In his weekly address today, President Obama makes his case on the proposed budget. He explains that he does not see this budget as
...numbers on a page or a laundry list of programs. It’s an economic blueprint for our future – a vision of America where growth is not based on real estate bubbles or overleveraged banks, but on a firm foundation of investments in energy, education, and health care that will lead to a real and lasting prosperity.
These investments are not a wish list of priorities that I picked out of thin air – they are a central part of a comprehensive strategy to grow this economy by attacking the very problems that have dragged it down for too long: the high cost of health care and our dependence on foreign oil; our education deficit and our fiscal deficit.
This video is an important step for the President, who many feel has struggled so far to make a compelling case for his budget. It is also just one of several ways the President is using new media to push his agenda; here's an excerpt from an email I got last week from Organizing for America:
The next few weeks will be some of the most important our movement for change has encountered yet.
Mitch wrote to you earlier this week about Organizing for America's Pledge Project -- an effort to identify and mobilize support across the country for the economic vision President Obama has outlined in his budget.
If you haven't yet done so, pledge your support now and ask your friends, family, and neighbors to do the same.
I'm not sure that the President's language is 100% there yet on the budget (and clean coal still?), but he makes a clear, cogent argument for it in this video. It's also clear that he understands the challenge ahead of him in getting this passed, and it'll be interesting to see how he ramps up the fight. Watch the video of this week's address below:
On Tuesday, March 10, NDN hosted a special forum with Joe Rospars, the Obama campaign’s New Media Director and founding partner of Blue State Digital. Joe and NDN President Simon Rosenberg had an informative, thought-provoking discussion about the role that new media and technology played in Barack Obama's quest for the presidency. During the back-and-forth, which was viewed from all over the country and even internationally via our live Web cast, Joe made clear that the cutting-edge use of technology that resulted in the most bottom-up political campaign in history started with the Blackberrying candidate himself. A former community organizer, Obama is also very conversant with new media tools and technologies, and understands their power and how they can be combined with traditional field organizing to create a political juggernaut.
Simon also asked Joe about what new media strategies his team found most effective during the campaign, the digital divide between Democrats and Republicans, and what Rospars and his crew might have in store for us in the future. This is simply must-see viewing for anyone who wants to understand the changing political media landscape. Check out Simon and Joe's conversation, and the Question and Answer session that followed it, below:
Here's what Nick Baumann of Mother Jones had to say after hearing Joe and Simon speak about the GOP's efforts to catch up technologically and organizationally:
Michael Steele, the new chairman of the Republican National Committee, has promised to take his party "beyond cutting edge." But Joe Rospars, the man behind the Obama campaign's incredibly successful new media outreach, said that the RNC's current internet strategy is "all smoke and mirrors marketing."
On Tuesday, Rospars took part in a question-and-answer session about the impact of technology on politics hosted by the left-leaning think tank NDN. Rospars dinged the Republicans' much-criticized request for a proposal (PDF) to redesign its website, laughing that his company, Blue State Digital, certainly won't be competing for the business. (Lefty BSD probably wouldn't respond to the RFP anyway, of course, but Rospars brought it up out of the blue—he was obviously referring to the widespread mockery it had already received.) He criticized the GOP's email list, boasting that the Obama campaign's 13-million-strong list was developed in an "organic" way. "We didn't purchase lists and just add people to our email list," he said. "The point of having a big email list isn't just to say you have a big email list. The RNC says they have a however big email list, but the point is to actually have relationships with people so they open the message, they listen to what you're saying, and they're willing to do something," he said.
Rospars suggested that it's a mistake to see the use of social networking technologies and new media as ends in themselves—in other words, using tools like twitter and facebook are ways of mobilizing a following, but they don't ensure you'll get one. Without adopting "the ethos of building an organization from the bottom-up," the GOP will have trouble catching up, Rospars said.
Meanwhile, Rospars is doing his best to make sure the GOP doesn't catch up. He says that of the 100 best ideas he and his team came up with during the campaign, they only used about 15. He's won't be talking about those in public. He doesn't want to "give anybody any ideas."
President Obama's Weekly YouTube address today focuses on the budget outline he released earlier this week. In breaking down the various elements of his budget, Obama explains how the specifics correspond to commitment to change he made on the campaign trail.
The most memorable line comes after he discusses the changes from the Washington status quo that his budget represents:
I know these steps won’t sit well with the special interests and lobbyists who are invested in the old way of doing business, and I know they’re gearing up for a fight as we speak. My message to them is this:
So am I.
Take a look at the whole address:
This very much feels like the President is governing with the large mandate he won on election day, and rightly so. It's amazing to think how much there is to do, after so much of this - energy, infrastructure, healthcare - has gone undone for the last 8 years or longer.
On Tuesday, March 10, at 12 p.m., NDN and the New Politics Institute will be holding a special event here at the our offices in DC -- a luncheon conversation 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 is little argument now that the way the 2008 Obama campaign used new media and the Internet has changed politics here, and around the world, forever. Joe was the director of this historic effort, and we are very pleased that he will be taking the time to reflect on their remarkable campaign, and offer some thoughts on what we might expect in this space in the years to come.
The conversation with Joe will take place at the NDN offices at 729 15th St., NW, between H Street and New York Avenue. Lunch will be served. Seating is limited and will be first come first serve -- please click here to RSVP.
For those not able to attend the event here in our offices, be sure to watch it live on our new high-end Web casting system. Just go to ndnblog.org/livecast -- the stream will begin at 12:15 p.m. ET.
Joe's full bio follows:
A Blue State Digital founding partner, Joe served as the New Media Director for Barack Obama's presidential campaign, where he oversaw all online aspects of the unprecedented fundraising, communications and grassroots mobilization effort.
Joe led a wide-ranging program that integrated design and branding, web and video content, mass email, text messaging, and online advertising, organizing and fundraising.
Prior to the Obama campaign, Joe led BSD's work with Gov. Howard Dean at the Democratic National Committee; during Dean's campaign for party chairman; and at Democracy for America. Joe was a writer and strategist in New Media for Dean's 2004 Presidential campaign.
He holds a bachelor's degree in political science from the George Washington University.
It was another great week for NDN in the media. First off, our tech event last Tuesday, "New Tools for a New Era," was picked up by Jose Antonio Vargas in the Washington Post in a story about the GOP's effort to catch up technologically. From the Post piece:
And the GOP will be rebuilding itself at a time when the Democratic Party continues to make inroads in using technology to reach a diverse set of constituents with their message. Today, the New Politics Institute, an arm of the liberal think-tank New Democrat Network, will hold one of its many lunches for Democratic Hill staffers and advocacy folks. The title of the event: "New Tools for a New Era." Simon Rosenberg, founder of NDN, said the lunch is a part of his group's ongoing New Tools series, which tout the use of cell phones, social networks and micro-targeting, among others, in campaigning. NPI was created in 2005.
"Look, the Republican Party is at least two presidential cycles behind. They didn't get what Howard Dean was doing. They dismissed what Barack Obama was doing," Rosenberg said. "But one of the things they have going for them is, they can learn from years of trial and error and investment by us Democrats. Eventually, they're going to catch up. But they can't just combine new tools with old politics."
Simon's tech analysis was also featured in a big AFP story about the State Department's embrace of new tools. From the story:
Simon Rosenberg, president of NDN, a progressive think-tank based in Washington, said Clinton's embrace of the Internet is going to be imitated by others in the Obama administration.
"It's going to be all the cabinet officials, all the major agencies and departments," Rosenberg told AFP. "They're going to be under pressure to use these tools to bring themselves closer to the American people and the people of the world.
"It's going to become imbued throughout the entire government," he said. "If you want to give a shiny apple to your boss and your boss is Barack Obama one of the shiny apples you can give him is a great YouTube video that reaches millions of people about a subject that he cares about."
On a different note, Simon was featured in a great story by Ron Brownstein and David Wasserman in the National Journal about Democrats' huge gains in the nation's better-educated counties:
Republican leaders have strained their relations with voters across the Diploma Belt by appearing at times to allow their religious views to trump science (on issues such as embryonic-stem-cell research) and to prefer small-town perspectives to cosmopolitan views. "These are [voters] who use the Internet and modern telecommunications," says Simon Rosenberg, president of NDN, a Democratic group that studies electoral trends. "And Obama felt like he was living in the same world as they are. And the Republicans had drifted from them and been deeply disappointing in their actual governance."
Our immigration event last Thursday, "Making the Case for Passing Immigration Reform This Year," was picked up in several Spanish-language papers, including El Sendero de Peje and El Financiero.
NDN Fellows Morley Winograd and Mike Hais had their essay, "New Attitudes for a New Era," featured on the Huffington Post politics page.
Lastly, Simon made an appearance on Fox News this week to (allegedly) discuss the stimulus. Check it out below:
I am excited to be announce that on Tuesday March 10 we will be holding a special event here at NDN - a luncheon conversation 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 is little argument now that the way the 2008 Obama campaign used new media and the internet has changed politics here, and around the world, forever. Joe was the director of this historic effort, and I am very pleased he will be taking the time to reflect on their remarkable campaign, and offer some thoughts on what we might expect in this space in the years to come.
We will be making a more formal announcement on this in a few days, but in the meantime mark your calendar for this midday discussion with Joe Rospars. For those not able to attend the event here in our offices be sure to watch it live on our new high-end webcasting system.
A couple weeks ago, I blogged about Recovery.gov, the site the Obama Administration has set up to be publicly accountable on the American Recovery and Reinvesment Act. Well, it's up now, fully equipped with video, information about the planned spending and tax cuts, and a snazzy, draggable timeline laying out the federal government's plans for implementing ARRA.
Here's President Obama's introductory video to the site:
In his newest weekly address this morning, President Obama congratulates the Senate for reaching a compromise on the stimulus bill, and stresses the urgency of passing a stimulus package. Clocking in at over 4 minutes, it's one of the longer addresses the President has released. Check it out below:
Bridging the gap between winning an election and governing with the help of the Internet and other new political tools has been one of the most interesting subtexts of the Obama transition. President Obama has of course made the weekly YouTube address a fixture of his administration, but in the past week, the Obama administration web team has taken their economic message online with new web sites: strongmiddleclass.gov, the website for the task force led by Vice President Biden on the middle class, and recovery.gov, a web site to be used for tracking the expenditures of the still-to-be-passed American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
Here's what recovery.gov looks like now:
NDN has discussed the Wired White House quite a bit. Click here for more of NDN's work on the topic.
It was a good week for NDN in the media. After NDN broke the story of Chip Saltsman's Other Song on Thursday, our post was featured in Politico and as the feature story on the front page of the The Huffinton Post. The story was also picked up by Kos over at DailyKos, and even made it into The New York Times's Sunday editorial.
Along the same lines, Simon was quoted in the Spanish-language paper Terra on immigration reform, and was the lone voice of reason in a Los Angeles Times op-ed by Ira Mehlman on the same topic. His recent essay about the Republican party and race, "Steele, the GOP and Confronting the Southern Strategy," was also featured on the front page of the Huffington Post. Finally, Simon was also quoted in AFPand Red Orbit about how President Obama will use his Web-based campaign organization moving forward. From the AFP piece, entitled "Obama Retools Campaign Machine":
Simon Rosenberg, president of NDN, a progressive think tank here, likened Organizing for America to former president Bill Clinton's attempt to build a grass roots pressure group on health care reform but agreed that "there really hasn't ever been anything like it before."
"Barack is not like any other candidate," he said. "He comes to Washington with more supporters and more modern tools than anyone in history. Barack is going to reinvent the presidency the way he reinvented the campaign."
Economist Rob Shapiro, a top Commerce Department official in the Clinton administration who was on Obama's transition advisory team, questioned the effectiveness of the $275 billion in tax cuts in the measure now before the House. "These tax cuts are not only not stimulative, but we're going to have to pay for them eventually."
Still, Shapiro, now an official with NDN, a think tank formerly known as the New Democratic Network, said it is more important not to let the debate over the stimulus package "degenerate into politics as usual. If the country believes this has turned into a package of special-interest spending and tax provisions, then the efforts to restore confidence will be damaged."
Finally, Morley and Mike had an op-ed published in Roll Call entitled "Obama Typifies Spirit of Civic Engagement." For those of you who don't subscribe to Roll Call, you can view an earlier version of this essay posted on the NDN blog here.
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There is little argument now that the way the 2008 Obama campaign used new media and the Internet has changed politics here, and around the world, forever. Joe was the director of this historic effort, and we are very pleased that he will be taking the time to reflect on their remarkable campaign, and offer some thoughts on what we might expect in this space in the years to come.
