Clay writes in full what-if mode that social software may have been bad for the Dean campaign:
But what if this [bottom-up and edge-in] style has also created a sense of entitlement or even inevitability about the change? What if communing with fellow believers has created the sense of accomplishment and satisfaction that comes from participation in a shared effort, but hasn’t created a sense of urgency or threat? What if Dean supporters believe that believing is enough, and what if the Dean campaign’s brilliant use of tools to gather the like-minded both online and off has fed that feeling?
Well, sure, what if? And what if not? From Day 1, the Dean campaign has explicitly aimed at using on-line to move people to-street (“mouse pads and shoe leather”). Large numbers of people who have never before been active in campaigns have come out to do the real world stuff that campaigns are made of: I was at a half-day meeting in southern New Hampshire for organizers — you know, the type that have to put on mittens because they’re going outside — a couple of weeks ago that pulled in 700 people. Over a hundred thousand people turn up for MeetUps in real-world watering holes. Thousands of people went to Iowa, which is reportedly a real state, although it does seem rather improbable. I spent yesterday standing in the cold holding a Dean sign.
Yes, my evidence is anecdotal. But Clay’s is speculative. The closest he gets to supporting his contrarian meme is:
We know well from past attempts to use social software to organize groups for political change that it is hard, very hard, because participation in online communities often provides a sense of satisfaction that actually dampens a willingness to interact with the real world. When you’re communing with like-minded souls, you feel like you’re accomplishing something by arguing out the smallest details of your perfect future world, while the imperfect and actual world takes no notice, as is its custom.
I don’t know what past attempts Clay has in mind. Are they attempts by real-world political campaigns of one sort or another? And if they are, do we know that their on-line efforts failed because the pleasant hum of online voices lulled the participants into a smug but vacuous sense of accomplishment? Or did they fail for some other reason?
We do have a couple of indisputable facts: Dean came in a poor third in Iowa and a disappointing second in New Hampshire. But this by itself leads to no conclusions about whether social software hurt the campaign. For all we know, Dean would still be in single digits as an ex-governor of the Maple Sugar state if the online connection hadn’t happened. And we certainly don’t know that, if social software failed, it was because it lulled participants into a sense of “inevitability.” That’s just Clay’s speculation.
But speculation has a political effect. I don’t have evidence other than participatory. And I am a partisan, so, I certainly don’t trust my own experience. But if I’m embrace Clay’s argument, I need more from him than a string of what-if’s and a quick gesture at what “we know” about why social software has failed in the past. After all, I have to weigh that against both the campaign’s explicit rejection of a masturbatory online approach and my personal interaction with hundreds of people who met on the Net and then hit the streets in some very cold weather.
Clay is a powerful writer and thinker. I think he’s wrong here, but the meme is attractive. That worries me.
I like Britt Blaser’s take on Clay’s piece.