PA Political Astrology: DemFest 2010 and Social Media

Photo courtesy of micahmj11

When I heard the snowmageddon was coming, I was prepared for a comfortable, snowed-in Saturday. What I wasn’t prepared for was the phenomenon of #DemFest on twitter this morning and afternoon. I’m not a political insider in the traditional sense, so I wasn’t invited to attend the actual Pennsylvania State Democratic Committee endorsement gathering, known as DemFest. I don’t really rub shoulders with powerful people either but I read and watch a lot of news like MSNBC, FoxNews, CNN, Daily Show, Colbert Report and pay attention to local political blogs like PoliticsPA, Pa2010, Capitol Ideas, and subscribe to CapitolWire‘s Under the Dome email newsletter. What I also do is follow people that are interested in politics on twitter.

Lucky for me, I was able to pick up on the gossip of DemFest 2010 as it was happening thanks to the #demfest twitter hashtag and the wonderful political twitterati and bloggerati that kept us all up to date. Some, like @micahmj11, even had live video and pictures of the event that they shared with their tweet updates. It’s funny that while I was immersed in the PA Drama, I also clicked on a link tweeted by @spedwybabs (also partner in Progressive PST) on How Scott Brown friended, tweeted, and LOLed his way into the people’s Senate seat. Back in January, I tweeted about how Scott Brown had 3x more twitter followers than Martha Coakley. I even wrote a post comparing their astrological charts to see who’s chart looked more favorable for the special election (Brown’s did). And even though I was ultimately disappointed in the unsurprising endorsements by the PA Dems of Arlen Specter for PA Senate and the disappointing drop of Joe Hoeffel from the 1st round of ballot voting, I found out that I wasn’t alone and that I am still connected for change.

I exchanged tweets with 4 wonderful twitter “entities” that are also in my voting area: @Susan1030, @politicslovr, and of course @spedwybabs / progressivepst. This is wonderful for me because I recently relocated to Lancaster County (see also Lancaster Democrats), after having lived in Montgomery County my whole life (see also Montco Democrats), and haven’t had the chance to meet a lot of local Democrats because I commute to Philly for work everyday and still spend the majority of my time there. From these twitter connections, I’m looking forward to having a tweet-up and talking with and ultimately organizing a nice grassroots social media group for 2010 and beyond. Oh, what fun!

Stay tuned as I begin to analyze the astrology charts of our candidates for the upcoming Senatorial and Gubernatorial races. For the Democrats, we’ve got Aquarius Arlen Specter and Capricorn Joe Sestak against Republican Scorpio Pat Toomey for PA Senate, as well as Democrats Virgo Joe Hoeffel, Capricorn Jack Wagner, Aquarius Dan Onorato, and Pisces Anthony Williams, against Republican Leos Tom Corbett and Sam Rohrer. You can read my previous posts on Jim Gerlach, Tom Corbett, and Ed Rendell to catch up on what I’ve seen so far. Please feel free to tweet me, too: @signon2nine.