I linked earlier to the story about how John McCain now has less cash on hand than long-shot Ron Paul. This has been taken up by some bloggers/campaign watchers as some kind of triumph for Paul. Lets not get ahead of ourselves.
Frankly the fact is this has less to do with Paul as a great campaigner and more to do with John McCain being a horrible one. The McCain camp burned through the money they received and had a series of gaffes and missteps. NOT TO MENTION the fact that he positioned himself as a key supporter of a president with the longest sustained/lowest approval ratings in history, co-authored an immigration bill that was rejected by, well, pretty much everyone and became the public face of a troop surge in Iraq that most people are beginning to see as a failure.
Ron Paul on the other hand has a bunch of people sitting in their parents basements putting his name on Digg.com 24/7. He basically is the Vote for Sanjaya of the 2008 campaign.
The article looks over everything done so far and what might come ahead.
What didn’t they cover? This:
Ultimately the “buzz” idea behind candidates using YouTube etc. is “connecting”. If you look at Hillary Clinton’s videos thus far they actually aren’t “connecting” ready, they are mass media ready. Sure they go viral online but they get covered on TV. Most of the other candidates appear to be “connecting” to and with the online world of bloggers & YouTubers. People who sound like the video above.
Now I am not going to go out of my way to make a judgement call here BUT if you spend a lot of time looking over a lot of this Web 2.0 candidate goodness you see a couple of things. 1) that all those facebook and myspace numbers actually represent a good deal of people who simply hit yes to a friend request and then never interact beyond that point. 2) If you go through a lot of submissions when mainstream media ask for “your questions” or just people conversing with video & twitter etc., you see a lot of very, how should I put this, interesting people with interesting ideas that want to be catered too.
I am all for online democracy and involvement etc. I just wonder how much of it is a giant waste of time and how much of it will actually result in votes.
Long-shit candidate Ron Paul has more cash on hand than the veteran Senator and at one time frontrunner for the Republican nomination John McCain. From ABC News:
ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos Reports: Though often regarded as a longshot candidate for president, Republican Ron Paul tells ABC News that he has an impressive $2.4 million in cash on hand after raising an equal amount during the second quarter, putting him ahead of one-time Republican frontrunner John McCain, who reported this week he has only $2 million in the bank.
In an exclusive interview taped Friday and airing Sunday on “This Week,” Paul said his campaign is on a better trajectory than McCain’s.
“I think some of the candidates are on the down-slope, and we’re on the up-slope,” said Paul.
Paul’s cash on hand puts him in third place in the Republican field in that important metric, although he is well behind leader Rudy Giuliani, who has $18 million in the bank, and Mitt Romney, with $12 million.
Normally one might observe that it doesn’t matter as McCain, the more likely candidate, would be able to raise more money and make up in the next quarter. I highly doubt it though, McCain worked his rear end off for the money he has and has been plowing through cash like a drunken sailor. McCain needs help and he needs it fast!
