Esther Dyson on Dean

Esther Dyson on Dean
: Esther Dyson, leading light of the tech industry and occasional blogger, writes about the Dean campaign.

But I asked one group of campaign staffers at Bloggercon what they had changed in response to all the online feedback

they were getting, and the answer was how they changed their Websites. I

had meant: How did their candidate change his policy?

Second, the candidates who got the attention did not necessarily get the

votes. There’s an old saying in advertising: “Good advertising is the best

way to kill a bad product.” I’m not going to argue whether Dean would have

made a good or bad president, but clearly quite a few people, when asked,

decided he would not. His stridency, which attracted a core of active,

activist supporters, evidently alienated many other prospective

voters.