Technology that Wins Elections...

Recently, I attended a conference on the use of technology in politics. Or, in short, bloggers talking to bloggers about how great blogging is...

Most of the speakers were liberals. And while I believe in the maxim: "Know thy enemy as thy self," I couldn't get past the fact that I was listening to "experts" who had just been out-manuevered by Republicans.

True, Democrats get a lot of press for their use of technology. But Republicans use technology to win elections. It occurs to me that this phenomenon has to do with the fundamental differences between Republicans and Democrats (in short, our worldview is different). Here's my theory:

Democrats view technology as a game. They like to put a lot of effort into blogging and hope to be able to, "create an internet community." Republicans (who by nature are outcome-based and serious) tend to use technolgy (like micro-targeting) to identify, persuade, and turn-out voters on Election Day.

The normally annoying Susan Estrich has just published a column that seems to corroborate my position:

At the time Dean pulled out of the race in 2004, his much-vaunted website was getting one-tenth as many hits as George Bush's. Even more important, the Bush team, under the leadership of then-Rove deputy Ken Mehlman, was embarked on a sophisticated technological project that allowed it to communicate with voters in key states and key groups the same way Amazon does with regular purchasers: Understanding more than name, address and serial number, Amazon knows what I like, and what my family likes, and what other people like me like, so that when they write to me, they know how to sell to me. So did Bush.

On the Sunday before the election, Karl Rove was in a position to squeeze out every single Bush voter he needed, a capacity Democrats couldn't match.

I hope the Dems keep on talking to the converted and let the business of identifying, persuading, and turning-out voters to us...