The Machinery of Hope : Rolling Stone
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Saved by 2 people (-1 private), first by anonymouse user on 2008-03-19
- Justinmassa on 2008-04-29 - Tags no_tag
- Oldude59 on 2008-03-19 - Tags campaign , marketing , networking , obama , organizier , politics , social
Public Sticky notes
The meeting in San Marcos wasn't advertised in any traditional
sense. Instead, the campaign posted the event on my.barackobama.com
— its social-networking site affectionately known as "MyBo"
— and e-mailed local residents who had donated to the
campaign or surrendered their addresses as the price of admission
to an Obama rally. And the volunteers who showed up won't be
micromanaged by Ukman or anyone else from the campaign. They'll be
able to call their own shots, from organizing local rallies to
recruiting and training a crew of fellow Obama supporters to man
their precincts on election day.
Highlighted by oldude59
This scene in the rec center is being repeated in neighborhood
coffee shops, high school cafeterias and public libraries across
Texas. Over the course of the three-day weekend, the Obama campaign
trained 4,000 precinct captains in more than twenty communities,
from El Paso to Corpus Christi. This is the same grass-roots effort
that has trounced the Clinton campaign — a classic top-down
operation run by high-paid consultants — in ten straight
contests by an average of more than thirty points. It has evolved
into the mother of all get-out-the-vote campaigns, one that has
enabled Obama to collect more votes in Virginia and Wisconsin than
all of the GOP candidates combined.
Highlighted by oldude59
The Obama campaign has actually worked to
tamp down media coverage of its technological advances in
organizing, avoiding anything that would cast the candidate as "the
next Howard Dean." In Democratic political circles, Dean's
short-lived campaign still carries heavy baggage: Howard Dean
was the Internet. Howard Dean lost.
Highlighted by oldude59
"They've been guarded," says Peter Leyden, director of the New
Politics Institute, a San Francisco-based think tank that promotes
technology in politics. "It's been beautiful to watch them blending
these new tools into the old-fashioned shoe-leather, door-knocking
politics. But they don't talk about it. People like myself have to
piece it together from its outer effects."
Highlighted by oldude59
According to David Axelrod, the campaign's chief strategist, the
bottom-up ethos of the campaign comes straight from the top. "When
we started this race, Barack told us that he wanted the campaign to
be a vehicle for involving people and giving them a stake in the
kind of organizing he believed in," Axelrod says. "He is still the
same guy who came to Chicago as a community organizer twenty-three
years ago. The idea that we can organize together and improve our
country — I mean, he really believes that."
Highlighted by oldude59
Steve Hildebrand, a folksy veteran of South Dakota politics
regarded as one of the top field strategists in the game. "We
wanted to make sure we learned from Howard Dean's campaign,"
Hildebrand says. The most valuable lesson? "We didn't make the
assumption that people signing up on our Web site meant that they
were going to help the candidate or even vote for him. From the
beginning, we had an initiative to take our online force
offline."
Highlighted by oldude59
In February and March of 2007, just after Obama
announced his candidacy, the campaign set up huge rallies in cities
from Los Angeles to Austin to Cleveland. In return for a ticket,
supporters were asked only to provide their e-mail, zip code and
telephone number — a practice that continues at every Obama
megarally, where it has become routine for him to draw crowds in
excess of 20,000.
Highlighted by oldude59
"Events are not just an opportunity for us to put Barack in
front of voters," says Hildebrand. "It's a chance for voters to be
in a captive environment where we ask them to sign up and do more
for Barack — to make phone calls, canvas, get out the vote.
We don't want people to just come to an event — we want them
to become part of this movement."
Highlighted by oldude59
Public Comment