New Tools

Travis touches on this issue in his post, but on this day that Barack Obama announced that he raised $11m more last month than any candidate in the history of politics, I wanted to revisit this theme again. For the story here is not just about money, but the emergence of a new 21st century people-driven politics.

Pete and I talk about the emergence of what we call a "new politics" in our "50 Year Strategy" essay, and in a piece I wrote right before Super Tuesday I talked about the explosion of money, voting and volunteering all coming together in "a virtuous cycle of participation."

Here is the heart of it:

A Virtuous Cycle of Participation - Finally, Obama has one very powerful advantage in these final days that is hard to see and evaluate - the power of his virtual community across the country. We saw the power of this community with the truly extraordinary amount of money it raised for him in January. But equally important in these final days will be the virtual door knocking these millions of people will be doing - emails to their address books, actions on MySpace, Facebook and other social networking sites, text messages sent to friends, viral videos linked too, and comments left on blogs, newspapers and call in radio shows. It is no exaggeration to say that this million or so impassioned Obama supporters will reach tens of millions of voters in highly personal ways in the next few days, providing a messaging and personal validation of Obama that may be equal in weight to the final round of TV ads, free media and traditional grassroots methods.

All the way back in 2003, I wrote an essay about this new era of participation in politics that argued the new Dean campaign model was changing the way we had to imagine what a Presidential campaign was all about. In the 20th century, a Presidential campaign was about 30 second spots, tarmac hits and 200 kids in a headquarters. In the 21st century, the race for the Presidency would be about ten million people going to work each day, wired into the campaign through the campaign's site, through email, sms, social networking sites etc acting as full partners in the fight not just passive couch potatoes to be persuaded.

This is a very different model of politics. One begun by Dean but being taken to a whole other level by Obama. It puts people and their passion for a better nation at the core of politics. When used correctly, it creates a virtuous cycle of participation, where more and more people engage, take an action and bring others in, creating a self-perpetuating and dynamic network of support. It is also why the endorsements of entities with large, active virtual communities - Kerry.org, MoveOn - is so meaningful for Obama. He has created an on-line ecosystem that can quickly take advantage of the support of the millions of people now doing politics in this new 21st century way and exponentially grow his dynamic community of change.

The Democratic Party is one entire Presidential cycle ahead of the Republicans in adopting this new model, and I will argue it is simply not possible for the Republican nominee to catch up this year. Too much experimentation, too much trial and error goes into inventing this new model for it to be easily and quickly adapted. It has to be invented, not adapted. I'm sure the GOP will catch up over time, but this year year the only GOP candidate who has taken this new model seriously has been Ron Paul - and they have paid the price. Obama raised almost as much money in January of this year as John McCain raised in all of 2007. Democrats are raising much more money across the board, seeing historic levels of voter turnout, increased Party registrations and millions more working along side with the campaigns - all of which is creating an extraordinary virtuous cycle of participation that continues to grow the number getting engaged in politics as never before. While there can be little doubt that anger towards Bush and disapointment with his government is a driving force behind this, the key takeaway is that the adoption of this new politics by Democrats allowed the Party to take advantage of this tidal wave in unprecedented ways, and will be one of the Democratic Party's most significant advantages going into the fall elections.

Much attention has been given to the money raised by this Obama network. Much more needs to be given to the power of it to deliver message, provide personal validation to friends, neighbors, colleagues and peers in ways so powerful, and ways never seen before in American history. I have no doubt that it has been the campaign's ability to foster and channel the passion of his supporters - creating a vrituous cycle of particpation - into an unprecedented national network - helping amplify and reinforce the power of Obama's argument - that is playing a critical role in Obama's closing the gap with Clinton in these final exciting and dramatic days before Super Tuesday.

It is a phrase that finds itself being uttered by Senator Hillary Clinton in debates and speeches so much that her audience concurrently recites it: "Join us in this campaign. Go to www.hillaryclinton.com." And it is significant because it shows at least an acknowledgement of what has been going on in the way politics is oriented.

There are the top-down campaigns, which, as Simon has said, are characterized by the 30-second ad, the stop on the tarmac, and the 200 volunteers at headquarters; and then there are the bottom-up campaigns, characterized by new tools that allow organizations to be decentralized in key ways to maximize its reach.

Each is enabled and defined - to various degrees - by what Simon has described as the virtuous cycle of participation.

Tim Dickinson's fantastic piece in Rolling Stone, "The Machinery of Hope", details what this cycle looks like through the lense of the Obama campaign. Essentially, people sign up to get involved and find themselves empowered to take leadership roles by using new tools available to them on-line. Then they bring in more people. That leads to more money. What you see in the end is a larger, stronger organization, particularly at the ground level. As Simon says in the piece:

"That's the magic of what they've done," says Simon Rosenberg, president of the Democratic think tank NDN. "They've married the incredibly powerful online community they built with real on-the-ground field operations. We've never seen anything like this before in American political history."

It's true. All we have to build on is the Dean legacy, which proved to be quite an innovative force in and of itself in 2004. Before I get ahead of myself let me be clear: any candidate of any party can take this approach. In fact, as Joe Trippi said at a recent NDN event, the Dean campaign found its inspiration from John McCain's race in 2000. Furthermore, what about Ron Paul!

Yet look at where we are. Thus far in the 2008 presidential campaign especially, you see organizations being built, funded and strengthened by this cycle of participation. Average citizens are brought into the process in ways we've never seen before. Yet the Democrats are the ones benefiting the most. They have consistently seen record turnout, with single candidates gaining more support in certain states than the GOP candidates combined. You also see a shift in party ID. Then there's the money. This is too simple. Barack Obama: $55 million. Hillary Clinton: $35 million. John McCain: $12 million? And that’s from February alone.

So it is clear that the Democrats on the whole are much better aligned with this politics. Some candidates have some catching up to do, though. Jose Antonio Vargas touched on this in his piece from the Washington Post, quoting Simon saying:

"The Clinton campaign missed the zeitgeist of the moment," Rosenberg says, "and they underestimated the possible reach of Obama's support, and they're paying for it."

While he focused more on the Democratic candidates instead of politics as a whole, David Brooks could be right in saying that we are at a defining moment. Applying the cycle of participation as an indictor of who heads into that moment the strongest, I'd say the advantage goes to the Democrats. And they aren’t stopping while ahead. Remember: “Go to www.hillaryclinton.com”...

Walking the walk, NDN is now up with a blog ad to promote our March 12th event, "A Moment of Transformation?" (If you haven't already RSVP'd, do so here.)

We took the advice of Henry Copeland, who recently penned a fantastic memo for our New Politics Institute on advertising online, and are up on a variety of blogs. We'll be tweaking the ad in the days ahead, but for now be on the lookout for this image. 

One of the speakers at our Moment of Transformation day-long conference on March 12th will be a high tech entrepreneur with no experience in politics. But, like everyone else at this event, he is in the transformation business. And political people will find it useful to listen closely to what he has to say.

Shai Agassi is trying to transform the $1.5 trillion-a-year auto industry and eventually make the $1.5 trillion-a-year gasoline industry obsolete. He is the CEO of a Silicon Valley start-up called Better Place that is trying to jumpstart the electric car business with an approach to building an infrastructure for swapping out batteries in a practical, quick way.

Agassi is no wide-eyed dreamer. He was one of a handful of top executives at SAP, the third-largest software company in the world, and he barely was edged out for the top CEO position in 2007. When he did not get that job, he left to become the founder and CEO of Better Place. Since then he has successfully lobbied the Israeli government to back his plan to quickly scale up electric cars in Israel. He has raised more than $200 million in venture capital, and found a auto-company partner in Renault Nissan. This plan is for real. For the detaield version of this amazing tale, check out a recent BusinessWeek story.

Agassi will be speaking late in the morning on March 12th about his big, bold idea and what it takes to think and act in a transformative manner. With all the talk about change and even transformative change coming to politics, we will be stepping back and talking about just how transformative the changes could be in America and the world as we come off this historic election. Agassi will be just one of about a dozen people talking about the transformations happening in their fields of expertise.

We hope that you will come and join many others in giving your insights into what kind of change we will see coming in the months and years ahead. Spread the word about this free, open event among your friends and colleagues. And then make sure you come and RSVP. Thanks .

Peter Leyden
Director of the New Politics Institute

As I was getting the URLs for my ad roundup, I noticed something in Barack Obama's YouTube channel that I've never seen before. I'm sure I'm really late to notice this, but I saw an option to contribute to Obama's campaign in the video's description box. You can see what it looks like in the screenshot below. (To be fair, the option wasn't in either Hillary Clinton or John McCain's videos.)

When you click on the Contribute button, you are directed to a Google checkout site (like this one) similar to every other contribution page. Yet to have the option to contribute via sites like YouTube just goes to show you how campaigns are becoming more interactive.

To see a whole new kind of 21st century political ad check out the new Obama ad on the main page of the Dallas Morning News running this morning. Don't know how long it will be up there so go now - and it will be hard to miss.

For more on how to use a new whole new generation of tools to improve your capacity to advocate visit the New Politics Institute and our "New Tools" campaign there.

A Sunday NYTimes piece by Adam Nagourney takes a look at the final strategies and tactics of the two campaigns in the all-important home stretch in Ohio and Texas.

Be sure to note the success the Obama campaign has had it with its google ads, something we talk a great deal about at our affiliate, the New Politics Institute.

Update - Remember California. As I look at Obama's small lead in the final round of Texas polls, I am reminded of California and the excellent campaign the Clinton campaign has run this year in the Hispanic community (from ads to issues to surrogates). Most of the final CA polls had Obama ahead or very close in California. But driven by a huge performance of Hispanics, a group difficult to poll, Senator Clinton won the state by ten points.

Could this pattern repeat in Texas? Could Hispanics deliver her another essential win? And what happens if she wins the popular vote and he the delegates? Going to be a fascinating night on Tuesday.

Update 1 - Two new polls out Sunday have OH and TX too close to call, with Clinton up 4 in OH and Obama up 1 in TX. Tuesday is going to be quite a night.

Update 2: A national AP piece on this consequential battle closes with this passage:

"The Clinton campaign clearly has much more money than they had before, but they are still being dramatically outspent by Obama," said Simon Rosenberg, head of [NDN], a think tank. "And things don't seem to be trending their way and they don't have a lot of tools to deal with it anymore."