I admit to being charmed by Cory Booker’s 21st century version of constituent outreach, and he seems to be reaping a large (if momentary) political dividend by working over time to get his Twitter savvy constituents dug out of the blizzard.
But mainly I think he’s the beneficiary of the unique technological moment in which a gimmick like this is possible. If Twitter were more popular than it is right now, he wouldn’t be able to keep up with the demand; if it were less popular than it is right now, this outreach effort wouldn’t be getting much attention.
More substantively, though, the best way to respond to a snow emergency is to deploy resources where they can help the most people in the least amount of time, with no preference to people who’ve mastered the art of @-ing somebody.
Part of me thinks that’s what he’s doing — deploying his plows on a schedule and responding to his followers in a sequence that matches the schedule. That’d be crafty, and cynical, but also a much better way to run things, and, thus win elections.
