The Internet is not made up of kids, and people are spending more time online to find out more about upcoming elections than ever before. Nielsen data and others back this up. I think though in this case if you’re doing solely social networking stuff, let’s face it there’s no 15% markup, and I’m sure South looked at all the spending, didn’t see the money coming in, and decided this was not working. Fair enough.

As for an attack strategy – yes, attacking your opponent and calling him names and so on can work just fine. There’s just one thing – the opponent(s) can, and will hit back and if Gavin is gonna go for the jugular, he can expect it in return.

Gavin Newsom has never been able to take criticism, even from loyalists (he fired Margaret Brodkin as head of youth services simply because she questioned some budget priorities internally, and never went to the press with them) – how on earth is he going to handle a tough old fighter like Jerry Brown, or the angry GOP, who will not hesitate to go through his record and expose any inaccuracies. (BTW, he was furious that the Chronicle, a longtime supporter, published a mere 1 article suggesting he was less than perfect.).

What this says about Gavin

Newsom has a major trust deficit to make up after betraying his campaign manager and good friend. This does not help on that front. There is no longer a single person working on Newsom’s gubernatorial campaign who was with him for his only race just six years ago. Not one. Out of a much touted “machine” of 30 or 40 people. Not a good sign and I don’t think the campaign’s brain drain has gone unnoticed by the 15,000+ people who donated to that campaign but haven’t given to his gubernatorial effort.

Newsom is parasitic and while California offers plenty of fresh victims who don’t know him well, it normally makes sense to activate past supporters before expanding. To-date the campaign has failed to do that in any meaningful way.

What this says about the campaign

I don’t think this is about facebook and twitter. Casting Jaye as a new media guru who wanted to keep it real with base is just absurd. This is about how to deal with the candidate — who is a delicate flower. Eric knows how to work around the Newsom’s telephobia. The massive amount raised in ‘03 (which dwarfs his gubernatorial effort) is a testament to Jaye knowing how to deal with Newsom having absolutely no discipline as a fundraiser beyond a willingness to show up at events.

I think South is trying to teach an old dog new tricks and instead of working around the problem, trying to make Newsom into a politician he just isn’t. In the last nine months, this has created the worst of both worlds with Jaye unable to effectively work around Newsom’s problems and South ineffective in getting a 40 year old to completely change his ways.

So now we’ll get to see South unable to turn Newsom into something he isn’t while the one person in the world best able to take advantage of who Newsom actually is out.

Newsom’s only hope in a two way race against Brown was a bank shot he just decided not to shoot. The unfortunate thing is that Newsom has decided instead of building a movement he’s just going to tear Brown down, which is bad news for Democrats as Newsom no longer has a path to the nomination but South excels at triangulating. This is going to get ugly.