New Tools

In his weekly YouTube address today, President-elect Obama addressed the worsening state of the economy, and vowed to pass a sweeping economic recovery bill as one of his first acts in office. Listen to his full statement here:

NDN has been a strong advocate for a stimulus package that invests in our long-term economic future as well as focusing on short-term recovery. To read some of our recent writing on the topic, check out Simon and Rob's essay, A Stimulus for the Long Run, and Michael's essay, Accelerating the Development of a 21st Century Economy.

Aside from the policy Obama is proposing, one interesting thing about this Web video is that Obama is now using the medium to build support for his initiative, using the internet as a powerful tool to advance his agenda by employing and expanding the base of supporters he built through the election.

Earlier today, we noted that President-elect Obama had gathered one million subscribers to his mobile service by the end of the campaign. In an excellent piece in the Washington Post, Jose Antonio Vargas reports some more amazing figures that show concretely just how effective the Obama team's tech-saavy approach really was. From the article:

3 million donors made a total of 6.5 million donations online adding up to more than $500 million. Of those 6.5 million donations, 6 million were in increments of $100 or less. The average online donation was $80, and the average Obama donor gave more than once...

...In September, his single biggest month of fundraising, Obama amassed more than 65 percent of his record-shattering haul -- $100 million of the $150 million -- from online donations, aides said.

...Obama's e-mail list contains upwards of 13 million addresses...Four years ago, Sen. John F. Kerry had 3 million e-addresses on his list; former Vermont governor Howard Dean had 600,000.

...On MyBarackObama.com, or MyBO, Obama's own socnet, 2 million profiles were created. In addition, 200,000 offline events were planned, about 400,000 blog posts were written and more than 35,000 volunteer groups were created...On their own MyBO fundraising pages, 70,000 people raised $30 million...Obama has 5 million supporters in other socnets. He maintained a profile in more than 15 online communities, including BlackPlanet, a MySpace for African Americans, and Eons, a Facebook for baby boomers.

Before this election, there were many people who saw these new tools as gimmicky and essentially unimportant; skeptics pointed to examples like the ultimate failure of the Dean campaign as proof that the internet could not win elections.

Those skeptics may be reconsidering that position right about now. 

Tonight the Obama Camp brought out their mobile numbers: 1 million mobile subscribers.

A million people signed up for Obama's text-messaging program. On the night Obama accepted the Democratic nomination at Invesco Field in Denver, more than 30,000 phones among the crowd of 75,000 were used to text in to join the program. On Election Day, every voter who'd signed up for alerts in battleground states got at least three text messages. Supporters on average received five to 20 text messages per month, depending on where they lived -- the program was divided by states, regions, zip codes and colleges -- and what kind of messages they had opted to receive.

And for grins, see this snippet predicting this from our 2006 white paper, Mobile Media in 21st Century Politics:

Imagine this very realistic scenario: In the heat of the 2008 election, 1 million activists – all of them connected in a collaborative web both on their PC's and their mobiles – conspire in a collective act of mobile democracy.

...let's say a candidate has emerged that "gets" the power of the Internet and its mobile cousin. All their traditional media and Internet action combines with a call to mobile action. No speech ends without a call for those listening to join the campaign on their mobile phones – then and there. And this candidate has inspired a small portion of his base - 1 million people - to each devote ten minutes of their time to mobile action for the Presidential campaign.

As Tim Chambers mentioned at our great forum today on the New Politics of the Obama Age, NDN has partnered with Dewey Digital and Divinity Metrics to produce a white paper on Web video and the 2008 presidential election. Divinity Metrics collected an amazing amount of data over more than 400 days of the election cycle, from more than 150 different online media services and platforms, and this data allows us to take an in-depth look at how specific events during the election played out in the Web world.

For now, as a preview, I'd like to offer a few key numbers from the report:

• The Obama campaign produced 2,000 official Web videos over the course of the election, compared to 376 from the McCain campaign.
• There were 123,000 non-Campaign Obama videos, compared to less than 70,000 for McCain.
• Videos about Obama received over 1 billion views over the course of the election, compared to 613 million for McCain.

There are several things to take away from these numbers, but I think perhaps the most important is this: With a combined 1.6 billion views between just the Obama and McCain videos this election cycle (approximately 2 billion with all the presidential campaigns included), Web video is no longer an emergent medium. It now falls, definitively, under the heading of "mass media." And it's not just a question of reach, either; because Web video does not come through a middle-man, and is often sent to the viewer by family or friends, it can have a strong, direct impact that is hard for other media to match. 

As NDN and our affiliate, the New Politics Institute, have been saying for some time, Web video has very quickly become an essential component of successful political campaigns, and is now becoming a powerful tool for governing as well (see my recent post about President-elect Obama's first weekly YouTube address). To learn more about how Web video has permanently altered the political landscape, and for tips on how to use it effectively, check out our New Politics Institute paper, Reimagine Video, and be sure to stay tuned for our upcoming white paper!

UPDATE: Be sure to attend (or watch) our March 10, 2009 event with Joe Rospars, the new media director of the Obama Presidential Campaign and founder of Blue State Digital, one of the nation's leading new media consulting firms. There will also be a live Web cast of the event, for those of you that can't make it in person. 

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NDN is pleased to announce that Scott Goodstein has been added as a panelist -- his first appearance since returning home from the campaign -- at our Thursday, November 20, forum on the New Politics of the Obama Age. Goodstein was External Online Director for Obama for America, and developed the campaign’s social networking platforms. His pioneering work  included running the first political campaign to launch niche based social networks like BlackPlanet, Eons, MiGente, AsianAve, Disaboom, etc. He built the campaign's lifestyle marketing strategy and developed the "street team" materials used in battleground states.

Goodstein also created and implemented Obama Mobile, an advanced communication strategy that included text messaging, downloads, interactive voice response communication, a mobile web site (WAP), and even an iPhone application. To read more about the amazing work Scott did for the Obama campaign, check out this article by the Washington Post's Jose Antonio Vargas. The article also quotes Tim Chambers, who is a panelist at the event on Thursday as well. To read about Obama's entire new media team in a larger profile by Vargas, click here.

Prior to his work at Obama for America, Goodstein was founder of Catalyst Campaigns, a public relations firm that specialized in lifestyle marketing and online organizing. In 2004, Goodstein co-founded Punkvoter.com & Rock Against Bush and evolved these organizations into becoming a $4 million young voter mobilization effort.

Goodstein will join Simon Rosenberg, President of NDN, Andrew Rasiej, founder of Personal Democracy Forum and Chambers, co-founder of Media 50 Group and Principal at Dewey Digital, to discuss how we expect the lessons of this historic campaign and its use of new media to shape domestic and global politics in the years to come.

Thursday's event is from 12 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. at NDN, 729 15th St., NW, 1st FL. Space is extremely limited, so please click here to RSVP and arrive early to ensure a seat. See you Thursday for what promises to be a truly compelling discussion.

The 2008 election not only marked the election of America's first African-American president, it also saw the strong and clear political emergence of a new, large and dynamic generation and the realignment of American politics for the next 40 years.

The first large wave of the Millennial Generation, about one third of the young Americans born from 1982-2003, entered the electorate to decisively support President-elect Barack Obama. Young voters preferred Obama over John McCain by a greater than 2:1 margin (66% vs. 32%). This is well above the margin given by young voters to any presidential candidate for at least three decades, if not at any time in U.S. history. In 2004, young voters preferred John Kerry to George W. Bush by a far more narrow 10 percentage points (55% to 45%). Moreover, the support of young people for Obama crossed all ethnic lines: he won the votes of a majority of African-American (95%), Latino (76%), and white (54%) young people.

Dispelling the myth that young people never vote, Millennials cast ballots in larger numbers than young voters had in any recent presidential election. About 23 million young people, an increase of 3.4 million over 2004, accounted for almost two-thirds of the overall 5.4 million increase in voter turnout. Their participation increased at a rate greater than older generations. As a result, young voters increased their overall share of the vote from 17 percent in 2004 to 18 percent in 2008. In contrast to previous recent presidential elections, a majority of young people voted in 2008 (53%), and in the competitive battleground states, youth turnout was even higher (59%). This was significantly above the 1996 (37%), 2000 (41%), and 2004 (48%) levels. In the earlier elections, "young people" were primarily members of Generation X, an alienated and socially uninvolved cohort; by contrast, the young voters of 2008 were mostly members of the civic-oriented Millennial Generation.

Their unified support for Barack Obama combined with their high turnout made the Millennial Generation the decisive force in his victory. Young voters accounted for about seven million of Obama's almost nine million national popular vote margin over John McCain. Had young people not voted, Obama would have led McCain by only about 1.5 percentage points instead of seven. Republican Internet guru Patrick Ruffini pointed out that without Millennials, Obama would not have won the combined 73 electoral votes of Florida, Indiana, Ohio, and North Carolina. While he may still have won in 2008 without young voters, Obama's margin and his political mandate would have been far narrower.

Contrary to the hopes of many Republicans, the Millennial Generation's support for Barack Obama is not a one-time phenomenon. Millennials are every bit as supportive of the Democratic Party as they are of Obama personally. Millennials identify as Democrats over Republicans by a 2:1 margin and Pew survey results indicate that they have done so since at least early 2007, well before Obama emerged as a well-known national political figure. More of them consider themselves liberals rather than conservatives (31% to 18%), as well. When it comes to policy, Millennials are liberal interventionists on economic issues, active multilateralists in foreign affairs and tolerant non-meddlers on social issues-a profile that most closely matches the Democratic Party's platform as well as the new President's agenda. Their propensity to vote straight Democratic was clearly evident in 2008 when young voters supported Democratic congressional candidates by about the same margin that they did Obama (63% vs. 34%).

What's more, as with previous civic generations, they are likely to vote a straight ticket for their preferred party for the rest of their lives. The Millennial Generation is ready to take its place as America's next great Democratic civic generation, just as their GI Generation great grandparents did nearly 80 years ago. Welcome to the Millennial Era.

Today, President-elect Obama delivered the first weekly presidential YouTube address in history. Watch it here:

This is an historic moment in American politics. In the past weeks at NDN, we have been speculating about how Obama might use the internet to govern, and one of the things we envisioned was in fact a weekly YouTube address. To understand why we think this is such an important moment in the history of American politics, check out some recent articles on the topic here in my latest New Tools Feature, or watch Simon's recent video blog below:

In his first address, President-elect Obama discusses his plan for getting the economy back on track. His plan includes a stimulus package focusing on long-term investment, which he says will be the first thing he does in office if Congress fails to pass such legislation before then. To see what such a plan might look like, read Simon and Rob's recent essay, A Stimulus for the Long Run, or Michael's essay, Accelerating the Development of a 21st Century Economy: Investing in Clean Infrastructure.

Since my last roundup on Tuesday, we've been in several stories that have really picked up and advanced NDN's narrative. Simon was in a great Associated Press video about how Obama will use the internet to govern, in which he predicted that the weekly radio address would also be broadcast on YouTube. His analysis of the subject was also featured in RCR Wireless, and in a whole host of other pieces over the past several weeks.  From the RCR article:

New Democratic Network President Simon Rosenberg offered a different view in foreseeing that Obama’s tech innovations have paved the way for “a completely different relationship between the President and the public.” Presidential “Fireside Chats” by radio initiated during the 1930s Depression will be out in this scenario. They would be supplanted by an entire array of interactive and citizen-empowering communications tools already tested during the campaign that convinced 55+ million voters to be Obama supporters. Pipedream or prediction? We’ll all soon see.

And indeed, with Obama instituting a weekly YouTube address this weekend, we are seeing sooner than most expected.

Simon was also in a great story in Salon, entitled "A Permanent Democratic Majority?", about the role of Hispanics in creating a lasting progressive majority coalition. From the article:

...None of this means that Democrats can take the Hispanic vote for granted. In fact, the party's success this year comes in large part because it began a concerted effort focusing on Hispanics. Simon Rosenberg, the president of the New Democrat Network, which has been studying the changing electorate and especially the impact of the Hispanic vote, says, "Increased turnout happened because Democrats finally woke up to this Hispanic opportunity ... It's really only in the last few years that Democrats woke up to this new reality. If you're a Hispanic voter, particularly in the Southwest or the West, the Democratic Party sort of woke up and started to speak to you."

NDN's work on Hispanic issues was also featured in the Boston Globe, the Examiner, the Latino Journal, Talk Radio News Service, Capitol Hill Blue, ScrippsNews, and VotoLatino.

Simon was also quoted in Mathaba on how Millennials and Hispanics have permanently changed American politics. NDN Fellows Morley Winograd and Mike Hais were quoted in great article in Forbes, entitled "Young Voters Turn America Left." And Rob was quoted in the Kansas City Star, and had a featured guest blog in the Houston Chronicle.

NDN's work has been featured in many narrative-shaping stories over the past week and a half. If you haven't gotten a chance to check them out yet, you can do so here, here, here, and here.

In a previous New Tools feature, I discussed the launch of Web sites like WhiteHouse2.org, and wondered whether an Obama administration would be open to using tools like this to amplify the public's voice and increase its role in governing.

That very much remains to be seen, but President-Elect Obama's background in community organizing, his groundbreaking use of the Internet during the campaign, and the launch of his new site, change.gov, seem to bode well for the possibility of a more open-source style presidency (although I hope change.gov evolves to become much more interactive and participatory than it is at the moment). Of course, Obama was elected to lead, and in order to be effective leader he will ultimately have to make his own judgments and decisions. But the more voices and opinions he hears in the course of his deliberations, the better.

If he chooses to do so, Obama can certainly use technology to give people a greater voice in government. But he can also use it to spread his message and to build support for his initiatives. Simon predicts that Obama will do with the Internet what FDR did with radio and what JFK did for television, using the web to reach people in new ways. He envisions a weekly YouTube address that could be instantly viewed by millions of people around the country and the world. This kind of direct reach would be an incredibly powerful tool in advancing the administration's agenda.

In the past few weeks, we at NDN have talked a lot about the ways an Obama administration is likely to use technology to govern: in addition to the aforementioned New Tools post, Simon and Joe Trippi discussed this at our NDN election forum, and Simon did a great video blog about it, entitled "Obama to Reinvent the Presidency."

NDN's thinking in this area has also been featured in a host of press stories in recent days: Simon was interviewed in an Associated Press video segment today that asked, "How much will President Obama embrace Internet?" and has also been quoted in Wired, the National Journal's Tech Daily Dose, the Washington Times, the San Jose Mercury News, Agence France Press, the Houston Chronicle, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, TCMNet, Business Intelligence Middle East, and Real Clear Politics on the topic. 

Friday morning UPDATE: Jose Antonio Vargas of the Washington Post reports this morning that

Today, President-elect Obama will record the weekly Democratic address not just on radio but also on video -- a first. The address, typically four minutes long, will be turned into a YouTube video and posted on Obama's transition site, Change.gov, once the radio address is made public on Saturday morning."

It has been a remarkable week for NDN in the media; this is my fourth news round up in eight days (see the others here, here, and here).

First off, Simon's election analysis appeared in a major article in BBC News today, which began like this:

Democratic strategist, Simon Rosenberg, director of the New Democrat Network, is one of those who argues that the pattern of the last four decades has been broken.

Since the the 1960s, when the Democrats passed civil rights legislation, the southern states have mostly voted Republican in presidential elections.

This has given them an in-built advantage, and only two Democrats, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton (both southerners), have won the White House in the last 40 years.

Now Mr Rosenberg argues the Democrats have created a new paradigm that means they could dominate politics for a generation.

He gives three reasons:

• Demographics: The Democrats are appealing to the fastest-growing groups in the electorate

• Technology: The Democrats have mastered the new digital technologies, enabling them to fundraise and mobilise their supporters more effectively than their opponents

• Issues: The Democrats are better equipped to deal with the new issues, like global warming, immigration, and the global financial crisis, which go beyond traditional left and right divisions

He also argues that the Republican brand has been irrevocably damaged.

At the same time, he recognises that the main issue for many voters in this election was an old-fashioned one - falling living standards - and this will represent a major challenge for President Obama.

Simon is also quoted extensively throughout the body of this excellent article, which lays out many of NDN's main arguments, so be sure to check it out.

Since Friday, Simon has also been quoted in a plethora of sources about how Obama is likely to use technology to govern, including Wired, Agence France Press, the Houston Chronicle, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, TCMNet, Business Intelligence Middle East, and Real Clear Politics; NDN Fellows Morley Winograd and Michael Hais are also quoted in the RCP story talking about Millennials. 

From the Wired article:

Obama is widely expected by the inside-the-Beltway community to use the web to redefine the relationship between the President and his constituents, just as he did so with voters during the 2008 campaign when he often used tech tools like YouTube and text messaging to communicate directly with voters, bypassing the media.

"I think you're going to see this new model used throughout his presidency that Obama's pioneered that allows him to reach many more people in a much more meaningful way," says Simon Rosenberg, president and founder of the non-profit think-tank NDN in a recent interview. "Just like the advent of radio changed the relationship between those that govern and their voters, President (elect) Obama will start to re-invent the relationship of American citizens to their president using the new and modern internet-based tools."

This could take shape in the form of Saturday YouTube addresses instead of or in addition to the President's weekly Saturday radio address, Rosenberg speculated. The point is that Obama is expected to use the tools to go "over the heads" of the media to communicate and to mobilize voters.

Simon was also quoted in several more stories about the Hispanic vote, appearing in the Los Angeles Times, the Las Vegas Sun, the Latino Journal, and Burnt Orange Report. Tom Brokaw also quoted Simon in an interview with U.S. Sen. Mel Martinez on "Meet the Press," and Markos (Kos) from DailyKos linked to Simon's blog post about the interview.

Finally, Andres appeared in the Las Vegas Sun discussing Latino turnout, and Rob discussed Obama's possible economic policies in the Chicago Tribune and Ireland's Independent.