Before the Dean Campaign - 1996-2000

Johnny has done a good job summarizing the innovations of the Dean campaign. In this post, I'm going to discuss the online strategies of some of its predecessors.

The 1996 presidential campaign was the first with significant use of the internet. Both major parties--along with the Libertarian, Green, and Reform Parties--created websites for themselves and their candidates. These sites look primitive by today's standards, but they contain a sizeable amount of information. There are also some interactive features (e.g. a chat room on the Republican Party site) but nothing comparable to what we take for granted today. Books proclaiming the significance of the Internet for the '96 campaign were published. ("The Net . . . will be the voice and the lightening rod of the '96 Campaign!") But overall, the Internet was a sideshow, and the real 1996 campaign was conducted through traditional media.

By 1998, the Internet had become more sophisticated, but it was still not a necessity for a congressional campaign. One study reviewed 1,397 congressional and gubenatorial races in 1998, and found that the majority of candidates had neither a website nor an email address. There was no significant difference in the overall pattern of internet usage by the two major parties. Although not all national politicians used it for their campaigns, the Internet affected the 1998 race in another way--through Matt Drudge's January 1998 release of information about Monica Lewinsky that would lead to President Clinton's impeachment after the election. Groups used the Internet to distribute petitions for and against impeachment. For example, Arianna Huffington (who opposed Clinton at the time) collected 13,303 names on a petition calling on Clinton to resign. MoveOn.org led the drive against impeachment, collecting 250,000 signatures against impeachment.

The websites from the 2000 campaign were much more sophisticated than those from four years earlier. The Bush, Gore, McCain, Bradley, and Nader sites not only look like today's modern campaign sites, but also have features such as state-by-state resources and frequent press releases that resemble primitive blogs. Of the candidates, McCain's internet efforts received the most attention. McCain held the world's first "cyberfundraiser", and collected $2.6 million over the Internet in the eight days after his victory in the New Hampshire primary. McCain's statements in 2000 foreshadow what Dean's supporters would be saying four years later:

"Even more impressive than the money is the way we can communicate with people," McCain said on the bus. "We can communicate with them eight to 10 times a day. You know how much it cost to communicate with someone eight times a day before the Internet? It's going to change politics."

...

As McCain told me on the bus, it's cleaner money, because the donor isn't shaking your hand and reminding you about a bill he wants you to vote against. "It's smaller donors," McCain said. "And clearly, it's less personal." It's new money: Thirty-nine percent of those who answer the questionnaire say they've never given to a political campaign before.

In the end, the online efforts in 2000 did not represent a revolution in campaigning. Despite McCain's success with online fundraising, about 95 percent of contributions were made offline, and 40 percent of websites could not even accept campaign contributions. Information was transmitted to voters more quickly, but this was largely one-way, with few attempts being made to interact with voters other than an unsuccessful cyberdebate. Despite the mixed success, commentators saw the extraordinary potential of the internet, especially online contributions, for the next election cycle.

In my next post, I'll discuss the 2002 elections, which coincided with the explosion of blogging that would influence the Dean campaign.