Swarm

Alvin R.U.N. There?

In all the rumbling about Alvin Greene's super stealthy path to becoming the Democratic nominee for a South Carolina Senate seat, we cannot entirely dismiss his claim that he has a network of supporters. Nor is it entirely impossible for him to come up with a $10,000 plus filing fee while being unemployed.  Seriously, it's not that much money, especially if you have been in the military for a while and socking away cash while saving on expenses. People have pointed out that he should not have requested a public defender for his alleged showing of porn to a college student if he actually had the money, making it all very mysterious.

(We lack the details, but somehow showing porn to college students seems a bit like showing Sesame Street to toddlers). We assume that when you are down to your last ten thousand, but have also gotten busted for something incredibly stupid, you want to save your stash for your dream of being a senator and passing life changing legislation. Do you really want to blow it on a public defender who will probably lose your case anyway?

What kills us though, is the reflexive tendency to paint Greene (sans further facts) as both criminal and mentally deficient. It's particularly amusing to watch various media and loud voices go through Socratic variations of inquiry by way of asking him, "Are you retarded?" How quickly we can lose our manners with certain types of people. You know what I mean. Those people.

It's possible to imagine him running his stealth campaign via social networking from the comfort of his home. He could have been sitting there in the den with dad, firing up his netbook, and telling his friends, and friends of friends, to help raise the cash or get out the vote. "Dad, I'm firing up the BlueSwarm on my Asus to see how our supporters are doing. Gonna send out a few Facebook hugs to those on the fence."

In contrast, BlueSwarm and similar software lets users work their friends and families and, in turn, have them solicit their own network to build a donor tree with deep roots. The same technique applies to institutional fundraising used by colleges or social causes such as charity campaigns.

Success and failure are tracked over the Internet on a screen illustrating the roots of donor's organization, as well precisely who has given and who still needs to cut a check or type in their credit card number.

(AP via Yahoo)

It's good to know that the future may now be here, and that we can all run the most complex of campaigns from the comfort of home, not too far from the fridge. We only need exit our house on election day to make a speech and do some inarticulate interviews with the swarm of media voices who will simultaneously fellate and mock us out of the same mouth.