Yesterday I went to two leaders rallies in Vancouver, Michael Ignatieff’s in North Vancouver and Elizabeth May’s in Vancouver

At the Green party rally that started at 7.30pm in front of the train station in Vancouver I asked Elizabeth May who’s @elizabethmay on Twitter

“Do you knew that 20-45% of prisoners have ADHD?”  Only 5% of adults have ADHD. She said a lot of prisoners have ADHD and other mental health problems. I then said “The UK screens prisoners for ADHD in their jails, would you commit to screening prisoners in Federal jails for ADHD?” She answered “Of course”

I was very pleasantly surprised since most politicians I talk about this have no clue about the massive disproportionate number of prisoners in Canadian jails who have ADHD. I thanked her and gave her a printed copy of my blog post on 15 peer reviewed studies on ADHD and crime Up To 45% 0f Prisoners Have ADHD Studies Show. Crime & Jail Are Costly, Treatment Is Cheap

So thank you Elizabeth May for choosing science and evidence over ideology and theology in regards to ADHD and crime. I hope other leaders do the same.

I got a chance to give my blog post on 15 peer reviewed studies on ADHD and crime to Michael Ignatieff who’s @m_ignatieff on Twitter, as he passed on the way out but unfortunately didn’t have a chance to ask him if he’d screen prisoners in Federal jails for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.

Health is mainly a provincial responsibility but the Federal govt is responsible for jails. So if you or someone you know has ADHD why don’t you ask your local candidate or their party leader if they have a chance if they support screening prisoners in Canadian Federal prisons for ADHD and also properly diagnosing those who screen positive by people who know ADHD and treat them in jail not only with long term medications that can’t be abused like the short term ones but also therapy so they learn self awareness and skill so they don’t come back to jail at a cost of $101,000 a year to the Canadian taxpayer?

Ideally you want them to screen children and adults for ADHD BEFORE they end up in jail, get medical professionals trained on ADHD in kids and adults and do a national anti stigma/ ADHD facts campaign.

If you’re Canadian here’s how to find your local candidate to ask them about ADHD & crime:

Find your local Liberal candidate

Find your local NDP candidate

Find your local Conservative candidate

Find your local Green candidate

Follow the Canadian Federal election on Twitter with the hash tag #elxn41

Photo Credits: dogsbody and Brent Granby

Vision Vancouver’s Gregor Robertson’s campaign understood the internet, social media, and web culture much better than the NPA’s Peter Ladner’s did and that’s one of the many reasons he won the 2008 Vancouver civic election.

In this comprehensive post I compare and contrast the two Vancouver Mayoral candidates in the 2008 Vancouver civic election. Gregor Robertson of Vision Vancouver and Peter Ladner of the NPA in 25 different areas involving social media websites, (Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Flickr and Friend Feed), various search engine results & web presence. Data was collected election day, Nov 15, 2008. I did a similar post comparing Barack Obama & John McCain in social media & SEO. I’m an adult ADHD coach and a former political science student and long time political junkie who’s been online since before the world wide web started.

Here’s what I’ll be showing you.

9 overview slides of the data

Comparison chart of the data

Analysis and opinion

Links to Vision Vancouver’s and the NPA’s campaign’s social media profile pages

Overall conclusions

Social media lessons and resources

Links to Vancouver area blogs that cover politics

My 9 slides have an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike Creative Commons license, so feel free to use them or remix them, just give me credit and a link.

Intro

This blog is usually about the strengths and challenges of adult ADHD, and trying to raise awareness of Adult ADHD in Canada, where we’re a decade behind the Americans, and Vancouver is way behind Ontario, sigh… and the world from the perspective of an Adult ADHD Coach who has Attention Surplus Condition more commonly called ADHD.

BUT I’m also a political science major and a politics junkie. So occasionally I’ll do posts on politics, humour, and other things that interest me. Disclosure, I’ve talked to both candidates briefly during the beginning of the 2008 Vancouver civic election.

Since the 2008 Vancouver civic election was so close the US Presidential election where I recently did a post called Barack Obama Vs. John McCain Social Media and Search Engine Scorecard, I decided to a similar post for the 2008 Vancouver civic election in my hometown. Congratulations to our new Mayor Gregor Robertson.

Social Media Websites

Facebook

Gregor Robertson has 3 Facebook pages
1. His personal one.
2. His politician one, his word.
3. His Gregor Robertson and the Vision Team One. This is the one I’m measuring in the chart.

Peter Ladner seems to only have two,
1. His personal one
2. His Vancouver NPA one. This is the one I’m measuring in the chart because that’s the main one they seem to be using for the campaign. That being said, Peter has more friends on his personal Facebook page, 617, than he does fans on the Vancouver Non Partisan Association’s Facebook page, 488.

So I just compared the two official campaign pages. Peter Ladner has 8 videos in a YouTube box while Gregor only list 3 videos, less prominently on the lower right hand side. But he has 15 videos on YouTube. Why didn’t the Ladner campaign post the other 7 on their Facebook page?

Both Peter and Gregor allowed wall posts on their respective individual pages. Vision Vancouver’s online campaign team decided to allow wall posts on their Facebook page, unfortunately the Non Partisan Association did not. Being open and engaging in the community was probably part of the reason why Gregor Robertson had twice as many Facebook Friends as Peter Ladner. Too bad Peter Ladner wasn’t as interactive on his NPA page as his personal page. That was a lost opportunity to engage the Facebook community. Seemed here like an open source style campaign vs. the old fashioned tradition command and control one. Command and control doesn’t work so well online, look at what happened to John McCain.

YouTube

Peter Ladner cranked out much more content on YouTube than Gregor Robertson did, more than 4 times the number of videos. Surprisingly, both candidates had very few subscribers on YouTube. Peter had 7, but for some reason refused to show any, Gregor had 4 and did list them. Both were smart enough to repurpose their videos by embedding them in their Facebook pages.

I went to a debate at the Greek Church on Arbutus and saw a videographer at the back filming it, later found out it was for the Ladner team. I assumed it was for ads or to improve their candidates speaking performance. I tried to ask a question about why everyone in the campaign was talking about the well known problems of addiction and mental health in Vancouver but no candidates or media outlets were talking about the links between undiagnosed and untreated ADHD and addictions. These links are well known among those knowledgeable about ADHD but less so in the general public. Unfortunately they didn’t ask that one.

The SMALLEST numbers I’ve seen on ADHD and addiction are 20-25% in peer reviewed clinical journals in Pub Med and I’ve seen much higher. For example see this as well as this, and this.

Kind of frustrating especially when the BC Liberal government and Children’s hospital closed down the only provincial Adult ADHD clinic in the province (where it’s very difficult to find someone that knows enough about ADHD to diagnose it) at BC Childrens hospital because it had a 1 year wait list, which was politically embarrassing. Kill the wait list; avoid bad media coverage about long wait lists. I contacted various people in the BC NDP’s offices and got promises of action from several NDP staffers, who subsequently did absolutely nothing. It’s easy to forget one big reason we have so many homeless people in Vancouver is the NDP emptied out large mental institutions because they were so “terrible” and decided to “house them in the community” then promptly abandoned them to the predators of the streets.

We got coverage of the adult ADHD clinics shutting their doors on BCTV, but no other media outlet covered it, and the only public BC adult ADHD clinic is still dead and the patients are still abandoned.

Twitter

Gregor has nearly 5 times as many twitter followers than Peter, but Peter has 3 times as many Twitter update posts or tweets.

Gregor’s tweets (posts on twitter) were nearly all one way promotional broadcasts. He (or the person(s) that posted as him) only responded to other Twitterers 3 times and 2 of them were to his online campaign manager, @koriB. Sounded to me like Kori was talking to himself but I can’t be sure. UPDATE: Kori just mentioned in the comments it was Gregor doing the tweeting not him. But Gregor did technically follow 159 people. Whether he or his campaign staff actually read any of their tweets, responded to his followers or other’s Tweets or cared about interacting with those people, I couldn’t tell.

Most of the NPA’s tweets seemed to be mainly from/about NPA council candidate Sean Bickerton

The NPA’s tweets were 100% self promotional, not a single response to anyone else on twitter. They didn’t believe in the mantra of social media consultants and connected web strategists, “listen to the conversation”.
That is, they weren’t interested in following anyone else on Twitter, they didn’t even fake it, they had 0 followers. Obviously clueless about Twitter.

Vision Vancouver Twitter jacked Peter Ladner’s name on Twitter. That is, Peter and his campaign didn’t bother to register his name on twitter, (an internet rookie movie) so someone from the vision Vancouver camp registered his name and created a Peter Ladner account on Twitter, started putting out Tweets that insulted/made fun of Peter Ladner. This is why politicians and other visible people, businesses and other organizations should start learning more about social media, just as a defensive move if nothing else.

Frankly it was a clueless move. It’s one thing for a third party to do something like that like the brilliant Fake Steve Jobs did.

But for someone from the opposing campaign to do so and not create something like fakepeterladnder instead of using his real name is just not kosher, someone who did that in the US would probably get fired for it. Plus it irritated members of the local twitterati and others on twitter, especially Vision Vancouver’s seemingly unwillingness to apologize about it. It’s still up there, and was really counterproductive. Hopefully our new mayor understands the lessons of what happens to arrogant politicians in BC, they get defeated. Miss 604 reports that #civicvote2008 is now the second most talked about topic on Twitter today.

It also got mainstream media coverage since Vancouver Sun Journalist and blogger Gillian Shaw is unlike most Vancouver journalists and has a blog and a twitter account, and unlike other Vancouver Sun and Vancouver Province journalists, she actually is clued into the blogosphere enough to have a blogroll with other non company blogs listed. Was also picked up by several blogs here are a few stories on it.

Most of the searches on Twitter for Peter Ladner seem to be related to Vision Vancouver’s campaign’s Twitterjacking of his name. Gregor (or his campaign) was smart enough to create an individual account on Twitter with his real name, which has no content but links to the Gregor08 Twitter page. Unlike John McCain, both candidates were smart enough to send out get out the vote tweets on November 15th, election day.

Flickr

There was more than 3 times the number of search results for Gregor Robertson as there were for Peter Ladner on Flickr, and 256% more photos on Vision’s Vancouver Flickr profile page than the Vancouver NPA’s. Vision Vancouver’s group pool on Flickr had 9 members and 400 items; the NPA had no group pool.

Vision started using Flickr on Nov 16, 2007, the NPA first started using Flickr on Jul 6, 2007, so the NPA started 4 months earlier, plus the NPA has been a political party since 1937 (so you might assume they’d have more photos to upload). Vision just started up 3 years ago and the mayor was from the NPA, and they had more elected members than Vision, but still had fewer photos.

Probably those restless cultural creatives and young folk creating all that content. Also Vision’s online team seemed far more web 2.0 savvy then the NPA’s. Plus I think Vision’s policies appealed more to that crowd.

Using the web tools alone is not enough if your policies and past actions don’t resonate with those people creating and consuming content on those social media sites. Just as John McCain had George Bush as an anchor on his campaign, Ladner had his own anchor, Sam Sullivan, i.e., Sam’s Strike. But to be fair to Sam, he was a small anchor compared to George Bush.
Flickr was created in Vancouver and it’s a very popular photo sharing site, that many local blogger use to spice up their blog posts. I’ve posted creative commons licensed slides for this post on my Flickr set here.

Friend Feed

10 of the links to “Peter Ladner” was done by one user that had them removed, but still showed up in the Friend Feed search, so the actual number was smaller. Even still, more results for Peter Ladner. I didn’t check every single link on both, but in this case the last ones looked pretty similar by the same user. They probably just had trouble uploading the video file on blip TV.

MySpace

I didn’t list MySpace activity on the chart, since neither candidate has any profiles on the site unlike Barack Obama and John McCain did on my previous post. There were only 6 search results for Peter Ladner, 4 for Gregor Robertson. When I searched for Peter Ladner on MySpace, there was an ad for Peter Ladner and the NPA. Interestingly, when I searched for Gregor Robertson, I found the same ad for Peter Ladner and the NPA. Maybe Gregor’s team was doing the same thing, I’m not sure.

Didn’t list WordPress.com results either, since there was such little activity there. There were 10 search results for Gregor Robertson on WordPress.com, 9 results for Peter Ladner.

Search Engine Results For “Gregor Robertson” and “Peter Ladner”

Gregor Robertson was elected as an NDP MLA in 2005. Peter Ladner was elected to Vancouver city council in 3 years earlier in 2002 and yet Gregor Robertson beat Peter Ladner in every search engine. His margin was biggest in google’s index, 48%, but not by that much in the other ones, around the 10% range. Keep in mind that more search engine results or user generated social media does not always mean that the results are positive towards the candidate, many are negative of both. The political blogosphere can be a tough place. One other thing to keep in mind is that bloggers are often content creators on other social media websites as well.

Quick Short Diversion to BC Provincial Politics

Gordon Campbell’s BC Liberal party is smart enough to realize this. The BC Liberals are encouraging their supporters to target bloggers on their website, and get involved in social media. I noticed that they’ve removed some BC bloggers from the list. I believe that bloggers and social media content creators will be even more important in coming civic and provincial elections, political campaigns will ignore them at their peril. The BC Liberal Party has got a very well designed and modern website, more similar to Vision’s than the NPA’s.

Carole James’s BC NDP’s website is quite antiquated in comparison, and is too clueless to even mention anything about blogs or social media on their get involved section. Look at the wording of their main URL, http://home.bcndp.ca, home? Did someone create this website a decade ago and forget about it? It get’s worse. Look at the order of the URL’s on their top navigation bar, they’re all subdomains! I.e., http://newsroom.bcndp.ca/ instead of http://bcndp.ca/newsroom. If you don’t know why this seems nuts, ask someone who knows SEO to explain. This web 2.0 cluelessness will hurt the BC NDP in the upcoming election.. I guess the old fashioned left can be command and control too. Maybe they should hire Gregor’s online team quickly, the election’s in May 2009, not too far away. Also hire an SEO, same title tag for every page on the site? Which after permalinks is THE most important on page SEO thing you can do. Just like John McCain’s and Peter Ladner’s website. Perhaps being so unaware of the internet that your campaign has the same title tag on every page of your site is a predictor of electoral defeat:)

Compare the design and functionality of the BC Liberal Party’s get involved section to the NDP’s version. Which one would you be more likely to click through? Hire a usability expert too. The BC NDP’s website looks like a decade old. Looks like the BC NDP will be roadkill on the information superhighway in the upcoming election. Maybe the BC NDP needs to lose and election too in order to find a new leader the gets the internet and social media.

Responding to Bloggers

I can only give my personal example, not sure if/how the campaigns responded to other bloggers. If you blogged about the civic election and got a response from either campaign, let me know in the comments.

I recently did a post calling for the civic election candidates and the media to start talking about the connection between ADHD and drug addiction and crime and the lack of services for adults with ADHD in Vancouver, and calling for a mental health advocate. One member of Vision mentioned in a comment on my post that vision supported a mental health advocate while the NPA opposed it but ignored the main question of my post and never bothered answering my follow up question. At least they responded, the Ladner campaign never bothered to.

Internet Presence for Gregor Robertson and Peter Ladner

From just the 2 domains visionvancouver.ca vs peterladner.ca, Vision clearly wins in every category. But Vision only has one website. If you look at the Vancouver NPA site, they beat Vision’s in pages in google’s index 283 pages to 219, the NPA has less Yahoo Links-Pages 201 vs 481, but more Yahoo Links-Inlinks, 1281 vs 219. So if you combine both Peter Ladner’s site with the NPA’s one, they have a greater online presence then Vision Vancouver in 2 out the 3 metrics.

However Vision Vancouver’s website is superior in to both Peter Ladner’s and the Vancouver NPA’s website in:

Design
Functionality
Usability
Interactivity
Encouraging Engagement
Social media features

I’ll do another post later comparing the two main websites.

List of Gregor Robertson and Peter Ladner’s Online Profiles on Social Media Websites

Gregor Robertson’s Websites

Vision Vancouver’s Website
Gregor’s personal Facebook page
Gregor’s politician Facebook page, his word
Gregor Robertson and the Vision Team Facebook page
Gregor Robertson YouTube
Gregor Robertson Twitter page
Gregor Robertson’s Fake Peter Ladner Twitter Page (Twitter jacked)
Vision Vancouver’s Flickr Photostream

Peter Ladner’s Websites

Peter Ladner.ca
NPA Vancouver website
NPA Vancouver Facebook page
Peter Ladner’s personal Facebook page
Peter Ladner YouTube
Peter Ladner Twitter
NPA Vancouver’s Flickr Photostream

Overall Conclusions

Of the 25 different metrics I used, Gregor won 17, Peter Ladner won 6, and they tied on two. Gregor Robertson was the clear winner. He won every single category in the search engines if you don’t add the 2nd NPA Vancouver website.

Gregor Robertson’s Online Campaigner was Kori Brus. who has a blog, and twitter account and is active online While the twitter jacking was a definite screw up, overall he performed far superior to his counterpart in Peter Ladner’s campaign, if in fact Peter did have a dedicated person for that. I couldn’t find out by googling it. Clearly not a good sign.

Both campaigns could have done better in engaging people on Youtube, Flickr and Twitter instead of just old fashioned push broadcasts. They both could have had created groups of individual on their website by demographics or areas like the Obama and McCain campaign did.

Social Media Lessons.

1. It’s important for a political organization, business, non profit that wants to get involved in social media websites like Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Flickr etc to understand how the tools work, simply from a defensive point of view, even if you don’t plan on participating in them. I.e., avoiding getting Twitterjacked like Peter Ladner.

2.Why were both candidates so anti social on social networking sites that were designed specifically to allow people to, you know.. socialize?

Robertson did well on Facebook.

But look how many YouTube subscribers they both had. Look at how many YouTube groups they were members of. Zero.

Look at the how many photos they both posted on Flickr. Then compare how many contacts they had on Flickr. Look at how many Flickr groups they joined, ZERO.

Now look at the number of contact and groups this sociable local blogger’s has on Flickr.

If you’re creating all that content, LEVERAGE IT. And do so by being engaging with the community in a non pushy way. Google open source politics to see the way of the future.

If you’re an individual business person you may or may not want to get that involved in social networks because to do them right can take time and resources, or it may not be the right fit for you, or your resources are devoted elesewhere. Frankly I can’t picture myself spending time on MySpace, but I know some people love it.

3. It’s even more important to understand the ecosystem in which the tools are used.

For example flashy blinking graphics with extreme contrast are fine on MySpace, but would not be fine on LinkedIn. If you don’t understand the culture of the site and the users and how they interact with each other, you could be seen as an unwelcome outsider or a spammer, and have some really counterproductive results.

Here are a few social media mistakes to avoid.

So if you decide to participate in a social media network, learn about the culture of the site and engage with the community. Barack Obama didn’t dominate John McCain in social media and on the internet simply because he understood the tools and McCain didn’t, he beat him because he understood the environments in which the tools were used, the users of those tools and used the tools to engage and organize people and to get them to engage and organize others.

If you don’t understand this, hire someone that does like a social media consultant.

Gregor beat Peter Ladner by a fairly wide margin for many reasons but in a close election a good website and blogging and social media strategy could make the difference between losing and winning. I’ve watched elections for 30 years some are really close. Smart politicians will get clued in or pay someone to help them get a clue, the dinosaurs that don’t will be adding another potentially dangerous vulnerability to their campaign.

Resources relating to why and how to get involved in Social Media

The emergence and rise of mass social media

Social Media – Visual and simple images explaining trends, concepts and technologies driving Social Media growth

How do I convince my boss of the ROI of new marketing? David Meerman Scott answers the question via video.

Is It Worth It? An ROI Calculator for Social Network Campaigns

Social media ROI resources and general social media stats

A graphical categorization list of social media tools

Social Media & NonProfits: Make it Easy for Your Fans to Help You by local blogger and social media consultant Monica Hamburg

Alltop – Top Social Media News

E-Metrics: Followers, Friends, and Fans - Expanding Your Online Community By Beth Kanter

Vancouver Blogs That Cover Politics

Here’s a list of some blogs that cover politics in Vancouver that you might want to check out. I didn’t list politicians that blogged, since most of them just start up before the election, go dead shortly after and often just use blogs mainly as a press release device. This is by no means an comprehensive list, and it’s just of list of some blogs that I sometimes read or have searched to see who blogs about Vancouver politics. In listing them, I’m not saying I agree with what every blog on the list has to say.

I know some of the bloggers on the list personally from meeting them at the excellent Vancouver Bloggers Meetup Group hosted by Raul, or other blogging/tech events around Vancouver of which there are many, Vancouver has a thriving tech/blogging/Web2.0 community Apologies in advance if I’ve missed your political related blog on this list, I’m sure I missed quite a few.

If you have an opinion on what you read on someone’s blog, agree, disagree (respectfully, not rudely), or have another related point to make, let the bloggers know in the comment section of the particular blog post. Bloggers love feedback. Including this one:)

Vancouver Political Bloggers or Occasional Political Bloggers

For Vancouver Sun civic politics reporter Frances Bula is in a class of her own. Read her first, and encourage her to fully join the blogosphere by adding a blogroll of local Vancouver bloggers:)

The others are in grouped in sections then alphabetically.

Vancouver Online Magazines

Georgia Straight Politics Blog
Only Magazine
The Tyee
The Vancouver Observer

Vancouver Group Blogs

Beyond Robson Especially Sean Orr
Vancouver Metblogs
Vancity Buzz

Vancouver Primarily Political Blogs
Bill Tieleman
Irwin Loy
Keeping it Real
Left Eye on Vancouver
Oldtown News
Pacific Current Vancouver Sun blog
Paying Attention
Pacific Gazette
Public Eye Online
The Official 2010 Olympics Newswire
The Vancouver Manifesto

Vancouver Blogs That Sometimes Discuss Vancouver Politics

Adult ADD Strengths
Buzz Networker
Chinese in Vancouver
Currents
Hummingbird 604
Loud Murmurs
Miss 604
Mori Therapy
Paul Hillsdon Yes he’s in Surrey but he does have some great material, and I hope he wins next time.
Rob Cottingham
Stephen Rees
Tris Hussey
The Ugly Chinese Canadian
The Vancouverite
Ursa Minor Bear 604
Van Rambling

Why Blogs & Other Social Media Matter. Quantifying The Dangers Of Not Cluing In. 29 Social Media & SEO Metrics.

Here’s what I’ll be showing you in this post:

Comparison chart of the data

Overview slides of the data

Analysis and opinion

Links to both campaign’s social media profile pages

Overall conclusions

Analysis of both candidate’s websites and understanding of the internet & social media

Why “getting” the net & social media is critical for future campaigns

My 10 slides have an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike Creative Commons license, so feel free to share and remix them, just give me credit and a link.

UPDATE: I added some charts below to better present the data.

Comparison chart of 29 measurements of Barack Obama’s & John McCain’s activities, followers and presence on popular social media sites , Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr & several search engines (data collected Nov 5, 08, excel charts above below nov 12) Analysis below the slides.

* = The Candidates Sites on Flickr, Youtube, Facebook, Myspace and Twitter.

I got the idea for this as I was surfing the 2008 US Presidential candidates websites late Monday night, looking for ideas for online ADHD advocacy from my last post. As an Adult ADHD coach who has ADHD, I wanted examples to help raise awareness of Adult ADHD. I wondered how many pages Barack Obama’s website had in Google’s index vs John McCain’s. So I did a site search site:www.barackobama.com etc. to find out. Wow.

Nearly 6,000 % more pages on Barack Obama’s website than John McCain’s.

So being the curious type (a major ADHD strength), and a political junkie (I had the same major as Barack Obama, Political Science, concentration in International Relations) I examined the differences between the 2 candidates web presences via different categories of search engine results and checking out their presence and popularity on some of the many popular social media websites as of November 4, 2008. The chart above quantifying Barack Obama’s domination of John McCain in social media websites and search engines is the result.

Barack Obama vs. John McCain – Social Media Presence

Facebook

3,032% more hits for Barack Obama than John McCain, Barack Obama’s Facebook page had nearly 4 times more followers and posts than John McCain’s page and had 1,335% more notes up. TechPresident reported Barack Obama‘s added 400,000 new friends on facebook in the last 2 weeks, a 20% surge.

MySpace

Both Candidates pages were fairly well designed compared to the usual chaotic look some favour. Barack Obama had nearly 4 times the number of friends on MySpace as John McCain, and 269% more search results for his name. Strangely enough, I found 147K comments on Barack Obama’s MySpace page but none at all on John McCain’s. Not sure why he didn’t display any, which seems one of the main points of Myspace. Possibly the fear of too many negative ones?

Twitter

Here we have a case of severe internet cluelessness on the part of the John McCain Campaign. Barack Obama cranked out 10 times more tweets than John McCain, had 2254% more followers, and 1,029% more search results. John McCain’s last tweet was October 24th! So clueless that he didn’t send a vote today tweet on election day!. Some power twitter users like Alltop Media mogul Guy Kawasaki have large numbers of follower, in Guy’s case 24,726 followers. Imagine having a few of those people on your list AND the fact that some of their followers will retweet and/or blog the message if they like it, and they have followers, etc, etc.

UPDATE: Thanks to Oliver and Faruk for pointing out I listed the wrong John McCain Twitter page, just corrected it. I mistakenly linked to a McCain fan page, who had nearly half the followers as the offical one but massively more tweets. Maybe John McCain should have outsourced his twittering to him:) Also updated, he has 29,202 YouTube subscribers.

Friend Feed

Barack Obama had 25% more mentions than John McCain.

Youtube

Barack Obama had nearly twice as many search results for his name as John McCain, and more than 5 times as many videos posted. Barack Obama had 117k subscribers and 25k friends and strangely enough John McCain had no friends or subscribers Sorry, still has no friends but 29,202 subscribers, Obama beat him by 300% on this. Or at least none displayed. Wonder why? Maybe’s his campaign doesn’t know how to use Youtube or maybe they’re semi antisocial about social networking? Or there might be too many people posting negative videos and comments? Not sure.

Flickr

The photo sharing site that was created here in Vancouver BC Canada, had nearly 5 times more search results for Barack Obama than John McCain. I found 50,000 photos on Barack Obama’s flickr page and 7,000 contacts, I could not find a profile of John McCain on Flickr.

Barack Obama’s and John McCains Official Social Media Sites

Barack Obama’s Facebook Site
Barack Obama’s Myspace Site
Barack Obama’s Twitter Site
Barack Obama’s Youtube Site
Barack Obama’s Flickr Photostream

John McCain’s Facebook Site
John McCain’s Myspace Site
John McCain’s Twitter Site
John McCain’s Youtube Site
John McCain has no Flickr Photostream

Search Engine Results for “Barack Obama” and “John McCain”

Google News, Images and Video

John McCain beats Barack Obama significantly in Google News though by 173%. There’s almost 3 times as many results for Barack Obama in Google images and 51% more hits in Google Video as there is for John McCain.

Blog Search Engines

Barack Obama has more search engine results than John McCain in both blog search engines, google and technorati and in in wordpress.com a site with 4,592,973 blogs where users create blogs for free and host them there. This blog uses WordPress, the free standalone version. Keep in mind that more search engine results or user generated social media does not always mean that the results are positive of the candidate, many are negative of both. The political blogosphere can be a brutal place. But as a politician, being ignored is the worst thing. Getting no attention won’t get you elected. Plus bloggers are often creating content and commenting in other social media sites beyond their individual blog. Bloggers will become even more important and courted in the future by political campaigns.

Internet Presence for Barack Obama’s and John McCains Official Websites

As previously mentioned, Barack Obama had nearly 6,000 percent more pages on his main website than John McCain did on his, 1,820,000 vs 30,700. Barack Obama has more and deeper links, more hits for his name in Google,

Overall Metrics

Of the 27 29 metrics I chose, Barack Obama absolutely crushed John McCain. Barack Obama led on 25 27 out of 27 29, John McCain led on only 1 (Google Blog Search) and the Candidates were tied on one (Google page rank). In some cases the John McCain campaign didn’t even bother to show up. The McCain campaign had no Youtube subscribers, Youtube friends, and Myspace comments, or at least none posted. Was that a result of campaign malpractice? Or not wanting to show the hostile reactions of users to his messages? Or something else? Republican minds should start asking some pointed questions, Democrats should be thankful.

Maybe they need to find a republican version of James Carville, head strategist for Bill Clinton’s winning presidential election who has ADHD. I remember reading somewhere that the #1 career for adults with ADHD was politics and #2 was sports (27% and 23% I think). We have understimulated brains (or are brains are processing so fast we burn up dopamine) so we do best in high stimulation, creative, challenging jobs. Many ADDers in high tech, marketing, advertising, entrepreneurs etc. In those areas, having ADHD can be a competitive edge. Factory floors are death for us. Boring repetitive paperwork is our kryptonite.

Choose Your Bias

Waxy‘s Andy Biao created an excellent Greasemonkey script that I use called Memeorandum Colors for the US political aggregator site that’s almost been my home page for the last few months, Memeorandum, the Techmeme of politics

Left-leaning blogs are blue and right-leaning blogs are red, with darker colors representing strong biases.

Check it out, it’s based on who the blogs link to, and don’t just view the blogs on your side of the political spectrum, view the rogue ones too:)

Conclusions

Overall Barack Obama’s campaign has

• a larger, more comprehensive presence
• more followers or subscribers on the social media websites
• more interaction with those followers
• much greater results in search engines

This is in spite of John McCain being a big political celebrity FAR longer than Barack Obama was. John McCain was first elected to congress in 1982, and even before McCain ran in 2008, other than George Bush, McCain was probably the best known, most interviewed, and most written about Republican politician. That’s why I laughed when I saw McCain’s celebrity ad about Obama, look at how many mention’s John McCain has in the Internet Movie Database, like Bill Clinton, he was jealous because he was no longer the biggest political celebrity in Washington.

Outside of Illinois, Barack Obama was largely unknown until he gave his famous keynote speech at the democratic convention in 2004. So 26 years of exposure vs 4 years and yet Obama still massively dominated the online landscape.

Candidates Websites

Obama’s website one of the best designed websites I’ve seen in 15 years online, far better designed then John McCain’s, plus Obama’s has more features, more option and more content and is far more sophisticated than John McCain’s. Senator Obama hired Blue State Digital to run his online campaign, here’s their case study on it.

Barack Obama’s Website simply crushes McCains in:

• quantity
• design
• features
• sophistication
• participation
• usability
• Social media features

Take a few moments and look at both sites and you’ll see the huge gap. Obama even created an online rapid response team to counter the lies thrown at him, called fight the smears. Brilliant move, cheaper than responding with TV ads.

McCain’s social network page has only 3 suggested sites, Obama’s suggests 16.

John McCain’s Knowledge of the Internet

John McCain’s unfamiliarity with the internet is well known,

I am learning to get online myself, and I will have that down fairly soon, getting on myself

in fact the Obama campaign created an ad based on it. Knowing the tubes does matter. Check out the Design for Obama website, no similar site for the McCain campaign.

Barack Obama’s Knowledge of the Internet

Barack Obama is younger and more computer and web savy. Here’s one quote from Marc Andreessen, coauthor of Mosaic, founder of netscape, and co founder of roll your own social network Ning who had a 90 minute one on one with Obama, early in 2007.

In particular, the Senator was personally interested in the rise of social networking, Facebook, Youtube, and user-generated content, and casually but persistently grilled us on what we thought the next generation of social media would be and how social networking might affect politics — with no staff present, no prepared materials, no notes. He already knew a fair amount about the topic but was very curious to actually learn more. We also talked about a pretty wide range of other issues, including Silicon Valley and various political topics.

Politicans can always hire people to create their websites and do their online marketing, fundraising, organizing and voter outreach programs. But if they don’t “get the net” or don’t know what questions to ask, they’re at a severe disadvantage to those that do get it and do spend time on it.

Barack Obama won the presidency for many reasons, but one is that he really understood the force multiplier called the internet. He knew who the internet users are, understood their needs and wants, how and why they use it, and how to connect with those people, and get them involved so they do most of the building and content creation themselves.

Fear can be effective in politics, but it doesn’t create as much content as hope. Republicans like Sarah Palin and Rudy Guiliani mocked Barack Obama for being a community organizer. Barack Obama community organized on the net with devastating effects to the Republican campaign.

One reason Barack Obama won was because he open sourced his campaign especially the online aspect. McCain’s was command and control by multiple competing lobbyists.

Other politicians in the US, Canada, and other countries will either start learning more about the internet culture, blogging, other social media and getting involved the right ways (the wrong ways will cause a massive backlash) or risk getting their asses kicked in online fundraising, raising awareness, finding and engaging new volunteers, online and offline organization, and voter outreach by those who do understand and use the internet and social media. Plus they have to change their beliefs, attitudes, policies and operating procedures to appeal too younger, digitally connected people, technology by itself ain’t enough.

Social media consultants will be getting much busier.

“One person can make a difference and every person should try.”

US President John F. Kennedy

Online ADHD awareness and advocacy activities are easier and cheaper than offline ones, and are often more effective. Especially since most people with ADHD don’t have a lot of local services available for them because of a lack of awareness about ADHD and an unwillingness for most adults with ADHD and their families to demand change and services for people with ADHD in the offline world for a variety of reasons. Governments don’t give services out of the goodness of their hearts, people need to raise awareness of why those services like basic diagnosis and treatment of ADHD are important and demand services from the government and the health system.

Regardless of which party you support, I’d strongly suggest ADDers and their families start looking at the US Presidential candidates online websites, blogs and forums to see how they’ve been effective and organizing and connecting and motivating people, fundraising and spreading ideas so that we in the ADHD world can learn from some of tactics and strategies of what they’ve done well to help get the word out about our cause.

Even if you don’t like Barack Obama, his websites and blog have been really massively cutting edge in a number of ways and I think that there are many lessons to be learned from their many sites and many sub sites and individual state websites and blogs. I’m sure there are also some good ideas from John McCain’s sites too. Canada just had a federal election and frankly most of the major parties websites were massive disappointments in comparison.

Probably these sites may start shutting down a lot of their content shortly after November the 4th, so now is the time to check them out and document the good ideas you can find. To save a visual good example of an online site, take a screenshot. On a Macintosh you can take a picture of the screen by pressing the apple key plus the shift key plus the 3 key (or press and hold the 4th key to drag the picture to the area you want) to take a visual example of someone doing something useful online.

We may not be able to duplicate all of their online tactics and strategies, but even if we learn one or two, I think that can help us, whether those ideas are applied to the larger websites like ADDA,  CHADD, and the ADHD Coaches Organization or individual ADHD support group websites or personal websites or blogs that some of us ADDers have.

If you have ADHD and don’t have a website or blog of your own, and you want to make a difference for people with ADHD, or have some opinions and ideas you feel are worth expressing, or just want to counter the lies and myths out there about ADHD in adults and children, consider getting one. Ideally one with a domain name, but if not, get a free easy to use blog from sites like WordPress.com, where they take care of most of the technology for you. See this page for some features. 10 years ago you had to be a techie to have a website, today your non techie grandmother can easily create a website or a blog. Or get your teenager to set one up for you:)

There are still a lot of people out in the online world saying ADHD doesn’t exist and is not a real condition. I’ve even created a special page for those dinosaur people. But there needs to be more ADDers and their families with online presences, as well as ADD support groups with websites or blogs. The more ADDers and their families start getting online and showing the human side of ADHD, and start raising awareness and demanding services, the quicker the stigma of ADHD will be reduced and the quicker people with ADHD will get the resources that they deserve. Resources that people with other mental health condition have gotten because they demanded them.

Here in Vancouver BC Canada, it’s very hard to find someone who knowns enough about adult ADHD to diagnose it. We had the only provincial BC Adult ADHD clinic at Children’s hospital get shut down because the one year wait list was politically embarrassing for the Gordon Campbell Liberal (neoconservative really) provincial government. The patients were abandoned and still are. We got coverage on one TV news show but nothing else. Maybe if there were more online ADHD websites and blogs in this province, together we might have been able to save that BC Adult ADHD clinic. Maybe if there were more ADHD websites and blogs in your province or state you could help ADDers get the resources that you’ve been complaining that you need. You can bitch to your spouse and do nothing, or take some action.

I’m trying to raise awareness of ADHD for our vancouver civic election, focusing on the well known links between ADHD and addiction, given Vancouver’s huge addiction and crime problems, hoping the local media and the blogosphere will start noticing. We’ll see how that turns out. There’s also a provincial election in BC soon, May 12, 2009.

Maybe people have seen 1 or 2 useful ideas on the main presidential candidates websites/blogs or on individual local candidate websites that they could share with others Adders. Or send me some examples of how a campaign organized people, promoted ideas, connected people or raised funds that could be applied to people with ADHD (not just why my candidate is better their opponent) and I’ll blog them so other ADDers can take those ideas and modify them to their needs and put them into practice.

Wow. Check this video out.

If you want to see something inspirational, this video is worth a click. Youtube version here

Ringtone here

Yes We Can is a music video by Will.i.am (born in Toronto) of the Black Eyed Peas inspired by Barack Obama’s Yes We Can Speech in New Hampshire. Lot of other famous people in the music video. He did it in 2 days.

I’d highly recommend watching the individual speech. Even if Obama is not your cup of tea. As a poly-sci major and political junkie, I’ve seen a lot of speeches but this was amazingly inspirational and words don’t do it justice. If you want to see how powerful a speech can be, check it out.

Quite an antidote to george bush and company who has gained and maintained power by appealing to the worst aspects of the American people, and marketing fear. Obama is taking a radical risk and appeal to the best aspects of the American people and marketing hope.

Ballsy strategy, since historically speaking, its easier to win in politics by appealing to the worst in people and dividing people. It has seemed to work in the past for bush and others.

Here’s ABC’s interview with Will.i.am

Here’s a quote from Will.i.am on the songs page

It made me think…
and realize that today we have “very few” leaders…
maybe none…

but that speech…

it inspired me…
it inspired me to look inside myself and outwards towards the world…
it inspired me to want to change myself to better the world…
and take a “leap” towards change…
and hope that others become inspired to do the same…
change themselves..
change their greed…
change their fears…
and if we “change that”
“then hey”..
we got something right…???…

Update:

Maybe the pattern is stronger than I thought. via Canadian Cynic

Conservatives confirmed what Green party leader Elizabeth May and Macleans.ca blogger Kady O’Malley blogged about when they saw the government lobby of the House of Commons.

When you walk in the door, all you see are pictures of Stephen Harper,” said Ms. MayI’d say between every window, in every available space of the wall, at eye level, every available space has a photo of Stephen Harper.”

“You’ve got photos of Stephen Harper, but not of previous prime ministers,” she added. “Photos of Stephen Harper in different costumes, in different settings, dressed as a fireman, in Hudson Bay looking for polar bears, meeting the Dalai Lama, even the portrait of the Queen had to have Stephen Harper, but in a candid, behind her.

This is not normal practice.

Liberal MP Mauril Bélanger said the Liberal lobby has always displayed portraits of previous prime ministers, even cabinet ministers. One Conservative said the Harper photos have been up for at least three months.

There’s other examples too.

The prime minister’s official Christmas card last December portrayed Mr. Harper looking out a living room window adorned with 24 photographs, small to large, of Mr. Harper in various poses.”

“When the party last year unveiled its election campaign war room, Mr. Harper stared out from campaign posters on every wall.

Canadian Prime Minister and Conservative party leader Stephen Harper has been called a control freak. He tried to muzzle the Canadian parliamentary press gallery. He has ordered his ministers and deputy ministers

to say nothing to the media unless it is first cleared by the Prime Minister’s Office.

This may be normal in a 3rd world dictatorship but not in Canadian federal politics. But when I saw a blog post by Jeff Davidson
that claimed that on the photo gallery of the Conservative party of Canada,

every single image posted on the site is of the Prime Minister

I couldn’t believe even Stephen Harper went that far.

So I clicked and found out my God, every photo but one (and that is his house) is of Conservative Prime Minster Stephen Harper. The main header photo, the video clip photo, and 26 of the 27 individual photos are all of Stephen Harper. No other Conservatives are the main subject of any of the photos. Here’s 3 screenshots of the Conservative Party’s Photo Gallery as of Jan 7th, 2007. It looks more like the cult of Stephen Harper party rather than a modern political party.

Screenshot 1

Screenshot 2

Screenshot 3

The Canadian Liberal Party’s photo Gallery is empty. Boy there’s an easy joke there, but I’ll let it go.

In the US, on the Republican party’s photo gallery, screenshot here there’s 5 photos of George Bush, 1 of his wife and one of what seems to be a one white person, a black person and a woman, as if hoping to say they’re all welcome under the Republican tent. Right.

There was no photo gallery section on British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s Labour Party website or Australian’s Prime Minister John Howard’s Liberal Party website.

Are the no other Tory MP’s, Cabinet members, party officials or party members important enough to put on the conservative party’s photo gallery main page? I know the Canadian Conservative party has more than their fair share of kooks that they’re embarrassed about, but they can’t be that many loons that they can’t find one or two to add to the party’s official photo gallery as the main subject of a photo, can they?

Is it the Conservative party or the Cult of Stephen Harper Party?

There was a great turnout for the Walk for Democracy that I blogged about yesterday as well as here. Around one thousand people by one estimate. There was a constant stream of cars honking their support on the way. I guess there are many people who really hate having David Emerson and Steven Harper substituting plutocracy for democracy.

Here are a few memorable sights, the D. E. Burglar, stealing peoples votes. We were given voting ballots with David Emerson’s name on it and underneath were checkboxes for David Emerson running under 4 different parties, I tried to steal back the bag of ballots from him but he fought back hard. Seemed pretty desperate. The casket of democracy was another interesting one along with a the empty throne for the elected member of Vancouver Kingsway, carried by two people on their shoulders labelled Vacant. Here’s a photo of it on Flickr

It’s amazing to see how David Emerson and Steven Harper by screwing over the voters brought such diverse people together. On the stage at the end of the walk there were people who were Conservative (first speaker), Liberal, NDP and probably non political people until they were told their vote didn’t count, and got angry at democracy being under attack. During the walk I saw young people, middle aged people, seniors, couples and families of all races and more than a few socio-economic classes. Pretty widespread support, with a lot of people taking photos and videos of the event as well Radio TV and Print reporters.

After leaving the rally going into one large grocery store I noticed some employees with Recall Emerson buttons. This is almost NEVER done in retail stores i.e., political buttons tend to alienate customers, but this was not a partisan protest, and the campaign has widespread community support. Going down King Edward street, I noticed a lot of recall Emerson signs. You can get a Recall Emerson sign for your lawn here.

As of March 26th there were 600 signs posted in the riding with a backlog of 180 requests. They are thinking of ordering additional signs to the initial 1000 ordered.

Robert Sanzalone of Pacific IT already has some photos up of the event on flickr with the tag walkfordemocracy. I’m in this one. Hopefully we’ll see some more.

Message In The Air

That’s the name of another pro democracy website which is organizing this

On April 3, 2006, the day parliament resumes, a small plane towing a banner message reading DAVID EMERSON: CALL HOME will fly near Parliament Hill in Ottawa. Soon after, a scroll will be unveiled to the media and posted in our website. The scroll will include the names of citizens who would like Mr. Emerson to explain why he refuses to meet with the majority of his constituents.

I was one of the ones that paid and my name and that of 270+ others will be on that scroll.

This is not simply a local matter, it’s a national one. If the politicians think that they can get away with this here, they may try it in your riding next time. It’s about whether or not you think democracy is important in Canada. Get involved. Contact the blogs listed in my previous post for ideas on how you can help out.

The longest blog title in the world? Maybe:) Warning, political rant ahead.

For those of you in the lower mainland that believe that corporatism is not the way Canada should be governed, and that democracy is the best for our country, and that Canadian voters are relevant you might want to check this out.

Let’s send a message to Emerson and Harper.
Join us on a Non-Partisan…
Walk For Democracy
Sunday April 2, 2006

Join us – your neighbours and friends, for a family-friendly walk and rally – rain or shine!

A chance for all citizens, no matter whom they voted for, to let Harper and Emerson know that democracy comes before political expediency. David Emerson must resign and a by-election held in Vancouver-Kingsway to restore our true democractic rights.

Remember April 2nd is the day we turn our clocks forward one hour

Here are some blogs that are trying to get Emerson recalled you might want to check out. via Mike Watkins

* Walk For Democracy

* RealDemocracy.ca

* De-Elect David Emerson

* RecallDavidEmerson.com

* MessageInTheAir.ca

* DavidEmersonLegal.com

* Mike Watkin

* Recall On-Line Petition 20542 Total Signatures so far

I was going to blog about this before but got a bit distracted by my preparation for my talk on Adult ADHD at West Vancouver ADHD Conference. Thanks to my friend and uber techie/consultant/teacher/speaker Robert Sanzalone for reminding me with his Emerson post here.

I blogged earlier about the Emerson-Harper scandal. Basically Emerson was a liberal cabinet minister who ran for reelection under the liberal party, vociferiously criticized Haper and the conservatives during the election, and after he got re-elected as a liberal said this

“I’m going to be Stephen Harper’s worst enemy,” he warned. “We’re going to stir the pot and you better believe we are going to make a heck of a lot of noise.”

He then betrayed the voters in his riding and joined the conservative party as a cabinet minister two weeks later.

When Belinda Stronach jumped from his party to the liberals for a cabinet seat, Harper said this

We don’t go out of our way to romance MPs to get them to cross the floor,” Harper said. “The Liberals will do anything to win. We are trying to create a principled party where people act in a principled way.

“We’re fairly cautious about encouraging party jumping because I think that’s the kind of thing that generates cynicism and frankly when somebody jumps once you’re not sure to trust them that they won’t jump the next time.

What a principled guy. The campaign against Emerson is non partisan, he and Harper have alienated members from all political parties, some of the strongest condemnations against it came from conservative bloggers, apparently they actually believed that Harpers slogan “demand better, vote conservative” actually was something more than rhetoric.

On Sunday April 2 starting at 12.30 pm gather at Kingcrest Park (Knight and 26th). Walk starts at 1pm down Kingsway to David Emerson’s office then to a rally at 2pm at Norquay park. Map, bus, bike and parking info is here.
Remember April 2nd is the day we turn our clocks forward one hour

Alex Boivin talks about why he’s involved in the walk for democracy on this thread here

I came to the conclusion that this is a very serious issue that affects everyone in our family and ALL other Canadians, regardless of their political affiliation. We, as Canadian voters need to take a stand, to send a message, loud & clear, to our politicians that we are not a use once, then throw away commodity. You, our elected representatives are accountable to us, the people who elected you ­ not to the corporate entities that help finance your campaign, not to your party leader who decides your position in government and the perks that you receive, but to us, the average, on-the-street Canadian voter!

This isn’t just about the voters in Vancouver Kingsway getting screwed by Harper and Mr. Lust for Power Emerson, it’s about all Canadian voters. Are we irrelevant and easily stepped on and brushed aside without any real consequences? Will we allow some politicans to think that we’re too weak, lazy and subserviant to stand up to them? Or will we push back?

Hope to see a big turnout at the walk

Update.

Emerson Owes Vancouver Kingsway Riding Association $96,755.

Jason Cherniak has this update. He got a pdf copy of a letter from the Vancouver Kingsway Federal Liberal Riding Association to David Emerson. Here’ what some of it said.

Approximately three hundred volunteers gave their time generously to the Liberal campaign. They gave up time with family, children and friends, took time off work, and took time away from their small businesses because they believed in the ideals of the Liberal Party and wanted you to represent Vancouver Kingsway as our Liberal MP.

Your actions have made their gifts of time meaningless.

They ask that he:

1. Do the honorable thing and resign and have a reelection.

Let the voters have an opportunity to chose a liberal to represent them as they did only two short weeks ago

2.

Find a way, in compliance with the Elections Act to return the money that the Liberal Riding association transferred to you to run your campaign. This totaled approximately $96,755. This amount came from donations to the Liberal Party and were intended to elect a Liberal, not a Conservative. You would not have received those funds from the Liberal riding association if you ran as a Conservative. A spreadsheet is attached providing a breakdown of the amounts.

Very interesting. Wonder if they could sue him for misrepesentation or fraud if he doesn’t pay up. Few people have mentioned the citizens in his riding. They voted for a Liberal got him elected and he immeadiately became a conservative. This isn’t a matter of someone resigning after a year on principal and sitting as an independent. Do Canadian voters have any rights? Do elections matter?

Ivan Curman, President of the Vancouver Kingsway Federal Liberal Riding Association has the letter on the constituency website and

a petition requesting a by-election that you can download, circulate and return to us

.

They also ask that people

Contact David Emerson and express your views about his decision. His constituency office number is 604-775-6263 and his email address is emersd@parl.gc.ca

The Canadian blogosphere reacts rapidly. Recall and election blogs were created the same day for a politician who changed party’s 2 weeks after election for a cabinet seat.

David Emerson was a Liberal cabinet minister who campaigned for reelection as a liberal. He won reelection as a liberal January 23/06. 2 weeks later, Feb 6/06 he switched parties and becomes a conservative and a cabinet minister.

I don’t know if there is a Yiddish word for extreme chutzpah, but if there is, it applies to Emerson. He won the riding by getting 43 % of the vote. The NDP got 33% and the conservative candidate got 19 %. Here’s what Stephen Harper said about one person crossing the floor from his party recently.

There’s no grand principle involved in this decision, just ambition.” – Stephen Harper reacting to Belinda Stronach’s defection to the Liberal government in May, 2005.

When Belinda switched, Harper said this

“We don’t go out of our way to romance MPs to get them to cross the floor,” Harper said. “The Liberals will do anything to win. We are trying to create a principled party where people act in a principled way.

“We’re fairly cautious about encouraging party jumping because I think that’s the kind of thing that generates cynicism and frankly when somebody jumps once you’re not sure to trust them that they won’t jump the next time.

“So I will always handle with an extraordinary degree of caution.”

So he lost his principals and his party’s principals the very day he got sworn in. Maybe his new motto is sell out early. Here’s how Emerson characterized his view of Stephen Harper after the election via Ahab’s Whale

“Emerson added he is going to enjoy keeping tabs on Prime Minister-elected Stephen Harper.

“I’m going to be Stephen Harper’s worst enemy,” he warned. “We’re going to stir the pot and you better believe we are going to make a heck of a lot of noise.”

Remember he said this only 2 weeks ago. So now his worst enemy is his best buddy?

Here’s his new tune. He said he would have “absolutely” stayed on in Paul Martin’s cabinet if the former PM had been re-elected. via Babbling Brooks Why didn’t he just say I’d sell myself to the highest bidder?

Here’s the Remove Emerson Blog. Here’s the Elect Emerson Blog, which demands that David Emerson must resign and be elected as a Conservative. Joan Tintor offers these suggestions for citizen action.

“Below is a quick list of suggested actions loyal Conservatives can take to show their disapproval and dissent:

1.Do not make further donations to the party. Write the Conservative Canada Fund and advise why

2. If you receive a fundraising letter, return it with a letter indicating why as above, or simply mark it “Return to Sender – ELECT EMERSON.”

3. Contact your Conservative MP or candidate and advise them that you will not be assisting them in preparing for an election until this matter is resolved in a principled manner.

4. If you are on a riding executive, ask your executive to pass a resolution expressing its opposition about the appointment, and asking the Prime Minister to require Mr. Emerson to seek the support of his constituents as a Conservative. Issue a press release to your local media about your riding’s resolution.”

Wow. Extreme democracy in action. And both are run by Conservatives, not betrayed Liberals.

There’s also an online petition to recall Emerson and hold an election “so that the people of Vancouver Kingsway and in general all Canadians can be represented by the party and candidate of their choice.” via Remove Emerson

There was a vote held less than 3 months ago on a bill to make MPs who cross the House floor subject to a by-election call which 40 conservative MP’s voted in favour of. You can see a list of who voted in favor of it, including at least one current Tory cabinet minister here at the great How’d They Vote site which allows you to see how your MP voted on different issues so you can hold them accountable.

There are links to the politician’s website where you can encourage them to follow through on their convictions. Hopefully their convictions have not expired yet, this vote was only held 2 and a half months ago.

Here’s a final quote by Emerson during the recent federal election campaign

“The Conservatives want to keep any of their members who might be inclined to say something that would uncover their true intentions and keep them quiet, out of the limelight,” Industry Minister David Emerson said in Vancouver yesterday…

“I’ve got to wonder what it is they’re hiding,” Emerson said in an interview after a speech by Prime Minister Paul Martin.

“They’ve got a message that they’ve been quite successfully getting out to try to pretend they’re moderate on a range of issues where we all know that underneath, when you scratch a bit, they’re not moderate at all.”

Glad he was so honest about his true intentions.

One good thing out of this is to show how quickly the blogosphere can mobilize on something of political importance. Will be interesting to see what the results of the 2 blogs and petitions will be. Maybe not a change of the appointment but possibly a longer application of heat on the new hypocritical conservative leader that talks of transparency and accountability and his first move make’s Paul Martin’s Liberals seemed principled.

Follow up to my previous post about the Karmic payback to Paul Martin when he loses power in Monday’s Canadian Federal election.

But first, a short diversion.

Here’s a must see video of Paul Martin showing his love for Alfonso Gagliano, the public works minister during the sponsorship scandal which happened on his watch in his department. martin later fired Gagliano from his patronage appointment as Ambassador to Denmark

via shotgun blog. Back to our story.

Warren Kinsella former Liberal party campaign strategist and long term Jean Chretien loyalist talks about why he and ex liberal cabinet minister Sheila Copps (another long time Chretien loyalist) are advising non liberals on how to defeat paul martin’s liberals.

He describes a situation where he was taking to a member of paul martins team or “board” during the nomination meeting in Shelia Copps riding was stacked against her by paul martin’s team (shelia ran against him in the previous leadership campaign which martin won). Unfortunately Warren’s blog has no permalinks, so instead of linking directly to the post I have to link to the December 05 page and ask you to scroll down until Dec 21st. UPDATE He finally does now in 2008, but too late for this link to work, he’s killed his old stuff off.

Me: “I think you are about to f**k over a woman who has been part of the heart and soul of the Liberal Party for twenty years. I think you ought to be ashamed of yourselves.”

He grinned. Back in those days, The Board were the very personification of arrogance and conceit. Mike thought it was all very funny.

Before he could say anything, however, I asked him this: “So, are you going to kill her?”

Mike looked shocked. “What do you mean?”

“Are you going to kill her, Mike? Because, after this farce is finished tonight, you’re going to be wishing you did. You’re going to wish you killed me, too. Because, Mike, you aren’t going to be able to shut us up. The media are going to call us up, and invite us to write columns, and ask us to go on TV. And we will do what you did: we will go after you, over and over and over. Relentlessly. And you won’t be able to complain, Mike, because we will merely be doing what you did to Jean Chrétien.”

He stammered.

I said: “The only way to shut us up now, Mike, is to kill us.”

And so it went. Sheila was done in by Paul Martin’s thugs, that night, and the Liberal Party of Canada was the only murder victim. I, like Sheila, am providing advice to people I like – in whatever party they belong to. Liberals, Tories, New Democrats, Green candidates. I, like Sheila, know the best thing that could happen to the Liberal Party of Canada is a loss – and, as soon as possible thereafter, the departure of Paul Martin and his coterie of well-paid thugs.

Some houses can be renovated, some houses you need to tear down and start over. This one is a tear-down.

And he and Shelia proceeded to do just that. They got a lot of media attention, and used it to continually point out martin’s failings (not really a hard task).

In the next entry Warren posts an item about Shelia Copps saying this about the NDP candidate in her old riding, Wayne Marston

I would like the political process to be a more honest profession,” Copps said. “Wayne Marston is a very honest guy. He’s decent and honest and would make a good member.

She’s also helping to advise the campaign manager for the conservative candidate in her old riding against her enemy liberal Tony Valeri

Ken Audziss, Rukavina’s campaign manager, said he’s had several talks with Copps about strategy on boosting the Tory vote.

“Sheila is a wealth of information,” Audziss said. “We’ve talked about all sorts of things that we can work on to ensure we defeat Mr. Valeri. I learn something every time I speak to her. If it results in us running a stronger Conservative campaign that appeals to people we have not been successful in appealing to, I’m for it.

So this is another way martin has contributed to his upcoming karmic loss this Monday. Smart politicians running for the leadership of their party invite the losers into cabinet or caucus to win them and their supporters over, if for no other reason to avoid an internal party war. Martin not only didn’t do so, but actively campaigned to defeat her in her own riding. There’s healthy competition and there’s slash and burn competition. If you do slash and burn competition and you don’t kill, but merely wound, you run the large risk of creating a wounded, hostile, angry highly motivated opponent. In these two cases, opponents that know the liberal party and paul martin on a very deep level, are well connected and very media savy.

And you can’t really demand loyalty to yourself as leader when you showed disloyalty and treachery to your previous leader.