[While techPresident is a cross-partisan site that generally asks its regular bloggers to avoid partisan arguments, from time to time we think it's worth inviting guest contributors who are close to a particular campaign to state their case for how well that campaign is using the web. Lopez-Ayala came to our attention this week with his comments on our Clinton fundraising posts, and argued that the Clinton campaign had made some significant improvements in its use of the web since early February. Here's his case, which we're crossposting with his permission from his blog. The Editors]
In the days before Super Tuesday, I wrote that, “Hillary’s movement will not be televised,” a statement which reflected both my frustration with traditional reporting on Sen. Clinton’s campaign and my confidence that she would be successful. And I was correct—despite being heavily outspent on Super Tuesday, she walked away with victories in several very important states, and continued to show her strength in Ohio, Texas, and most recently, Pennsylvania.
But a lot has happened since I wrote that post, and I’d now like to offer an addendum. Although there has been some recent positive coverage of the Clinton campaign’s use of the internet to fundraise ($20 million in the 17 hours after PA), generally speaking, the coverage of social media utilization is unbalanced and favoring Obama. The reasons for this are numerous, but I think that, as with the “boys on the bus,” the demographic of social media bloggers heavily favors Obama. This demographic was probably very impressed by the Obama campaign’s early adoption of many social media platforms, often using them to engage supporters long before Clinton. And demography, I feel, has played an important role in the way supporters of both candidates organize online, a point on which I will expand later in this post.
The prevailing narrative about the Clinton campaign is embodied in the phrase “top-down,” and there is some truth to that characterization. But if the Clinton campaign is so top-down, than shouldn’t the coverage of the smallest concession of “total control” be lauded by the folks over at TechPresident as movement in the right direction, and more openness encouraged? I would answer in the affirmative, but, largely, the coverage remains negative, at worst, critical at best.
In this post, I hope to expand on what I’ve outlined above, with the purpose of highlighting the Clinton campaign’s web presence and the ways Hillary’s supporters are using the net to organize.
@barackobama, for example, started twittering almost an entire year before @hillaryclinton, and has over 10,000 followers, compared to Sen. Clinton’s 3,300. But I have to ask, “Where’s the beef?”
Comparing the TweetStats of @barackobama and @hillaryclinton will help us answer this question. Although @barackobama has been using Twitter for 11 more months than @hillaryclinton, she has 20 more tweets than he does posted to his account.
In March 2008, the most active month for both accounts, @hillaryclinton logged 41 tweets to @barackobama’s 19. Obama’s tweets are reaching nearly 3x more people than Clinton’s, but there is no rhyme or reason to them. @hillaryclinton’s web team, on the other hand, is able to track ROI by using Twitter-specific URLs in each and every call-to-action. Take a recent tweet from @hillaryclinton asking supporters to donate money after her Pennsylvania victory:
The tide is turning! Help keep the momentum going: www.hillaryclinton.com/april22twitter
When the campaign announced the “MyPA” program which let contributors choose where their contributions went, @hillaryclinton sent out this tweet: “TV Spots? Signs? Radio Ads? You decide! Tell us where to put your dollars in our campaign to win PA! http://hillaryclinton.com/twitterMyPA.”
In addition to Twitter, the Clinton campaign has been very successful in its use of micro-sites, which serve a particular purpose, advance a specific argument, or target a niche group of supporters. For example:
- HillaryHub: A site which provides links to pro-Hillary news articles, blog posts, and videos; sometimes used to break stories to the press.
- DelegateHub: A site dedicated to advancing the Clinton campaign’s position on the state-of-the-race and the issue of the “delegate math,” with a tool to allow supporters to contact super-delegates.
- FactHub: The campaign’s fact-checker website.
- Moms for Hillary: A site launched earlier this year focused specifically on the issues important to moms. It offers a sample letter to the editor, letter to friends, and Hillary’s record on family issues.
- HillBlazers — Young Leaders for Hillary: A site for Hillary’s many young supporters to read blog posts from fellow young people, download posters and talking points, and find chapters of Students for Hillary at local colleges.
- Attack Timeline: A site which launched when the question of “who attacked first” prior to the Iowa caucuses was all the rage. It has a sourced timeline of the attacks launched at Sen. Clinton, which, at one time, included those from Sen. Edwards, but now only includes those attacks from the Obama campaign.
- Women for Hillary: A site with resources for women supporters of Sen. Clinton, with blog posts specific to the concerns of women, and which features a weekly “HillGram” from Ann Lewis about the Women’s Outreach program.
Some people may immediately discount these micro-sites as the remains of Mark Penn’s emphasis micro-targeting, but this is not the case. Its important to take into account who these sites are aimed at and what purpose they serve. Many Clinton supporters are wary of trusting the mainstream media, which they see as biased against Sen. Clinton, and will start their mornings by opening up HillaryHub and eschewing “The Huffington Post,” DailyKos, or any number of other sites which often bash Hillary. AttackTimeline was initially launched for members of the press, but has served to arm Hillary supporters with the ammunition to respond to those who say that Hillary throws kitchen sinks, while Obama only “draws distinctions.” As a young person, the HillBlazers site is a resource I check often, because it features content that I’m interested in and provides a vehicle for my own involvement with the campaign (submitting personal endorsements, contact information for other supporters, and a guide to organizing both “on campus” and “in your community.” In addition, the HillBlazers site has consistently offered young supporters the opportunity to organize trips to other states to campaign for Sen. Clinton, and has encouraged them to spend their winter breaks in Iowa or Nevada and spring breaks in Pennsylvania.
In addition to the campaign’s own micro-sites, supporters of Hillary Clinton have created their own online world of pro-Hillary blogging platforms, social media sites, and discussion forums. This, in my opinion, has been more out of a necessity driven by sheer frustration—best represented by Alegre’s decision to organize a boycott of DailyKos—with the traditional sources of news, opinion, and social media. A few good examples:
- Hillary Speaks for Me: A site which lets users upload links to pro-Hillary videos, or the videos themselves, most often in the form of personal endorsements, but more often taking the form of creative self-expression.
- Hillary Clinton Forum: A forum for Hillary-supporters which has boards for everything from
- Hillary’s Voice: A pro-Hillary email group with almost 400 members and over 15,000 messages. Hillary’s Voice enables supporters to share their own stories, post links to their pro-Clinton diaries, ask for feedback, and disseminate rapid response-like talking points and calls-to-action.
- Hillary is 44: One of the earliest pro-Hillary, anti-Obama, blogs to surface, which has been extremely critical of Sen. Obama’s candidacy and features anonymously-authored posts attacking the MSM with both wit, sarcasm, and distrust.
From my own personal experience, its taxing and emotionally draining to be Hillary supporter on the internet. When my music slideshow video of the Clinton campaign’s Latino campaign song was featured on the front page of YouTube.com, it was immediately flooded with negative comments from Obama-supporters, and who downrated the video, the norm for pro-Hillary content on YouTube. And, yet, paradoxically, there is a lot of great pro-Hillary content on YouTube which is never showcased, some of which I included in a post earlier this year.
If you’re looking for great pro-Hillary YouTube videos, or videos which are critical of Sen. Obama’s candidacy, look no further than:
A lot of these videos are of the same caliber and quality as the best Clinton-bashing videos, but are rarely featured as such. And its understandable—on the internet, its about page views, click-through-rates, and views; we assume that the highest-quality content will rise to the top. But that’s not always the case, and Clinton supporters are largely resigned to this fact and have instead opted to create places where they can share amongst themselves the great content they’ve discovered. Although there are places like No Quarter and Taylor Marsh where Clinton supporters can expect to see pro-Hillary content, the rest of the net is a no-mans land, and places like DailyKos, Digg, and The Huffington Post take on the warning “enter at your own risk.”
Because of this self-segregation, this conscious choice to band together and challenge the “conventional wisdom” of “Big Blogs” and “Big Media” by making pro-Hillary content as available as possible to supporters and undecideds, their hard work is largely hidden from view. Bringing me back to a point I made almost three months ago:
Hillary’s army of supporters get up every day, roll up their sleeves, and work hard to make her the next President of the United States, because we know that for each of us there are millions more who go every day without health care, millions more who struggle each month to make ends meet, and millions more who feel invisible and voiceless.
We work even harder because we don’t have the luxury of backing a candidate who appeals to the leisure class of the Democratic Party—the affluent, white voters who think “personality” is more important than plans and policies.
Hillary’s movement will not be televised.
But come Feb. 5th, it will be heard.
Although in that post I was referring more to traditional methods of organizing, the statement applies to what’s broadcast on the Internet. No one is talking about the way the Clinton campaign has used “Updates” on Facebook to reach out to its young supporters, or the remarking on trivia game “Hillary 101” launched on the Hillblazers site earlier this year, or even the Clinton campaign’s foray into Facebook applications with “Hillary gifts.” I may have been one of the few to compliment Peter Daou and the Clinton campaign’s web team on its implementation of threaded comments on blogHillary, which has enabled supporters (many of whom do not know of the resources I’ve listed above) to offer each other suggestions, share information, give encouragement to each other, and hold back-and-forth conversations which were hard to facilitate when the comments were in one long string. And for all the praise heaped on my.barackobama.com, I can’t remember reading a single appraisal (positive or negative) about the connect.hillaryclinton.com social networking tool which was used by supporters across the country long before any of the resources mentioned above popped up.
Let’s give credit where credit is due. I’m not trying to argue here that the Clinton campaign is the most accessible, techy campaign ever… but then again, I don’t think it has to be. The tools its made available to its supporters are working, and have been complimented by those created by passionate supporters. For example, early last summer I created a group on connect.hillaryclinton.com for Angelinos for Hillary, in addition to some others, and almost immediately was contacted by a grassroots supporter in Ohio, who shared with me about how she thought Ohio would be important, and was going to fairs and community events and exchanging stickers for contact information. Within days, she put me in contact with someone at the national HQ and I had rally signs, stickers, and buttons even before the Southern California Clinton HQ did. I checked back with her after the Ohio primary, and she informed me that the group she had created on the site reached over 350 members and met often off-line.
I’ve worked closely with the Ann Arbor for Hillary organizers, who used the site to create an email list of over 100 supporters. They send out email blasts, and meet every Monday to handwrite notes to undeclared superdelegates. All of this without official coordination from the campaign. Before the campaign could afford to put people on the ground in rural Texas, there were websites and forums set up for rural Texans which offered housing for volunteers and a place for South Texans who supported Hillary to get updates on events and campaign news. Again, all without official coordination from the campaign.
It’s easy to say that this type of grassroots organizing was borne because the Clinton campaign was not offering the right tools, or was neglecting the online needs of its supporters. But, again, I think that conclusion would come from only a cursory understanding of the situation. These grassroots operations were designed to work in conjunction with—and not to augment—the campaign’s own efforts. And, largely, this is how they’ve functioned. I’ll give two quick examples. Before the results of the PA primary were even announced, Lindsay Levin posted an exchange between two commenters which took place on an earlier post:
Hey Gang, How about a new way to donate —- for every winning pt in PA, we give Madame President a buck or 2. So if you pledge 2 bucks for every pt, and Hillary wins by 10, you donate $20.00. Sound good?
I’ve been smiling all day in NYC!!
Thanks to all you wonderful voters in PA who are in the process of giving this campaign huge momentum.
-CW
Count me in CW - I will donate $5 for every point that she beats BO with!!!
Come on PA ….bring it home for Hillary!!
10% x $5 = $50
15% x $5 = $75
20% x $5 = $100
…Anyone want to match me? Even if it is just $5.. it’s all going to Hillary!! Keeping my fingers, toes, eyes crossed for Hillary!!!! ;) God Bless the Clintons for all they are doing for ALL of us!!!
-Fem4Hillary
She was, in effect, challenging supporters across the country to join CW and Fem4Hillary in their grassroots fundraising effort. This is similar to the $10.44 initiative that originated on HillaryIs44 and which has taken off among the pro-Clinton netroots.
Another great example of the type of netroots organizing of pro-Clinton troops is the Hillary Clinton rapid response network which exists in the form of several email lists. The members of these lists disseminate campaign talking points, instant polls, and news articles which need immediate rebuttals in a highly-organized fashion. Whenever an important announcement is posted on blogHillary or on HillaryClinton.com/News, you can be sure that it is going to be sent far and wide, spreading the campaign’s official message points far beyond its own ability, and getting talking points in the hands of supporters on-the-ground for use in their daily conversations.
It may be hard for an outside to see, but to me, this has been what the Clinton campaign has always been about: empowering people to use their voice, tap their networks, and organize their communities to spread the campaign’s message. This post has taken two routes to the same place, and may seem a little disjointed, so I want to take a few sentences to connect the thoughts. While the Clinton campaign has not always been the first or the best at social media, it certainly is not the worst, and the, at times, less civilized, more “loud ‘n flashy” nature of Obama’s demographics functions to drown out the great work being down both by the Clinton campaign and Hillary’s netroots supporters.
But although her netroots movement may not be broadcast on every YouTube channel, Facebook profile, or ever reach the Digg frontpage, the reverberations are felt on election day. It’s part of the reason why Hillary is successful in states where she’s counted out, and a major part of why her campaign continues to generate support from across the country. Because, regardless of what anyone says, the next President is not going to be chosen by who gets the most YouTube views, stories on the Digg front page, or followers on Twitter. Because if that was the case, Sen. Obama would have won in Ohio, California, Pennsylvania, Florida, etc. There’s no doubt that his grassroots supporters have helped him win in caucus states and states with small voting populations, but his large media budget and advanced online precinct captain system was unable to defeat Sen. Clinton’s California HillStar program, which blended traditional organizing and GOTV efforts with social networking, both on- and off-line.
The power of online organizing is in its potential to identify supporters, build community, leverage collective action, share resources, and deepen and enhance traditional organizing efforts. It’s not about Facebook, Technorati, or Tumblr… it’s about people. Hillary knows this, and her campaign knows this. So post all you want about how her virtual town halls or “NC Ask Me” ads don’t amount to a “real” conversation, but all of that misses the point.
Because to the Americans who go every day without health care, struggle each month to make ends meet, and feel invisible and voiceless, Hillary is talking to—and with—us about what is important to us. Instead of ignoring these Americans, or attempting to psychologize their beliefs, Sen. Clinton is asking for their input, listening to their concerns, and responding to their questions. That’s more than I can say for this President, and I’ve yet to see something comparable from the Obama campaign.
So, please, let’s give credit where credit is do.
Xavier Lopez-Ayala is president of the Aquinas College HillBlazers chapter.
print
email
delicious
digg
technorati
Congratulations
In the Democratic Primary, you are the 2004 Bush-Cheney campaign. even if you are doing cool and innovative things (distributed phone bank and walk efforts, 5000-8000 house parties, etc) you're not going to get recognition until after the fact (if even then). The media will downplay any suggestion that you are using technology well and play up the 'momentum of the movement' on the other side.
I feel for you, but as I learned, that's the shakes, kid.
On the Twitter front, here's the distinct difference, and one that defeats your point, rather than supports it.
Barack has 25,833 followers, you have 3,353. Barack follows 26,030, you follow 0. Barack listens to more people than he talks to. If you want people to believe you're having a conversation, then you might want to take a look at that.