techPresident - Is the Obama Campaign a Model for Online Politics? - Comments

what is success?

Fred Gooltz — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 19:19:16 -0500

no doubt Obama's online campaign tactics are going to be influential. any successful marketing strategy will be emulated. however, Obama says he set out to transform the way we do politics.

the web creates opportunities, but it doesn’t “do” anything on its own. much of the online strategy this cycle has been a race to appropriate, institutionalize, and essentially fit into the vertical top-down power structure of traditional operations the many 3rd party technologies whose appeal and power for users are their distributed and decentralized properties.

~~the big truck~~ “the interwebs” in and of itself is not going to be a change agent for American politics any more than the one time hope of a television in every home was ever going to eliminate America's illiteracy rate as some promised.

it's all about how it's used. the means.

thus, the national political establishment remains largely safe from the democratizing opportunities of this wacky series of tubes.

I think Obama's campaign has

Zephyr Teachout — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 17:28:33 -0500

I think Obama's campaign has done a great job, and should be applauded. But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't also look at the counter-factual...what if they had run a more decentralized campaign up until this point? What if they had 3,000 local groups in the Feb. 5 states, instead of a few hundred...groups which then locked into the final days door-to-door?

These are impossible questions to answer, but we ought keep asking them, as starting in April, the general election candidates will have to ask: do they want to encourage and enable local, adult (as in responsible not as in naughty), self-directed creative groups? I hope the answer is yes, and the last few weeks of more loose relationships with local organizers have given the democratic candidates confidence that they won't fall off the rails if they depend more heavily on more autonomous action.

Obama Pizza Rap feat. Obama Girl!!

Crunchy — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 16:50:30 -0500

EVERYONE’s got a crush on Obama… presenting the brand new Obama Pizza Rap featuring Obama Girl:

http://digitalfuntown.squarespace.com/dft-blog/2008/2/4/obama-pizza-rap-...

Does a campaign have to be transformative to be influential?

Colin Delany — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 16:22:52 -0500

Hi Fred, this is fun. You make an excellent point, and I agree that the Obama campaign does not appear to have the same kind of transformative nature as the Dean campaign had. But, I don't think a campaign necessarily has to be transformative to be influential. Let me steal from something I wrote a few weeks ago:

I'm a big fan of people-powered politics: if you look back at the last 17 months of articles on e.politics, you'll find plenty that celebrate the power of digital networks to allow ordinary people to upset the political applecart in ways previously unimaginable. Internet activism is real, and it CAN be really powerful. But there's a big difference between a phenomenon, which is something that happens, and a strategy, which is an attempt to MAKE something happen. Political campaigns may well benefit if they can catch a wave of people-powered politics, but they still have to win elections even when the waters stay calm.

To me, the Dean and Paul campaigns are fascinating phenomena, and I'm looking forward to seeing plenty of other people-powered online movements over the next few years. Some of them may break out and become massively influential, though we may not always like the results: your noting of some of Ron Paul's less savory associates is a good reminder that populist does not always equal progressive. Still, I see Obama's campaign as almost certainly influential, if nothing else than because he's raised so much money and organized so many people online. Online politics is partly a craft, and plenty of practitioners will be looking his way for ideas about tools, techniques and tactics.

Also take a look at Alan Rosenblatt's follow-on piece on the Dean campaign — I think it's excellent, and I'm curious to see what you think.

Colin Delany
e.politics
http://www.epolitics.com

I hope it's not

Fred Gooltz — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 15:55:20 -0500

I'm going to quote Zephyr:

"decentralized power is different than decentralized tasks. The internet enables both, but the former increases democracy, whereas the latter increases heirarchical control. The Dean campaign decentralized power; many campaigns have borrowed the tools and innovations from that cycle, but primarily for decentralizing tasks."

"Power is decentralized when participants have a meaningful chance to change the structure — what Jonathan Zittrain calls ”generativity.” Power is not decentralized every time a person participates. A supporter can make phone calls, door knock, forward emails, but not be encouraged to strategize on her own; she has little more power than a person sending in a video entry to a Cheerios contest for a new ad campaign. I regularly participate in the newspaper industry by reading papers, but that doesn't give me power to change the structure."

"Why should we care? Distributed power leads to distributed responsibility, which is good for a healthy polity."

I work for a company that exists because Dean's campaign actually trusted volunteers. The DeanSpace project birthed a community of companies working in progressive politics, innovating, competing - pushing for a better, more open, more progressive, flatter, decentralized, and more courageous Democratic Party structure/DC culture/national polity.

How many insurgent communities like that will succeed Obama's volunteer army? We'll see. After all, that's how we "change the way we do politics" as somebody likes to say. Obama's online campaign structure is not as inspirational as his rhetoric. It's certainly not transformative.

In many ways, Ron Paul's online campaign is what I would have liked the Democratic nominee to aspire to. Minus the insane spambots... and the affiliations to white supremacists... and the...

Nice line

Colin Delany — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 12:53:51 -0500

Political puberty? Ouch! My political career started about 15 years ago, though, so at least the timing's about right.

As for the rest, let me just say that if integrated online/offline political organizing were so easy and "not much new," a lot more campaigns would be doing it. In the future, they will, and I suspect that one example they'll look to is the Obama campaign.

Colin Delany
e.politics
http://www.epolitics.com

Let me be the devil’s advocate here.

Freedomfighter — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 19:00:50 -0500

I apologize if this comes off sounding offensive…….but…here it goes. This essay sounds like the writer hit their political puberty six months ago and upon discovering masturbation, thinks they have found something truly unique or awesome. Gosh, wait till you find the sex toys, porn and a girlfriend!

Honestly, there is not much new being mentioned here. There are many ways to organize people. What matters with the internet technology is how efficiently does it help a campaign. So far, John McCain seems to be the only one to make efficient use of the internet. He has been outspent but he is the front runner

Let me be the devil’s advocate here.
Obama benefits from the internet only because of other factors. One third of Democrats can’t stand Hillary and/or her husband and will not vote for her. Two, young people, particularly those under 25, have a huge prejudicial bias against old people. Young people place old people in three categories, my parents, your parents and the pedophiles. He comes off sounding “just like me”. This is the myspace crowd and identity politics at its worst.
Three, he speaks well.

As for Moveon, they are the Lyndon LaRouches of the internet age. All emo with angst against Bush. What policy comes from that? Sure, they helped get the Democratic Congress elected which now has the lowest rating Congress has ever had.

Is the Obama Campaign a Model for Online Politics?

Colin Delany — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 15:51:24 -0500

Over the past few months, we've gotten tantalizing hints of the level of integration of online and offline organizing that the Obama campaign has achieved.