The power of the web

Written By: - Date published: 1:11 pm, November 9th, 2007 - 1 comment
Categories: blogs, International - Tags: ,

All election addicts are casting their eyes to what is happening in other countries & especially over in Australia and in the States. The US political teams lead the way on the integration (and spend power) of web resources & but as this article points out, much of the firepower is pointed at Hilliary Clinton:

“Remember the ‘vast right-wing conspiracy’ that Hillary Clinton talked about in the late ’90s? Well, it’s the ‘vast right-wing conspiracy’ gone online — and then some,” said Peter Leyden of the New Politics Institute, a liberal think tank that helps Democrats take advantage of the Internet. “What the Web does so well is it picks up the early warning signals, the first glimmers of a movement. Think of the online world as kind of a more visceral connection to the zeitgeist.”

If Clinton and Giuliani end up facing each other next November in the general election, “it will be like World War III on the Web,” predicts Gregg Birnbaum, political editor of the New York Post and founder of JustHillary.com, an online aggregator of stories about the New York senator. “There’s an enormous amount of historical material out there on both of them, and the virtual hand-to-hand combat would be something like we’ve never seen before,” Birnbaum said. “All the videos, all the blogging — all the Web allows.”

(Washington Post, 8 Nov 2007)

One comment on “The power of the web ”

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  1. Santa Clawss 1
    9 November 2007 at 2:05 pm

    Interesting also that Clinton is the subject of attacks from both directions, i’s not just a Democrat vs Republican thing

    “Still, Clinton has been the biggest target by far, attacked by the left because of her centrist positions and by the right for her association with President Bill Clinton.’

    Glenn Hurowitz, a Democrat from D.C., is one of the group’s newest members. A few weeks ago, the 29-year-old started Democratic Courage, a political action committee aimed solely at fighting Clinton.

    “Fact is, the general population hasn’t tuned in to this election yet, and the more people tune in, the more they’ll know about Hillary Clinton, the less likely she’ll get the nomination,” said Hurowitz. “That’s the beauty of the Internet. What might be bad for the candidates is good for people like me . . . trying to have an impact.”

    And it can also back fire – e.g. the General Betray-us business from moveon.org apparently didn’t do the Democrats any favours.

    “Many Democratic strategists were privately furious at the group for launching an attack on a member of the military rather than Bush, arguing that it gave Republicans a point on which to attack the Democrats and to rally around the administration’s war policy. The displeasure underscores the uneasy alliance between MoveOn and the party. MoveOn, after its rather guerrilla start, has increasingly become part of the Democratic establishment in Washington. It has donated money and lent its Washington director, Thomas Mattzie, to a coalition of liberal groups with major funding from wealthy donors that organizes in an office on K Street to promote opposition to the war.”