Click or bust: Presidential hopefuls learn to embrace the Web

WASHINGTON - Day one for presidential campaigns used to be a hay barn in Iowa or an overstuffed couch in New Hampshire.

But this year, even before many of the 2008 presidential hopefuls hit the trail in earnest, they are networking with high-profile bloggers and cadres of eager college students with sprawling online social networks.

These web political junkies and "netroots" activists will be the field generals for a new type of presidential campaign, and the most web-savvy candidates have tailored their campaign sites to meet the needs of the new generation.

The rapid growth of the Internet makes way for the most wired race in political history, far surpassing Howard Dean's technological leap in the last presidential campaign.

"We will know the Internet had an impact this time," said Joe Trippi, Dean's campaign manager in 2003.

An online arms race has erupted among Democrats in particular. Sens. Barack Obama of Illinois and Hillary Clinton of New York along with ex-Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina are deploying web-based video, social networking and citizen journalism to engage and motivate voters.

Voters are turning to the web for political news in greater numbers. The nonpartisan Pew Internet and American Life Project reported last month that the number of people using the web as their main source of political news doubled to 60 million between the 2002 and 2006 elections.

In much the same way conservative talk radio energized the Republican party more than a decade ago, Democrats are seeking to bypass traditional gatekeepers of information and opinion.

Trippi said this presidential campaign will surpass the efforts of 650,000 "Deaniacs" who raised $59 million online for the Vermont governor.

But the Internet's power is a double-edged sword.

"Somebody's going to crash to the ground because of it," Trippi said. "But somebody's also probably going to be president because of it."

Sen. George Allen's "macaca moment," a new term for campaign slip-ups, was viewed by millions on YouTube and contributed to his re-election defeat in Virginia. Allen, who had been a leading GOP presidential hopeful, later decided not to run.

Face to Facebook

The shot heard 'round the world in the online battle for America's next president was fired in Columbia, Mo., by a student government coordinator named Farouk Olu Aregbe.

With one click in mid-January, he began a Facebook affinity group called "(One Million Strong for Barack)" which is creeping close to 300,000 members.

By comparison, it took six months for Dean to enlist 129,000 voters in groups on the meetup.com web networking site three years ago.

A social networking site like Facebook, not widely used in the last presidential race, allows people to connect with their friends to view personalized profiles, join common interest groups and plan real-life events.

Obama's website has borrowed that idea to create my.barackobama.com, where his supporters can network, strategize and raise money, all under the watch of Obama's web team.

Three of the six-member team worked on Dean's Internet campaign. They designed a site for Obama, launching it Feb. 10, the day of Obama's campaign announcement.

Michael Cornfield is an adjunct professor of political science at George Washington University and vice president for public affairs at electionmall.com who advises political campaigns on how to snare support form social networks. He cautioned that a sophisticated web presence alone won't be enough to translate into votes.

"The campaigns still have a ways to go before they optimize the technique of building on curiosity and transforming it into some sort of commitment," he said.

But many are already using the web to generate cash. The sites of Obama, Clinton and ex-Gov. Mitt Romney, R-N.H., have set up systems where supporters can rack up points and set goals for fund raising from their friends. The "One Million Strong" group has raised more than $4,000 on my.barackobama.com since Saturday.

The YouTube election

Search for "Hillary Clinton" on YouTube and click on the first video that comes up. You will be one of more than a million people to hear an open-microphone, off-key rendition of "The Star Spangled Banner" sung by Clinton on Jan. 27 at a high school gym in Iowa.

To find Clinton's announcement of her candidacy, scroll down to the seventh video. Only 7,500 people had done so as of last week.

Micah Sifry started the blog techPresident.com as a part of his work with the Personal Democracy Forum, a site dedicated to monitoring how presidential candidates use the web - and how the web uses them.

He said candidates' efforts to control the message on sites like YouTube may be futile, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't play the game.

"The web is saying to these politicians, 'Either you do it or it'll be done to you,'" Sifry said. "Failure to go where millions of people are going means someone else will define you there.

"While social networking and blogging will be important, Sifry said, online video will define the election. Most candidates already have streaming video on their websites.

Republicans appear to lagged behind in web campaigning.

"Let's just say that they're running a 2000 web campaign and using the tools that were available in 2000," said David All, a web consultant for Republican members of Congress.

He described most websites in the Republican field as "glossy online fliers," while Democratic candidates employed robust personalization systems that allowed users to get involved.

One result of the lack of web buzz, he said, has been a dearth of mainstream media coverage of Republican candidates.

He predicts that the next big web-campaign advance will be television ads generated by online supporters at the behest of candidates.

For a tech-savvy, Republican blogger like All, the web can be a lonely place. Left-leaning blogs outnumber their conservative counterparts two to one, Sifry said. (A blog is a user-generated web site, usually with journal entries and often with pictures, video and links to other blogs.)

While he has his own site, All said he started a blog on my.barackobama.com called "Behind Enemy Lines." He said the Obama site was a neat tool and he wanted to figure out how to play with it.

Since last Saturday, more than 4,000 people have joined him in the Obama blogosphere.

Blogging down

Edwards' campaign site has the most established blogging system, but the campaign ran into trouble when two staff bloggers came under fire for anti-Christian comments on their personal blogs before they joined the Edwards campaign. Edwards decided not to fire them, but both left the campaign last week.

Cornfield said one Internet user's words can temporarily derail a campaign but not stop its momentum.

"When you relinquish control, you open yourself up to a bad day's worth of news and maybe a week's worth of news, but you can only really mess things up on your own," he said.

Despite Dean's big Internet advantage, for example, his campaign imploded after his much-publicized "scream" following the Iowa caucuses.