During closing statements on Wednesday night, candidates encouraged the audience to visit their creatively named websites, like “Michael Bennet dot com.” When former Vice-President Joe Biden’s turn came up, he didn’t stick the delivery:
Most likely, Biden’s campaign hoped that he would say “text Joe to 30330” in order to sign up for a text-mailer keeping potential voters up-to-date on his latest gaffes. Instead, he sent curious audience members to a weird URL that didn’t stay empty long. Initially, it appears that the quick fingers that bought the site were supportive of Pete Buttigieg.
But as of publication, joe30330.com reroutes to “Josh for America,” a joke campaign for the first “Gen Z’er to declare candidacy for this office.” But click one more time and the Buttigieg endorsement checks out: The site’s “about” page states that “ActBlue thinks our campaign is ‘not legitimate’” and encourages voters to “donate to our good friend Pete Buttigieg’s campaign.”
In the meantime, voters who text the number as Biden intended will find a campaign intern’s hard messaging work in its right place:
Meanwhile, the fight over URLs with the name “Joe” and the numbers three and zero is getting scrappy:
