techPresident - Reflections from Dean '04 regarding Obama's MySpace Challenge (elevated from comments) - Comments

Challenges of Politics 2.0

futurespeak — Fri, 04 May 2007 20:58:57 -0400

Zephyr raises an important question here about what types of actions are appropriate to delegate to campaign supporters, and which types of roles are best reserved for the campaign. As important as it is to empower supporters, there are instances when the relationship between leaders and staff breaks down and those breakdowns show the real limitations of politics 2.0. I worked all too briefly in Burlington on Meetup, and I saw my colleagues struggle with the occasional difficult Meetup leader.

In organizations with modal, diagonal, socially oriented groups, the challenge is to make sure everyone plays nice. We sometimes would want a list of supporters from a Meetup leader who would claim we had no right to their information. While there was something to this claim - it was after all their work that grew their Meetup - encountering these recalcitrant hosts was probably the single most infuriating aspect of the job. It seems to me that as activists begin to get involved in the campaign, that they should realize that at some point the reality of political necessities will occasional cause the campaign to do things they don't like or understand. The importance of recognizing the primacy of staff to determine the contours of "official" campaign material is as true of big-time surrogates like David Geffen as it is of Joe Anthony.

In particular, I consider it bad form for Joe to have gone to the media and broadcast his discontent to the community. Transparency is important - but so is discretion. Community leaders need to realize that they are have created real responsibility and should act accordingly. It is up to campaign staff to communicate that responsibility to leaders as part of empowering their autonomous action. In this case, it is easy to see how both Joes messed that part up.

Glad you're still here too

cfinnie — Fri, 04 May 2007 12:53:57 -0400

Hi Aldon,
Thank you for proving my point that volunteers who feel empowered stick around. I remember you from the National Grassroots Network. Glad to see you're still in the game too! Chris

Individual Support of Barack Obama

EburgObama08 — Fri, 04 May 2007 08:33:34 -0400

I feel a certain connection to this story, since I recently set up a local support web site for Senator Obama -

http://eburgobama08.org

While it has no following such as the My Space site had, if it ever does gain any significant following in my area, I would not have a second thought about turning it over to the official campaign if asked to do so.

I put it together just for fun, so I would have a place to track campaign info and other Barack Obama news.

I also think that that this web 2.0 community thing is great, but campaigns are still fumbling a bit in terms of how to integrate them into them into their overall campaign strategy.

Maybe this could have been handled better, but I don't know if this incident has any larger implications for how Senator Obama might react if he becomes the candidate for the Democrats.

Also, anyone can create a profile on the official Obama '08 site, and use that to assist with fundraising or organizing, without needing to create any separate site.

I'll read more about what happened to the My Space site, but if one is truly a supporter of Senator Obama, this web 2.0 glitch should not change that.

Peace.

Jim Lyons
http://eburgobama08.org
"Learn at least one new thing each day" - Stephen Poulos 1955-2001

what a fantastic post

alicescheshirecat — Thu, 03 May 2007 20:31:48 -0400

Thank you so much for this bit of information. I've seen campaigns for the last two years at several levels fumble their relationship with the grassroots - but none clearly at the Prez level.

I constantly wonder what is perhaps not the best way but at least a good way, an honest way, to work with the new growth in volunteer engagement and support. And what you've talked about here is really helpful - and should be sent to EVERY campaign for the 08 cycle.

Bless you!

Internet Politics 2.0

hscpub — Thu, 03 May 2007 13:50:15 -0400

This is great, as it provides insight not only into Dean's activities but some of the challenges, opportunities and pitfalls that a campaign faces when it utilizes grassroots, and especially interactive, Internet, and web 2.o based grassroots activities.

The most successful campaigns, I believe, will be those that can most efficiently, effectively and quickly scale their processes and strategies based upon the lessons that are being learned - sometimes painfully - by candidates as they confront these new mediums and issues.

Don't we want our President to be a great problem solver anyway around innovative domains? If yes, such situations provide a windown in regard to an important dimension of a candidates management and operational skills.

What would be helpful at this point, from my perspective, is a timeline with analysis in regard to what has occurred in regard to Internet campaigning across campaigns, and what has been learned.

And what has not yet been learned, or learned well.

Perhaps that would provide greater insight in regard to where things may be going, at least in the short term. With that, all campaigns, and all of us, might over time develop more of a roadmap over what is, to be sure, a continually moving landscape.

At Politics 2.0 we have a series of posts since the Obama MySpace story broke focused on different elements of this potential (still to be determined) "saga". Like many, we work hard to focus on "What's now and what's Next" in the rapidly evolving, and exciting "convergence of politics and web 2.0"

Alex Hammer
Politics 2.0

Only you have the power

cfinnie — Thu, 03 May 2007 12:44:26 -0400

I think the dynamic Zephyr describes so well here is what gave all of us the feeling of ownership in the campaign. Howard was our candidate, and it was our campaign--not the other way around. I also think that's what made it a movement that has lasted. A few days ago I was in San Diego for the California Democratic Party convention. While I don't know if it's true, somebody told me Dean delegates accounted for 49% of the total. Certainly there were a lot of us! And the DFA booth was getting more traffic than most.

Howard Dean told us that only we had the power to take our country back. And, goddess help us, a lot of us believed him. So we were there in force at the convention. We accounted for fully half the campaign staff in the successful Jerry McNerney for Congress campaign.

The Dean campaign empowered volunteers in a unique way. And we have taken that power and used it.

This weekend, several of the 7 presidential candidates we heard repeated his call to take our country back. A few said something like "I can't do this without you." Edwards had supporters join him onstage. But only the Dodd and Kucinich tables had a volunteer sign-up sheet. When I asked for literature at the Obama table, I was told they were only selling stuff to raise money. Clinton had no table at all. I got no sense that we were in this together. Merely that they wanted my support to further their goals. It was a notable difference.

Next week I'll drive 2 hours and pay $50 to see Dean. I flew to Iowa in January on my own nickel and slept on the floor for a week for his campaign. I'm not sure I'd do as much for any of the current crop.

I

Encoderer — Thu, 03 May 2007 12:29:36 -0400

I <3 Zephyr.
I <3 Dean For America, even though we broke up years ago.
I <3 Obama, but I miss the dean campaign.

The cultural component

Aldon Hynes — Thu, 03 May 2007 10:43:01 -0400

I think Zephyr provides a great starting point for a broader examination of what is going on in our culture. I believe that it relates to a clash of cultures, the culture of volunteer driven bottom up activities and a culture of paid top down controlled activities. (Read more about this on Orient Lodge.

Reflections from Dean '04 regarding Obama's MySpace Challenge (elevated from comments)

Zephyr Teachout — Thu, 03 May 2007 09:31:28 -0400

This issue [Obama's MySpace Brouhaha] reminds me of questions that we had to deal with all the time on the Dean campaign. We called people like Joe Anthony "centers of gravity"-- people who had built up their own Dean communities. We wanted centers of gravity as close to campaign as possible without imploding.