[this is one of a series of posts that I did while a student in Nicco Mele‘s class at Harvard in 2013]

What’d I read?

In “Persuasion Points Online” Schlough, Koster, Barr and Davis show how Harry Reid was able to pull off an upset victory thanks to his campaigns embrace of the web. “Yes We Can” by political scientist Kevin Wallsten drills down on this topic further and explores one aspect of OFA’s media savvy – the important role that campaign staff (and bloggers) had in constructing and dismissing some of the viral videos that dominated news cycles in 2008.

The case study, “Obama versus Clinton: the YouTube Primary” by John Deighton and Leora Kornfeld, on the other hand, gives a birds-eye-view of the entire 2008 campaign season and reviews the various candidates strategies in light of the web. Another study, by Mikołaj Piskorski, Laura Winig, and Aaron Smith, “Barack Obama: Organizing for America 2.0”, showcases what is arguably the most effective use of the internet by a candidate for political office.

Zack Exley’s article, “The New Organizers” shows how OFA took a decades-old concept, community organizing, to new levels of effectiveness by harnessing the power of the web to enhance already-existing interpersonal connections. Seth Colter Walls then describes how a piece of that organization, namely VoteForChange.com works in “Neighbor To Neighbor”.

Was it any good?

The Piskorski, et al., case study is well researched and does a great job describing how well-planned the Obama ’08 campaign was. The authors also do a wonderful job projecting some of the things that actually did happen after the establishment of OFA – namely the use of the tools the campaign had developed to help push President Obama’s agenda. While the threatened break with the Democratic party didn’t happen, the analysis marshaled in the case study make a compelling statement about the strength of a permanent campaign/organization that takes advantage of one of the key features of the web – that nothing really ever goes away.

The other case study, by Deighton and Kornfeld, is equally well thought out but more striking because it effectively refutes the conventional wisdom that Clinton was less tech savvy than the Obama team. Both sides knew the importance of the Internet to the campaign, but OFA was still able to come out on top. I think the questions the case study raises about what exactly makes an effective Internet campaign are still worth asking and it will be a while before we sort everything out – at least a few more Presidential campaign cycles, anyway.

The Exley article does a good job of synthesizing the two main strengths of OFA – community organizing and technology. He effectively shows how they really can’t be considered each in a vacuum, but were so effective because they were blended. This may be one of the answers to the questions posed by the Deighton and Kornfeld case study.

So?

The big take away here is this: if the internet has enabled regular people to engage and create in new and interesting ways, it has just as much helped the rich and powerful to magnify their own messages. Schlough, et al., couldn’t have made the point more clearly in their article on Harry Reid’s latest campaign. It was the fact that he was willing to devote significant resources to the Internet side of the campaign that it was successful. The implication is that small-time candidates and regular people simply cannot affect the political process through the Internet anymore (if they ever could).

The Web has been institutionalized and co-opted by the wealthy and powerful, as just one more piece of the toolkit to maintain political power. As the Obama/Clinton case study shows, it isn’t a battle between a scrappy-yet-nerdy candidate and the establishment giant, rather it’s between two establishment figures trying to get an edge. The fact we see it the former way just shows how much we, as a people, love myth-making.

With that being said, the scope and capacity of the OFA organization was, indeed, astounding. As someone who volunteered and worked for campaigns in 2004, 2008, and 2012 for the Democratic Party, it was surprising to see how much changed between elections. It was also amazing to me (and is more fully described in our readings, like the Walls article) how the use of the web and of technology was far more advanced in the Democratic campaign than the Republican one. Even as late as 2012, I noticed that the Republican GOTV efforts were similar to what we had done in 2004 and our GOTV/Voter Protection processes were far more advanced and effective.