Obama's Online Road to Victory - Report Example

OBAMA’S ONLINE ROAD TO VICTORY In their book on American politics, The Way to Win: Taking the White House in 2008, John F. Harris and Mark Halperin wrote that this year’s presidential election would be very different than those of other years. One of its defining features, they said, would be the Internet and how each candidate would try to use it to their advantage. The winning presidential candidate would find ways to use the Internet not only to disseminate their political messages, but also organize supporters and raise money. November 4th has come and gone, and with the victory of Senator Barack Obama, we can see at last how correct Harris and Halperin were. Obama’s use of the Internet was vastly superior to his opponent, John McCain, and proved to be a major reason for his electoral success. Part of this success can be traced to the enthusiasm Obama inspired among Internet-savvy young people and part of it can be traced to strategic choices made by his campaign, but in both cases the Internet—especially Web 2.0 advances (which allow user-generated content) not available or in their infancy in 2004—opened up huge stores of possibilities for the Illinois senator. It is possible to trace Obama’s web presence back to the very day he came to national prominence at the Democratic convention in Boston in July 2004. On that day, someone named Meredith Segal created a Facebook group called "Students for Barack Obama." This was not an ordinary fan site, according to an article in the Washington Post. By early 2007 it had become a political action committee with nearly 62,000 members and chapters at 80 colleges, the most structured grass-roots student movement -- theres a director of field operations, an Internet director, a finance director and a blog team director -- in the presidential campaign so far. "Young people are on the Web," said Segal, 21. "Thats how were organizing."1 Eventually the Obama campaign would involve Facebook and other social networking sites in its communications strategy in a more official manner, but in the beginning his message was spread in a grassroots manner. Used officially or spontaneously, social networking sites allowed Obama supporters to organize in a way never before seen. As of November 6th, Obama has 2.5 million supporters on Facebook. Senator John McCain has around 600,000. This is a significant illustration of the different levels of importance both candidates placed on social networking sites. Indeed, one of Facebook’s co-founders Chris Hedges joined the Obama team early on and was instrumental in the way the campaign approached the Internet. He pushed the website MyBarackObama.com. Here the site is described in an article in American Thinker: The Mybarackobama site is the first social network site devoted to a political campaign.  Mybarackobama.com capitalizes on "viral growth": by inviting friends to join you in supporting Barack Obama. Powered by this simple but effective mechanism, the Obama campaigns list of contacts, supporters and donors has grown at an exponential rate with zero incremental costs of "acquiring" them. Why buy mailing lists?2 The site not only collected names, but lots of personal information about supporters which allowed the campaign to refine outreach messages. This database led directly to another of Obama’s key advantages in his campaign against John McCain: online fundraising. By deciding to refuse to accept public financing for his campaign (which McCain chose to do), Obama effectively set the sky as the limit for the money he could raise. It was a bold move, but one he felt comfortable making as he began to see his online fundraising machine in action during the Democratic primary contests. Indeed, the final numbers bear him out. Obama and the Democratic National Committee raised around $750 million to McCain and the Republican National Committee’s $450 million.3 Another telling statistic: the number of donors. Here Obama again trounced his Republican rival with 3 million donors, five times more than McCain. How did Obama get such an enormous monetary advantage over McCain. The answer again lies online—through social networking sites and other sites that allowed younger voters to easily give small amounts of money. But the Internet does more than just help disseminate messages, organize, and raise money. Harris and Halperin argue that it creates a campaign atmosphere. One not unlike a circus. The online “circus” might focus on trivial and petty issues, sometimes magnifying minor flaws (like Hilary Clinton’s laugh, for example), but nevertheless it is huge part of the campaign. Both authors argue that John Kerry lost the election in 2004 because he was made “toxic” by bloggers and websites, especially by Matt Drudge of the Drudge Report. In their own words: Anger, prurience, invective, conspiracy theory -- all are native flowers on the American landscape. What is new is the greenhouse in which these blossoms are cultivated and sold. This greenhouse was built on two beams. The first was the disintegration of editorial filters in the Old Media, which in an earlier age prevented the most salacious tales and bitter accusations (though certainly not all) from entering the public arena. The New Media -- talk radio, cable television, Internet websites -- for the most part never had these editorial filters. Many of its leading voices, Drudge among them, are openly contemptuous of the very idea. The Old Media, faced with filter-free competition, responded by loosening or discarding its own.4 It is isn’t hard to see how the enthusiasm Obama inspired among young people in part insulated him from some of the nastiness John Kerry had to endure in 2004. But, nevertheless, there were many occasions, especially in the Democratic primaries where Obama faced his online critics and immediately went out of the way to neutralize their criticism. This can especially be seen in his reaction to the Jeremiah Wright scandal in March 2008, during the primary season, when YouTube videos of controversial sermons the Reverend had preached began to circulate. Jeremiah Wright had been Obama’s pastor in Chicago and had even presided over his marriage ceremony. In some videos Wright said that the United States had deserved the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. In others he said, “Goddamn America!”5 This was a big problem for Obama as these videos were appearing everywhere and people were questioning his judgment. Instead of simply sitting back and saying to himself, “I’m above all this,” similar to John Kerry’s reaction to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth attacks of the 2004 campaign, Obama decided to quickly try to neutralize the problem. In a passionate speech in Philadelphia, Obama responded not only to accusations that he believed in the things the Reverend Wright said, he went much further, giving a heartfelt speech about race in America. I can no more disown him [Wright] than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother - a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe. These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.6 The speech received rave reviews and effectively changed the channel on the Rev. Wright. It is possible to imagine John Kerry winning the election in 2004, if had given a passionate speech about military service and the honour of serving one’s country even in controversial wars in response to the Swift Boat Attacks. That he did not take these online attacks seriously is probably in part why he lost the election. Obama showed that taking the “online circus” seriously is an important factor in winning the White House. It is not surprising that Barack Obama used the Internet more effectively than John McCain, a 72-year-old who does not even know how to use email. But what is important was how significant a role the Internet played in this election. From the early days of Obama’s first Facebook group to the millions of online donors who pushed Obama to record-breaking fundraising totals to the free distribution of YouTube ads attacking John McCain as a Bush clone, online activities played a key role in the campaign. Even four years ago, much of what was accomplished online this year would have been unimaginable. It is very likely that we will be able to say the same in November 2012. Bibliography Edsall, Thomas. “What Obama’s victory could mean for Democrats.” Huffington Post. November 5, 2008. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/11/05/what-obamas-victory-means_n_141296.html Halperin, Mark and John Harris. The Way to Win: Taking the White House in 2008. New York: Random House, 2006. Ed Lasky. “Barack Obamas Goldmine.” American Thinker. May 05, 2008. http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/05/barack_obamas_goldmine_1.html Obama, Barack. “Speech on Race in Philadelphia.” March 18, 2008. Text from Huffington Post site. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/03/18/obama-race-speech-read-t_n_92077.html Ross, Brian. “Obamas Pastor: God Damn America, U.S. to Blame for 9/11.” ABC News. March 13, 2008. http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=4443788 Vargas, Jose Antonio. “Young Voters Find Voice on Facebook.” Washington Post. February 17, 2007. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/16/AR2007021602084.html Read More