 year career in sales for ITW/Signode Corporation and moved to San Miguel. After settling in San Miguel with his wife Carol, Bob started Casas Elegantes to bring a new dimension to the vacation home rental business.
Wow. At first, I thought it was too late for a Googlebomb search engine campaign in OH-05, but when I saw that this was the third result on Google searches for Bob Latta, I knew it was still doable. Swing State Project is the fourth result. The DCCC, blog, The Stakeholder, is the fifth. A professor of biology at the University of Toronto is the sixth. An Ohio GOP blog is seventh, Breaking Blue on MyDD is eighth, a bank manger in Palo Alto is ninth, and As Ohio Goes, another Ohio progressive blog, rounds out the top ten.
Without even trying that hard, four progressive blogs are already in the top ten for searches on Bob Latta. With a little effort over the weekend, we should have no problem pushing whatever we want on Latta not only in the top ten, but possibly even above his campaign and state legislature website. On Monday and Tuesday, that could turn into a few thousand effective voter contacts.
Here are the articles I suggest we target:
Bob Latta: "Ohio Elections Commission rebukes Latta for lies about foe," from the excellent local paper the Toledo Blade. This should be the top target, although it does talk about the primary campaign instead of the general.
Bob Latta: "Prison doesn't bar Noe from political controversy, Weirauch ads use 'Coingate' figure against rival Latta" also from the Toledo Blade. A pretty good target, too. Not to second guess myself, but maybe this should be the top target.
Bob Latta: "DCCC turns up heat in solidly GOP district," from the Politco. Not bad, but the source of the article isn't as good as the Toledo Blade. Also, I wonder if the title will help or hurt undecided voter psychology. Will voters who see this article think "oh, all my neighbors vote Republicans, so I should too," or will they think "hmmm, people around here are turning away from Republicans, so I should too"? Hard to say, but it still might be worth a shot if you don't like either of the first two articles.
Here is how you can participate. Whenever you write about Bob Latta, embed a hyperlink to the news article of your choice above. If you have a blog, stick your preferred Bob Latta hyperlink in the template of your blog (more info on how to do this, and why it is important, can be found here). If you don't have a blog, embed your preferred hyperlink into your signature line. BlogPac will purchase in-district Google ads in the district to help out the campaign, and measure how many voter contacts it makes.
Why will this work? Because the most common political action people take online is to look for more information about candidates, and they look for that information on search engines. This technique is designed to direct OH-05 voters looking for information on this campaign to local news articles we want those voters to read. Effectively, it increases the reach of potentially negative press on Republican candidates.
So, let's give this a shot. We are already doing quite well on Google results for Bob Latta, but I think we could do even better.
Update: Alright! In only five hours the Toledo Blade onBob Latta is up to 14th in Google searches for Bob Latta. Making progress...
Any discussion that is a variation on "what's wrong with kids today" is bound to be more based on nostalgia and off the cuff cultural perceptions than it will on anything approaching historical or intellectual solidity. That is the basic reason that I never commented on Thomas "Suck On This" Friedman's "why aren't the kids marching in the streets" editorial, or really on Al Gore's "why aren't the kids lying in front of bulldozer's" comment a few months back. Rather than actual cultural inquiries, both the Freidman and Gore commentaries are generalized dismissals of contemporary youth for not conforming to pre-existing stereotypes.
The fact is, that large numbers of Americans under the age of 30, or whenever the "youth" line is drawn, are both politically active and quite progressive. Everyone knows that political campaigns and the netroots, for example, have heavy amounts of youth volunteer and professional participation. Political activism is actually well-up nationwide, and that includes among young people as well. Overall, this is the most left-wing and Democratic generation since the New Deal, and it turns out to vote in numbers roughly equal to young voters throughout the past thirty-five years. So, when I hear commentary from aging Baby Boomers about why aren't young people taking to the streets and engaging in civil disobedience, I chalk it up as a lazy comparison to a fuzzy, nostaligic view of their childhood, the bizarre expectation among older human beings that younger human beings should act according to those fuzzy, nostalgic memories, and the strange American obsession with an arbitrary identity concept known as a "generation." My eyes really tend to roll when I read passages like this:
I am impressed because they are so much more optimistic and idealistic than they should be. I am baffled because they are so much less radical and politically engaged than they need to be.
If the "they" in question were pretty much any other identity category other than age, such as gender, ethnicity, religion, nationality or sexual orientation, such a passage would read as an offensive relic of nineteenth century Sepncerist Social Darwinism. But, I guess, because we are talking about "age," it is OK to keep having these conversations.
There has still been a lot of commentary about Freidman's piece, just as there has also been discussion of Gore's comments. Ezra Klein, Courtney Martin, and Brian Beutler are just some of those who have offered commentary. The basic conclusions from these young progressives is that twenty somethings feel either overwhelmed or that past political tactics have proven ineffectual, and thus don't engage in the political tactics of the past. They all write from the "we" in this perspective, something that I am not sure I am still allowed to do at the age of 33. However, based on my personal experience, I would like to throw out another possibility for why political activism of "today's youth" isn't as visible to aging Boomers like Freidman and Gore. As I noted yesterday, in order to engage in self-starting political activism, usually you need to feel as though your "leaders" have failed you. However, successful self-starting political activism tends to help those same "leaders" more than it helps you. In essence, you end up doing their dirty work for them, and get nothing in return. That is endlessly frustrating.
Looking back over the past several years of my life, this is a pattern I can see time and time again. You help organize a union where you work, and lose your job for a while as a result. You help out with Howard Dean's campaign, and then the same Democratic establishment that the campaign railed against benefits from the new wave of small donor activism. You help organize new unions in a different state, and the powerful head of the local has all organizing positions cut because the new members threaten his position as local president. You run for Democratic Party office, and get harangued by the chair of your regional caucus at meetings for not just doing everything he tells you to do. You help raise $2M for Democratic candidates, push them to run on an Iraq withdrawal platform for more than a year, conduct Googlebombs against all their opponents, and help transfer $3M to the DCCC toward the end of the campaign, and you are immediately and repeatedly told on national television by the people you helped that this victory was a rejection of both progressivism in general and you in particular. Later on, you are condemned by the Congress you helped elect.
This is a serious problem with successful, self-starting activism: the benefits are often reaped by the same "leaders" whose failure caused you to conduct the organizing in the first place. This is what I meant in my Pretenders to the New Democratic Majority piece a few weeks ago. They get to govern because of what you do. In return, because of your dedication you get to see your relationships fall apart, you get to lose your job now and again, your bank account gets drained, your health care goes unpaid for a couple years, and you get repeatedly condemned either in Congress, national TV or whatever other forum comes to mind for being too left-wing, too vulgar, or simply unhelpful. This really sucks. I mean, one of the only reasons you started the activism in the first place is because these same leaders kept failing, time and time again. Union density was dropping, Democratic Presidents who passed NAFTA were being impeached for being too left wing, elections were being stolen, wars were being started, huge monetary giveaways were being made to corporations and the wealthy, the planet's ecosystem was being destroyed, the local Democratic Party had not canvassed your block in eight years, and the "leaders" in the relevant fields had utterly failed to stop any of it. You started getting active to help stop all of this from happening and, in the end, when you are actually successful, those same leaders get to reap the rewards.
Your life doesn't improve, but their's does. And then, when its all over, first they condemn you, and then they ask you why you aren't more politically active. While that makes me want to pick up my pitchfork and torch and engage in as many intra-party struggles as possible, I can understand why for many it would cause them to instead wonder what was on television, or to simply transfer their activism to volunteer social justice work and lifestyle choices. Really, what is the point of continuing to do their dirty work for them?
On the Web, Clinton led in August with 759,000 unique visitors to her Web site, followed closely by Obama with 749,000. John Edwards was third with 448,000 views.
Recent Republican entry Fred Thompon led in page views in August with 410,000 unique visitors, followed by Romney with 291,000 and Paul with 208,000. The worst online showing was for Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.) with 58,000 hits, and 52,000 for Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D., Ohio). However, McCain leads the presidential field in online advertising, with 4.3 million sponsored links in August, followed by Kucinich with 1.8 million sponsored links.
Clinton continues to lead in "online buzz," which is measured by mentions on blogs. Fred Thompson saw the biggest surge in buzz, up 526%, due largely to his September entry into the race.
McCain is putting down big bucks in online advertising, but it still isn't drawing visitors to his website. This is somewhat odd for a candidate who was one of the first, if not the first, Presidential candidate to raise big money online, and is a testament to how low his image has sunk among internet users in the past eight years. Also, this points to a real problem with online advertising where ads don't necessarily result in click-throughs for the advertiser. Then again, it is possible that McCain would have had virtually no hits at all without his hug online spending spree. It is also interesting just how little traffic all of these websites receive. The Huffington Post surpasses all of these candidate pages every single day.
So, not only are people ignoring paid advertisements, but they are also generally staying away from official channels. These are two empowering aspects of the Internet compared to television. However, they also point to the difficulty of making money online. Marketers are paid to persuade and, in a manner of speaking, control consumers. These numbers indicate that people are extremely difficult to control online, at least when compared to television. Online, the key to a successful online advertisement is to make it seem like it isn't an advertisement at all. Hence, the Googlebomb Rudy Giuliani campaign, which is designed to have individuals run across negative information about Rudy Giuliani on their own, and without any obviously sponsored links. Search engine optimization of that sort is simply a medium appropriate form of negative advertising on Rudy Giuliani, far better than paid links. Instead of simply transplanting television techniques to a different medium, it reinvents them for a new media.
Finally, it is also interesting that Clinton runs neck and neck with Obama in terms of online traffic. Two thoughts come to mind on this. First, that is very different than national polls right now, and thus shows online strength for Obama. Second, that is actually pretty much the same as total donations right now, which simply attests to Obama's well-known activist and donor strength. Still if the only major telecommunications medium we had was the internet, Obama would probably be in a tie with Clinton nationally, and he might be slightly ahead in the two early states. However, for the time being, it is enough for Clinton to remain competitive online, and then swamp the other candidates through other medias.
That is pretty powerful, but I still would like to see the third Googlebomb target, Rudy Giuliani missing in action for Iraq panel reach the top ten as well. And yes, I stand by my belief that this will be worth at least ten million dollars in adveritising money if Giuliani wins the Republican nomination.
Some may ask why I am not Googlebombing Mitt Romney or John McCain. The simple answer is that I don't find either of them threatening in a general eelction, so I do not want to take action that would hurt their chances of winning the Republican nomination.
Fred Thompson, on the other hand, is a bit more of a general election threat (not to mention a threat to jail women who have aobrtions after the first trimester). I am indeed interested in seeking out googlebombing targets against him. There is also a real spite factor on this one, since, Fred Thompson's Internet guy trashed the Googlebomb campaign in a recent National Review article. So, if you find any particularly good, negative news articles on Fred Thompson, please post them in the comments. Articles with Thompson's name in the title are a plus.
Ah, right-wing laments over the 2006 Googlebomb campaign. I fondly remember that time when I was regularly receiving death threats over email and calls from every major media outlet in the country who wanted to know why I was engaging in dirty tricks. Really, you would be surprised how many right-wingers wish that a terrorist would crash a plane into West Philly. This article in the National Review really brought back fond memories of that time:
A good case study is Kansas Congressman Jim Ryun, who lost a narrow election for his seat in 2006 and was one of the candidates subject to the netroots Google-bombing attack. "When a campaign goes wrong and a five-term incumbent loses, there are a whole lot of things that have gone wrong. So was the Google bombing the sole reason we lost? No. Was it a part of it? Yes, but how big a part I don't know," said Drew Ryun, the former congressman's son and himself a former deputy director in the grassroots division of the Republican National Committee.(…)
Regardless, the liberal blogosphere, and Bowers in particular (who did not respond to a query for this piece), remain actively engaged in Google bombing and seem to have few if any ethical qualms about the lack of transparency. "If you look at Bowers writings on this, he refers to this as SEO - "Search Engine Optimization" - but it's not. They are really trying to game search engines," Beutler says. "It's not making the pages better, it's not doing the organic things that Google is supposed to do."
Hahahahahaha! Yeah, of course the Googlebomb campaign hurt Jim Ryan's re-election chances. Usually when people are directed to a story linking him to a child predator, that can happen to any politician. But the best part is that I am accused of a lack of transparency after the National Review quotes extensively from the entire plan behind the campaign, which I posted online and in public. To top it off, the article then quotes William Beutler, who works (or at least worked at one time) for Fred Thompson's Presidential campaign, even though the article never indicates that William Beutler works or consults for the Fred Thompson campaign. There is some transparency for you.
For the record, let's refresh everyone's memory on the Googlebombing campaign:
I conducted every aspect of the campaign online, and in public.
It resulted in a minimum of 564,000 in-district, voter contacts in 49 key House and Senate districts during the final two weeks of the 2006 campaign. The actual number of voter contacts was probably much, much higher.
The total cost of the campaign was under $600. The expenditures in the adword side of the campaign were disclosed by BlogPac in appropriate FEC reports.
It only pointed people to news stories already published by established, local news outlets.
To be frank, while I was reading the National Review article, I wasn't sure if the right is more disgusted by, or envious of, the campaign. Either way, I am still proud of the campaign, although I remain quite cognizant that even one million voter contacts in the final two weeks of the campaign is a drop in the bucket. Overall, the in the 50 districts I targeted, there were probably over 250,000,000 voter contacts in the final five weeks alone. In the end, I am just an independent activist, not a major organization or party committee. Still, I was glad to contribute, and extremely grateful to all the wonderful online activists who made the campaign work (special shout-outs to Lucas O'Connor and Bob Brigham). I only hope that in 2008, I can think of something half as clever, effective and irritating to right-wingers.
On October 22 of 2006 Chris posted a call to action on MyDD asking the netroots to Googlebomb vulnerable Republicans. Read the post if you want to learn more about that campaign or don't know what a Googlebomb is.
Recently there has been much talk of a "Bush Dogs" campaign here on OpenLeft with running Adwords criticizing "Bush Dogs" on voting to shred the constitution, continue the occupation of Iraq or as Matt said (insert fight here).
Well I think we should Googlebomb the Bush Dogs too. It has the same effect. But it's free.
This morning I am pleased, if surprised, to announce that the anti-Giuliani Googlebomb campaign I suggested at Open Left three weeks ago is starting to produce real results:
That Rudy Giuliani was the only candidate not invited to speak to the Firefighters presidential Forum is now #10 on a Google search for Rudy Giuliani
How Rudy Giuliani was kicked off the Iraq Study Group because he never showed up for meetings is now #26 on a Google search for Rudy Giuliani.
This is remarkable. If more people join in, and those already involved keep pushing, this is the sort of action that could be worth several million voter contacts in a general election campaign. Why and how? As I wrote in the original post:
This is a great video, and it certainly connects nicely to the Googlebomb Rudy Giuliani action we have started here at Open Left. Please, keep that action in mind, and spread the word. It is easy, it is effective, and it is quick.
Also, I have attached a poll to this post: which Republican candidate do you currently consider the frontrunner for the nomination? I am asking, at least partially, in order to get a sense as to whether or not you guys think targeting Rudy Giuliani is a good idea right now.
McCain and Rudy Giuliani have seen their early national leads over the Republican field shrink precipitously.
Giulaini and McCain, the purple and orange lines trending down respectively, are big names, but their positive images among the national electorate, including the Republican electorate, are thin and backed up by little. The advantage both started with in the campaign for the Republican nomination is a dead ringer for Lieberman’s advantage over the Democratic field in 2003-2004: both are vaguely thought to be “moderates,” and are favorites of the neoliberals who hold disproportionate sway over political television talk show culture and other established outlets of our national political discourse. However, outside of low information voters, politicians of this sort have little in the way of a natural base in the electorate. Once voters become more engaged, they generally are not impressed by what they see, and turn to other options so far, we have seen this not only within the Republican field, but also in potential general election matchups, where both McCain and Giuliani have seen their once double-digit leads against all Democrats disappear entirely, and be replaced by deficits across the board, in the first half of 2007.
McCain and Giuliani saw their positions furthered weakened by generally sharing the same group of potential voters: low-information types and the few remaining Republican “moderates.” However, Giuliani was particularly strong these groups, and also among wealthy neoliberals. In an April poll from Pew, he scored scoring 38% of national primary support among moderate and liberal Republicans (29% among cons), and 42% of national primary support among those who make over $100,000 a year (low thirties for all other income groups). Now, he stands to benefit quite a bit from a rapidly weakening McCain. First, from Mystery Pollster:
STATE BLOGS
