Sorry, Tweeters, I can't put this in less than 140 characters

Republican "reformicons" are blaming Donald Trump for the lack of substance not only on the GOP campaign trail, but in the candidates' online presence:

Few candidates have delivered policy speeches in recent months or, if they have, gotten much coverage. Several, including Bush, Ohio Governor John Kasich and, until Tuesday, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker have all but dispensed with any mention of policy on their campaign websites.

That seems a bit lame — the blaming of this on Trump's substanceless appeal. Even if no one actually reads policy proposals on websites, the presence of such substance would be entirely harmless … would it not? Fact is, these candidates just don't have much to say, especially anything to say that's appealing in the way of reform.

One monumental truth did leap out at me, however, from one "digital strategist" of Republican roots.

"'What's you’re seeing is that the Web is very metric-driven,' said Patrick Ruffini, a co-founder of Echelon Insights, a Virginia-based research and analytics firm.... Anything that takes more than a few seconds to digest, including speeches and position papers, doesn't 'get the clicks,' he said."

It's time for us online writers to enshrine those words atop each of our websites. Anything longer than 200 or 300 words simply doesn't get read by most readers. Even 200 words is a perilous stretch. We are living in the Age of Twitter, wherein Plato's Republic or Tolstoy's War and Peace is either reducible to a handful of words (abbreviated!) or it's utterly irrelevant, ignorable.

Why I persist in writing 600, 700 or sometimes 800-word posts (usually first thing in the morning) is beyond my comprehension. Mostly because I enjoy it, I guess, but 700 unread words are as useful as Louie Gohmert in Congress. And I like to feel useful.

I further guess that I am, as Donald Trump would undoubtedly put it, just stupid. I can't seem to get it through my rickety prefrontal cortex that I am wasting my time writing posts of any real length. They're just not what the typical American reader wants or indeed demands, which is, instead, "anything that takes [roughly] a few seconds to digest."

In our evolutionary "intellectual" slide to the bottom, the Age of Twitter will soon have us scratching our ribs and eeking like chimps when confronted by anything longer than 140 characters. I await a site that limits attempts at profundity to half that. By now, to millions of American readers, 140 characters must seem rather taxing.

***

Note: The above post is only 406 words long. Yet five'll get you ten that most readers don't make it to the central point.

 

Comments

[Mike Dennis]

FWIW, I for one especially enjoy your longer posts. My assumption is that your readership may not be typical in their consumption of on-line media.

[RP]

I disagree with the 50/50 characterization of your visitors. I suspect that the vast majority of us get to the end of just about every one.

I won't lie. I can't make it to the end of Tolstoyesque works any more, but PM-esque posts are easy.

[Peter G]

If you are stupid for writing them I must be a freaking mulleted moran for reading them and then regularly exceeding that two hundred word limit in comment. Worse still I don't just read every word you write, I read every single comment by everyone else. My only complaint would be there isn't enough.

[Lee]

Phil,

You may be underestimating your readers. I think most people who are attracted to this site do so because of the depth.

While you won't get elected president (hmm - anybody up for a draft PM effort?) you do connect with a solid niche

[Marc]

tldr

[RB]

I don't recall ever commenting on your site before, but I do enjoy your posts. Most times they prompt me to thoughtfully consider your views and I am most always entertained! I also enjoy reading the comments and agree that there are too few. Please keep writing!

[Bob]

You are one of the most underrated political writers and deserve a larger audience or even a syndicated column. Though I can neither confirm nor deny I'm stupid, I also read every post beginning to end, occasionally more than once, as well as all the embedded links and comments and enjoy adding my own.

Now on to my own: Peter Gosselin claiming Republicans have a bench only makes sense if taken to mean they have a field of credible candidates, an idea so wrong it's bizarre. Where he is right is that new ideas are few and far between. The reformicons are a bad joke that's further proof of just how destitute the Republicans are of a single serious policy thought. The reformers formerly known as young guns propose eliminating the minimum wage, more tax subsidies for business, boosting the child tax credit and letting investors literally turn students into indentured servants. In what way is any of it not current Republican orthodoxy?

Republicans' real problem isn't just a lack of ideas, it's an inability to own up to what the party has become, which is an asylum for rednecks and kooks. Trump didn't create the problem, he's just uniquely pedigreed to take advantage. As any twelve-stepper will say, the first box to tick when attempting to stop self-destructive behavior is to admit you have a problem. The Republicans aren't there yet.

[Mary G]

I read it all too, and most of your posts all the way through. (Not knocking the ones I don't, but I do have a tendency to distraction so I'm not going to claim I read every word every time.) I even copied your post after the same-sex marriage and Obamacare Supreme Court decisions into a comment of mine on Balloon Juice in an attempt to get you more readers. It was hilarious. I meant to tell you so at the time, but there is that distraction thing again.

[ChrisL]

I am willing to bet that I've not missed a word of a PM Carpenter post since I discovered this blog. And at least for this reader, the fact that the masses don't care to do the same is a feature, not a bug. Not sure how much that helps our host though...

[shsavage]

The only tweet I remember sending:

140 bytes-2 much 4 me-complex thought in 43