Nicco Mele on Digital Campaigning, Our Political Reality, and Where We're Headed

Joe and Alex are joined by longtime friend Nicco Mele, who was the webmaster on the Dean 2004 campaign, and now is a thought leader in the digital political space. Nicco and Joe talk about how close the 2020 election truly was, and how close we came to a Trump validation and Senate/House sweep of the GOP. In reality, we were only a few thousand votes from catastrophe. They also touch on how Joe predicted Biden's ascent (much to Nicco's chagrin), the push for minority rule via voting restrictions in GOP states, why Republicans will nominate crazy candidates indefinitely, who the "mainstream media" truly is, loneliness and the power of politics as human connection, and how we regain trust with local media. Then, Joe and Nicco remember creating Dean's revolutionary internet-first messaging, and how it indirectly led to the rise of Trump and email fundraising. Nicco reminds us of the ways the Internet could bring us together the way it did in the Dean days. Subscribe to Nicco's substack here: https://nicco.substack.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices