I've written here about a couple of previous "money bombs" organized by independent Ron Paul supporters-- one commemorating Guy Fawkes Night (and, oddly, the movie V for Vendetta) and another celebrating the Boston Tea Party.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
(Credit: Library of Congress. New York World-Telegram & Sun Collection. Via the Wikimedia Commons.)There's another one scheduled for today, but it has a purpose beyond mere money-raising. As Rep. Paul has been gaining ground in the polls and primaries, opponents have revived old charges of racism based on newsletters written in his name back in 1992. The statements in the newsletters were pretty bad, but Paul didn't write them and has apologized for them repeatedly.
More to the point, the statements are incompatible with Paul's political philosophy, which opposes all forms of collectivism: racism, nationalism, sexism, and so on. It's always been clear to me that Paul is no racist; it just wouldn't make sense. (If anything, he should be a little less inclusive, especially when it comes to accepting support from people who share his views on monetary policy but have unsavory opinions on other subjects.)
Unfortunately, Paul's repudiation hasn't succeeded in squashing these libelous claims. I've heard them from friends and coworkers myself. Although they're easily enough dealt with in a face-to-face discussion, the fact remains that the Ron Paul campaign hasn't managed to put them down yet.
Judging from the traffic on Ron Paul-related message boards I've been reading since Paul began his campaign, the vast majority of Paul's supporters on the Internet are socially progressive and vehemently opposed to this smear campaign. Today, they get to put their money where their mouths are.
The "Free at Last" money bomb was scheduled for Jan. 21 to coincide with Martin Luther King day, the Federal holiday celebrating the birth of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. that was established in 1983 by another fiscally conservative Republican, President Ronald Reagan.
I don't think anyone can know in advance whether this money bomb will raise more money than the other two ($4.2 million and $6 million respectively), but there's cause for optimism among Paul's supporters. Rep. Paul took second place in the Nevada caucuses last week and now ranks ahead of Rudy Giuliani in total delegates committed to date. If Fred Thompson drops out of the race as some analysts predict, Paul will be in fourth place overall.
What was interesting to me about the two previous money bombs is that they demonstrated how independent supporters can raise money more effectively than an official campaign organization. It's just one more way that the Internet upsets traditional power structures. Today we may learn that the Internet is also more effective at communicating a candidate's political positions.
I see today's "money bomb" for the Ron Paul presidential campaign is doing even better than the Nov. 5 event. No doubt the publicity from last month is helping this time around.
According to this real-time data from RonPaulGraphs.com, contributions are coming in at a rate about 50% higher than the previous occasion. Around 3 P.M. Pacific time, the day's donations passed the total for Nov. 5.
Donations are currently on a pace to reach about $6.5 million for the day, which would set a new one-day record for actual donations. And all without the support of the official campaign organization. Amazing.
Back on November 5 I wrote about an independent fundraising effort on behalf of the Ron Paul campaign. The occasion was Guy Fawkes Night, the commemoration of the 1605 attempt to blow up the Palace of Westminster in England. As I said at the time, this was a strange occasion for fundraising in a US presidential campaign, but at least it gave the organizers a convenient tagline for the effort: they called it a "money bomb".
The Destruction of Tea at Boston Harbor, by Sarony & Major, 1846
(Credit: National Archives and Records Administration)The Internet is having strange effects on political campaigns. Four years ago, the Howard Dean campaign used the Internet to great effect, but in largely predictable ways-- to reduce the costs of reaching supporters, raising money, and coordinating campaign activities.
This time around, all the presidential candidates are using the Internet for these purposes, but one campaign-- Ron Paul's-- has benefited more than the others from independent activism that has been much less predictable, and not uniformly beneficial.
Ron Paul has received unexpected support from users of Meetup.com, YouTube, FaceBook, and other popular sites. He has also received support from anarchists, 911 Truthers, racists, and others whose positions he doesn't agree with.
In the old days, a few problematic supporters were an accepted part of political life; as Charles Dudley Warner wrote in 1850, "politics makes strange bedfellows." A candidate could accept money (and votes) from anyone with the general public being none the wiser. Without hard details, rumors are more easily dismissed.
Today, the Internet makes it easier for a candidate's opponents to dig up ill-considered statements and campaign appearances and make them appear more significant than they really are. (This has been a problem for all the campaigns this year, not just Ron Paul's.)
The November 5 "money bomb" was not promoted in advance by Dr. Paul's campaign, perhaps because it feared the whole thing would flop. In fact, the campaign basically ignored the event until it became apparent that it was bringing in millions of dollars-- eventually topping out at more than $4.2 million. The campaign never made a formal statement about the Guy Fawkes connection.
On November 20, the campaign-- possibly responding to rumors that another "money bomb" event was planned for December 16-- sent out its own fundraising letter encouraging supporters not to wait. It argued that it needed to raise and spend the funds sooner because of the timing of the primaries, saying "If you wait a month from now to donate, your money will only be spent after Iowa caucus-goers and New Hampshire primary voters have made up their minds."
As of this writing, the campaign has yet to mention the Tea Party money bomb, and my guess is that it won't-- unless the event raises some significant amount of money. Coincidentally, the event is likely to push the campaign well past its $12 million fundraising goal for the fourth quarter of the year, so some recognition by the campaign is probably inevitable.
Will the Ron Paul campaign turn down Sunday's donations simply because they aren't from an official fundraising drive? Of course not. Will it be able to spend the money effectively? I'm sure it will. Would it have been better for the campaign to have received these donations sooner? Absolutely. But Internet activists run on their own schedules for their own reasons, and political campaigns are going to have to get used to that.
November 5 is Guy Fawkes Night in the United Kingdom. It commemorates the Gunpowder Plot of 1605, an attempt to blow up the Palace of Westminster and overthrow the government of James I.
Summary of Nov. 5 donations to the Ron Paul 2008 presidential campaign
Perhaps echoing the traditional childrens' request for "a penny for the guy" to buy fireworks, these advocates-- without the support of the official Ron Paul campaign organization-- have been exhorting other supporters to make $100 donations to the campaign today. The donations are going through the regular channels (a donation page on the campaign's website), so this isn't a scam, but I still think it's pretty weird. In fact, I said so a few times when people asked me about it. I think it isn't entirely appropriate to be connecting a legitimate political campaign with a 400-year-old act of insurrection.
But I guess a lot of other people think it's okay, because the donations have been pouring in. As I write this, we're still nine hours away from the end of the day here in California, but the day's total is already in excess of $2.7 million, and donations continue to arrive at the rate of $200,000 per hour.
(As an aside, the fact that these figures are available at all says a lot about the integration of computer technology with political campaigning. The Ron Paul organization offers a live feed of donation records which is summarized in real time on ronpaulgraphs.com.)
The campaign itself seems a little unprepared for this whole thing; in a blog post earlier today, campaign fundraising director Jonathan Bydlak didn't even mention the Guy Fawkes connection. But he did say that the amount raised so far is already a record for Republican online fundraising, and it looks like the day's total will exceed what Bydlak says is the all-time record for single-day fundraising: $3.1 million.
It's all pretty amazing, anyway.
[Update: the graph showed just over $4 million as of midnight East Coast time, but the Ron Paul campaign told the Associated Press that the actual figure is somewhere in excess of $4.2 million from over 37,000 individual donors. Apparently there's some data loss in that real-time feed...]
Just a quick note between Siggraph events--
CNET's Declan McCullagh has written an article (here) describing the Internet phenomenon that is the Ron Paul presidential candidacy.
It has a lot of information and insight on how the Internet can turn a fringe candidate (although in this case, Dr. Paul is on the rational fringe, not the lunatic fringe) into a serious contender.
Good stuff. I say, check it out.
I did attend the Ron Paul rally I mentioned on Friday. (More info here, here, and here.)
It wasn't what I expected-- in a good way.
If elected, Dr. Paul would withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq, abolish the IRS and the Federal Reserve system, and return the country to the gold standard.
There were other speakers addressing these topics, and many of the people attending the event were apparently there to hear about these things-- anti-war activists, gold bugs, even a contingent of conspiracy theorists. I expected these people to dominate the rally, and I was prepared to just keep my head down and avoid contact with them.
But most of the people in the audience-- which I would estimate at over 500 people-- were just regular Silicon Valley people. They didn't respond so strongly to that kind of rhetoric. Instead, I think they were there seeking the real value of Dr. Paul's campaign: having a real alternative to the current one-party system in this country.
Seriously, when all we're given is a choice between a tax-and-spend Democrat or a tax-and-spend Republican, what's the point of voting? Dr. Paul is running as a Republican, but he's trying to save that party by returning it to its roots, not just perpetuate its current problems.
Dr. Paul got a lot of strong applause and a standing ovation at the end. I was able to chat with a number of people at the rally and at a campaign luncheon afterward, and was pleased to discover a number of mainstream Republicans-- and Democrats-- who might never have considered voting for a third-party candidate.
I also had the pleasure of spending some time with CNET chief political correspondent Declan McCullagh, a long-time Libertarian activist, and John Gilmore, co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Just for the record, McCullagh was the first person to flaunt an iPhone in front of me (well, he wasn't really flaunting it; in fact, he seemed vaguely embarassed every time he brought it out-- but he did seem to bring it out a lot :-) and Gilmore gave me my first hands-on with an XO from OLPC.
All in all, a great day, even better than I expected...
I was once very active in the Libertarian Party. I ran a libertarian/objectivist computer bulletin-board service called the John Galt Line from 1983 to 1990, attended state LP conventions, and helped out during campaigns.
In 1988, I worked for the LP's presidential campaign. The ticket was Ron Paul for President and Andre Marrou for Vice President. Dr. Paul, an obstetrician/gynecologist from the Gulf Coast of Texas, won three terms in Congress as a Republican, making him the closest thing to a mainstream politician the LP had yet been offered. Marrou spent one term in the Alaska state House of Representatives, but he'd been elected as a Libertarian, which was also unusual at the time.
It was a pretty small, informal campaign. I was Paul's chauffeur when he visited Miami, FL; Marrou spent the night at our house during his visit to save the cost of a hotel room.
The LP's campaign was designed to help spread the word of the party more than to elect its candidates. In fact, Paul and Marrou attracted only 0.47% of the popular vote, but that was enough to help the LP retain its #3 position among US political parties at the time.
Paul returned to the US Congress in 1996, once again as a Republican, and in 2006 was elected to his tenth term. Now he's running for President again. Perhaps because there is no clear front-runner for the Republican nomination-- as there was in 1988 with Vice-President George H. W. Bush-- Paul is running as a Republican. (Click here for his campaign website.)
Some people say Paul has no chance to be nominated by the Republican Party. He has voted against the PATRIOT Act, the war in Iraq, and all of the Republican budget increases since President Bush took office. On the other hand, Paul supported the war in Afghanistan, so he can probably persuade voters that his opposition to the Iraq war is a matter of principle and practicality. I feel that if Paul were nominated, and had the support of the Republican Party, he would have a better chance of winning the general election than any other current Republican candidate because the other half of the electorate-- that is, Democrats-- probably won't tolerate any Republican who wants to continue the Iraq war.
But Paul doesn't have the support of the Republican Party. In fact, it looks like they'd rather ignore him entirely. Paul's unexpectedly strong showing in the first Republican debate apparently made Party leaders uncomfortable; there was talk of banning him from future debates. Fortunately, they backed down, and Paul went on to draw a lot of attention in the next two debates.
It's a little surprising that the oldest Republican in the race today is getting the most support of any candidate on the Internet. Paul's page on YouTube is the second most popular among all Presidential candidates, trailing only Barack Obama's. Paul has frequently demolished the other Republican candidates on Internet polls on ABC, CNN, FOX, MSNBC, and other sites.
Critics say Paul's campaign is simply doing a better job of ballot-stuffing, but I don't buy that. Paul's campaign is small and simply overwhelmed; I don't think they've had the resources to do anything of the kind. And if there's been an organized effort to rig these results, there's little evidence of it online; do Paul's critics think these Internet conspiracies have been orchestrated over the telephone?
No, I think Paul is just the most popular Republican among the Internet's heaviest users-- young people. The older supporters of traditional Republican candidates such as Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, and Mitt Romney aren't as likely to be hanging around Digg, waiting for ways to express their political beliefs.
The other Republicans are also harder to tell apart. They differ in how they want to change the course of the Iraq war, but they all want it to continue. They differ in how much they want to cut taxes, but they're all in the same ballpark. They all oppose certain policies of the Bush administration, but only in details.
There's also the fact that Paul is arguably the most tech-friendly of all the candidates. He topped the House and Senate rankings in CNET's own Technology Voter Guide last year (see the story here). There's little doubt that drastically reducing Federal spending, shutting down the IRS, eliminating the costs of the Iraq war, and restoring the gold standard would be a boon to industry. How these changes would affect ordinary consumers would make an interesting (and necessary) discussion, of course.
But we can't have this discussion unless Paul gets his chance to reach the American people with his message.
Paul has been on some of the major talk shows, including some of the most trendy, and he's also doing a series of talks, rallies, and campaign dinners around the country. He'll be speaking at a private Google event in Silicon Valley on July 13, and at a public rally the next day (at Charleston Park in Mountain View, CA; click here for details).
As much as I'd like to see Paul win the election next year, I can't really spend much time working on his campaign this time around. But I do want people to know that Ron Paul is a serious candidate and worth listening to. Whether or not you agree with his positions, at least it's good to have meaningful discussions of the issues.
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