As I continue my schizophrenic efforts to determine what this blog is about, let’s revert for a moment to the Presidential race. I’m introducing a new widget in the right-hand column showing the latest Electoral College tallies as calculated by a computer-science professor at Electoral-Vote.com. (The widget is dynamic, the image with this post is static.)

My main takeaway is that it looks like a close election. Certainly Obama is the frontrunner, but some of the recent national polls are showing a dead heat:

The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Sunday shows Barack Obama attracting 44% of the vote while John McCain earns 42%…. The margin of sampling error—for the full sample of 3,000 Likely Voters–is +/- 2 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence.

As we learned in 2000, the national popular vote is not decisive, which is why I like Electoral-Vote.com. OK, actually I like them because they have a fun widget, I have no idea whether their map is more or less accurate than other tracking maps, such as USA Today’s, which shows significantly different results for many states. But bizarrely, USA Today doesn’t bother to total the electoral votes.

Tagged with: 2008 Election

In the category of, “Best Use of a Blog for Marketing a Small Business,” the winner is… [sound of envelope being ripped open]… the Lincoln Sign Company. The blog is a fantastic example of using social media concepts like transparency in support of a small business. (Hat tip: John Jantsch at Duct Tape Marketing.)

JD Iles operates the sign-making company with a handful of employees out of a shop attached to a house in Lincoln, New Hampshire (pop. 1271).

JD makes a habit of blogging about every major project the company takes on. He blogs throughout the duration of the project, so the customer can track the progress and understand the reason for any delay.

Customers end up not just with a sign, but also with a behind-the-scenes description of how it was built and the artistic considerations in creating it. My favorite example is the story behind the sign they created for Sandpiper Cottage, a vacation rental home.

Why does the online story make the signs they create more valuable? Well, let JD tell it:

I think the value is mainly in the “possible opportunities for conversation” that it presents to the customer. Many times, our customers (after we have installed a sign) have commented to us that they have gotten great feedback on their new sign. For people who genuinely are interested, the proud owner of a new sign could e-mail them a link to the “Sign Story” of the sign being built.

True, this is great advertising for us, but it is also terrific for the business with the new sign. Any time you can get a potential customer to take time out of their busy day and spend some time looking at your logo or “brand”, you increase the likelihood that they will then go out and tell your story to others.

It has been said that the best marketing one can have is for a customer to want to tell your story to someone else. We want to provide a tool to help people tell a story about your business…

The line from that passage that jumps out at me more than any other is “possible opportunities for conversation.” I try to learn something – or relearn something – every day. Today a rural signmaker from New Hampshire has reminded me that markets are conversations.

(Cross-posted from Social Media Today.)

Tagged with: Social Media

Taranto likes me! He really likes me!

Moi is thanked today by James Taranto in the acknowledgements for today’s Best of the Web Today column. He spells my name right and everything. I (along with no doubt others) alerted him to the breaking news that Taranto’s least-favorite Republican, outgoing Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, is declining to endorse either candidate for president.

This kind of recognition is what makes blogging worthwhile. Well OK, I wasn’t actually blogging, I was commenting on Taranto’s blog. But I’m just saying.

Tagged with: Taranto

Here’s my latest contribution to the Social Media Today community.

Tagged with: Social Media

A fascinating 20-minute video from MilBlogs TV describes how American forces cooperated with and supported the early stages of the Anbar Awakening, a key factor in the turnaround in Iraq.

It’s not a completely happy tale — the American captain and the local sheik who played central roles in the cooperative effort both were ultimately killed. But near the end of the video is a helpful explanation of the reasons for success:

“The tribes represent the people of Iraq, and the populace represents the “key terrain” of the conflict. The force that supports the population by taking the moral high ground has as sure an advantage in COIN [counter-insurgency] as a maneuver commander who occupies dominant terrain in a conventional battle.”

This is why I’ve never believed the advances made in Iraq are going to be temporary, and disappear with the end of the surge. The irony is that the success of the surge will probably benefit the candidate who opposed the tactic. The better things get in Iraq, the less concerned people become about the idea of Obama as Commander in Chief.

Tagged with: Iraq • Milbloggers

That’s not an op-ed piece, it’s the lead sentence of an Associated Press article. As James Taranto points out, it’s kind of the mirror image of Walter Cronkite coming out against the Vietnam War.

Tagged with: Iraq

The whole post-every-day thing is already running out of steam. So far the blog seems to be mostly about Obama.

Today it’s about the Mets — game starts at 1:10, I need to head for the train in less than an hour, I’m meeting my son Harry at the ballpark. Johan Santana (8-7) vs. Kyle Lohse, who is, um… 12-2. Rubber game of the series against the Cardinals, who won in 14 last night after the Mets came from behind in the 9th to force extra innings. Mets still in first place by one game.

Tagged with: Baseball

… to make my quota for Day Five of the post-every-day experiment.

Tagged with: Uncategorized

Obama opposed the surge, and McCain was its champion. Jonah Goldberg argues that the success of the surge will therefore favor… Obama.

If it were going worse, McCain’s Churchillian rhetoric would match reality better. But with sectarian violence nearly gone, al Qaeda in Iraq almost totally routed and even Sadrist militias seemingly neutralized, the stakes of withdrawal seem low enough for Americans to feel comfortable voting for Obama. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki’s support for an American troop drawdown pushes the perceived stakes even lower. …

Although the economy will dominate this election, McCain can still press his advantage on foreign policy. But not with I-told-you-sos. Re-arguing the surge is almost as counterproductive as re-arguing the war itself. Elections are about the future.

McCain doesn’t need to explain why he’d be a better commander-in-chief. Voters already acknowledge his superior judgment on foreign policy by huge margins. He needs to explain why, going forward, we’ll need that judgment.

No matter how hard I try, I can’t find a way to disagree with this. Thanks for bummin’ me out, Jonah.

The irony is that while a president has a tremendous, dominant impact on issues of war and national security, he has only a tenuous impact around the margins of the short-term economy. The next president, whoever he is, will enjoy an unearned boost in popularity from the economic upturn to come. Meanwhile the issues that matter most take a back seat, and the national security candidate gets penalized for the success of the course that he advocated.

If it’s going to become Mr. Obama’s war, I can take some comfort in the fact that at least he’s showing signs of an ability to think independently of the extreme pacifist wing of his party.

Tagged with: 2008 Election • Iraq • Obama

I’m talking about two politicians in particular. One, of course, is Barack Obama, who is in Iraq to lay the groundwork for throwing under the bus the people who thought he was going to bring the troops home no matter what.

The other is Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who caused me (yes, I take it personally) a few moments of dismay the other day when Der Spiegel reported that Maliki had endorsed Obama’s 16-month timetable for withdrawal. It was a relief in the next news cycle that The Prime Minister’s handlers began “clarifying” the way the PM’s remarks were being “interpreted.”

In an analysis piece, the AP’s Baghdad bureau chief opined (emphasis added):

A top al-Maliki adviser, Sadiq al-Rikabi, insisted the Iraqi government does not intend to be “part of the electoral campaign in the United States.” But that is precisely what the Iraqis intended to do: exploit Obama’s position on the war to force the Bush administration into accepting concessions considered unthinkable a few months ago.

To which Outside the Beltway blogger James Joyce replied:

Well, yeah. Which is precisely how governments everywhere act. Indeed, this would appear to be a sign that Maliki and company are more ready for prime time than it had appeared.

The indispensible Omar and Mohammed Fadhil of Iraq the Model, blogging at Pajamas Media, look beyond the politics:

Maliki, for example, knows very well that had Obama’s vision for Iraq been adopted two years ago, he wouldn’t be enjoying the position and power he does today, and the progress in Iraq wouldn’t have been achieved. …

Terrorism cannot be defeated by killing Bin Laden or even killing every single existing member of Al-Qaeda, especially considering the decentralized structure of terrorist organizations. Terrorism can be defeated by offering a model for a bright future that gives people who have suffered for so long hope and saves them from despair.

Iraq is now closer than ever to becoming this model, and victory in this chapter of the war is within hand…unless Obama succeeds in ending the war his way.

Or unless Obama, talented politician that he is, finds a face-saving way to put the best interests of America and Iraq ahead of the surrender-at-all-costs platform that won him the Democratic nomination.

Tagged with: 2008 Election • Iraq