Ben's Rebellion

If you're a Ben follower you've probably received news of his recent PoliticIT score. PoliticIT is a service that correlates a politician's following in internet social media with his likelihood of being elected. According to them Ben's level of online activity versus Crockett is 78 to 22.

Virtually every race they follow shows a tighter margin between the two candidates. If PolitcIT's advertised record of predicting the winner in 87% of the races is credible, it would seen the election is in the bag.  

Yes, that score does give me a nice warm feeling inside. Especially since the blog I write, and the Facebook activity it generates, both contribute to Ben's online advantage.

The rational side of my nature, however, is more reserved on its significance. There is just too much we don't know about Ben's online following, or the online following of any politician. We don't know who these followers are demographically, or anything about their voting behavior.

For instance, I have top-line information about the readers of McAdams Apple. So I know there are a dozen people in Russia who read it regularly. Is their interest relevant to Ben's chances of winning the election? Maybe, but that correlation isn't entirely clear to me.

(If you're interested in a third party evaluation of PoliticIT I'd recommend The Political Omnivore.)

............

The "Yeah, he's different" billboard campaign has achieved a lot of notice. It features the juxtaposition of two seemingly incongruous facts about Ben. There are a variety of tag-lines: "Eagle Scout, Not Eagle Forum," "Democratic Candidate, Republican Support," etc etc.

What do these messages mean? Do they insinuate that he's only rejecting the conservative movement's harder edge? Or do they portray a liberal who's gone feral?

I don't think so.

Yes, there's a sense of rebellion, but not a rebellion against either end of the political spectrum. It's purely a rejection of the hyper-partisanship in the body politic generally.

Ben's message is post-partisanship, and he's rebelling against the belief that answers can be found in ideology... any ideology.

His message reminds me of a wonderfully effective ad campaign Apple used a few years ago. It wasn't so much about the wonders of Apple versus Microsoft. It was a critique of conformity, however defined. Apple's message was that creativity is the source of our progress... social, technical and political.

If that's "different," then I'm all for it.