Obama campaign

I'm late to the game, but let me add to Patrick Ruffini's smart thoughts on this Zack Exley article about the Obama campaign's organizing and GOTV operation. It comes down to expanding the number of stakeholders - Long Tail Empowerment.   They are not just distributing activity; they are distributing responsibility and authority.  Some might call it the Army of Davids theory of campaign management.

The "New Organizers" have succeeded in building what many netroots-oriented campaigners have been dreaming about for a decade. Other recent attempts have failed because they were either so "top-down" and/or poorly-managed that they choked volunteer leadership and enthusiasm; or because they were so dogmatically fixated on pure peer-to-peer or "bottom-up" organizing that they rejected basic management, accountability and planning. The architects and builders of the Obama field campaign, on the other hand, have undogmatically mixed timeless traditions and discipline of good organizing with new technologies of decentralization and self-organization.

This is a perfect symbol of one of the great ironies of our political environment; the Right and Left approach campaigning and organizing, both electoral and advocacy, in different ways...

• The Right has a very top-down, command and control model; Republicans centralize activity and authority within the organization.  Care about Issue (A)?  Send money, and Group (B) will take care of it for you.  Want to get involved in Campaign (X)?  Contact Group (Z) and they will tell you what they want you to do.  
• The Left is increasingly decentralizing, adopting more market-oriented organizational models.  They are not directing activity, but providing the tools for self-directed individuals to conduct their own activism.  The Left is creating an army of spokesmen, an army of organizers, an army of stakeholders - a Movement.

I believe a great deal of this is attributable to the state of each Movement.

• Consolidation: The Right is behaving like a company within a declining industry, which focuses on increasing market share, rather than expanding the actual market itself.  Declining industries are defensive, seeking tradition and efficiency rather than innovation.  The Right - and the Republican Party - is trying to manage the decline by consolidating successes and attacking their opponent to limit the Left's market share.
• Expansion: The Left is behaving like a company within an expanding industry, making speculative investment to build for market growth, for competitive advantage within the emerging market. The Left is playing offense, innovating.  The political pendulum is swinging their way, and they are working to turn that momentum into permanent infrastructural gains.

Promoted and bumped. -Patrick

Earlier this campaign season, My Barak Obama came under criticism for being the platform for some unseemly content posted by private individuals. While I  thought this content was fair game for the opposition I doubted the amount of energy expended exposing this "outrage" would  be justified.

Obama's campaign has made the conscience effort to provide his supporters many opportunities to speak their minds. Along with these opportunities comes the possibility that some renegde will do something stupid on Obama's platform.

But on the flip side,  the campaign appears to be reaping the benefits of letting the masses speak out and organize. You may be aware that Obama has decided to support the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). This has caused an uproar on the Left led by the ACLU and the Netroots movement.

The Obama campaign is setting up an online war room...

A crack team of cybernauts will form a rapid response internet “war room” to track and respond aggressively to online rumours that Barack Obama is unpatriotic and a Muslim.[...]  Jen Psaki, a spokeswomen for Mr Obama [said] “The only way to run a campaign is to respond immediately when inaccurate information is put out."

This is important.  It's not enough to focus on responding to the mainstream media, as mainstream media coverage is often just a final manifestation of stories that bubble up days, weeks or months earlier online.  If you're not monitoring and shaping information development online, you'll find yourself playing defense in the mainstream media.   And losing the battle for conventional wisdom.

The Left has gotten very good at this, setting up campaign war rooms (e.g., Clinton, Obama), permanent campaign war rooms like Think Progress, Wonk Room, TPM Muckraker, TPM Election Central and Media Matters, and war room research distribution points like Atrios and Talking Points Memo and others.   Progressive advocacy groups are also tapping into this, as well.

Meanwhile, where are the War Rooms on the Right?   Who has an effective version of this? I can't think of any serious equivalent.  This is a major strategic disadvantage.