First they overran Digg, but I did nothing because I didn’t use Digg…

A powerful new lobbying force is coming to town: Barack Obama’s triumphant army of 3.1 million Internet-linked donors and volunteers…

…Moreover, because his Internet operation was miles ahead of Republican John McCain’s, Obama’s liberal-to-libertarian electronic activists are in a position to dominate the new political medium much as conservative Republicans dominate talk radio…
…As for political utility, many thousands of volunteers such as Hood will be deployable within hours, with great precision and at almost no cost, thanks to the campaign’s state-of-the-art information-management systems.

The president-elect’s political operatives know, for example, the ZIP codes and hence the congressional districts of each of Obama’s million most active campaigners, those who volunteered via his Web site mybarackobama.com. It’s a social network that the campaign set up to communicate needs, events and assignments to volunteers.

The profiles that Obama campaigners submitted to the site also reveal which supporters in each district are environmentalists, concerned about health care or keen on government reform.

Moreover, because the so-called “MyBO” site quantified volunteers’ participation and fundraising totals digitally, there’s a numeric score for each participant’s success. It’s even adjusted to give more credit for recent help.

“We really know who Obama’s community leaders are,” issue by issue, said Thomas Gensemer, the managing director of Blue State Digital, the Washington-based mobilizer of online communities created by four Dean campaign veterans.

Instead of e-mailing members of Congress, Gensemer continued, Obama’s most effective supporters will meet with them in their district offices and press them at local town hall meetings.

Trippi offered a more dramatic scenario: “Obama will be able to say these are the 10 members of Congress standing in our way on health care. Basically, it’ll be the president and the people united, with some members of Congress in between, which won’t be a very comfortable place to be.”

The writing is on the wall…

President-elect Barack Obama will add a new media wrinkle Saturday to his weekly radio address: the first YouTube video version, to be posted on both his transition site and the popular Internet video site.

It’s the first visible result of a major transition-team effort to make Obama’s conversations with the electorate more direct. In addition, members and supporters of the White House media upgrade want more input opportunities for the public.

Many of the changes, if adopted, also would curb the power of a traditional but often unpopular middleman between presidents and the populace: the mainstream media…

…Also getting under way is a new team of official White House bloggers. One, prominent liberal blogger Michael Lux, joined the transition team this week.

He’s expected to be joined by bloggers assigned to specific Obama initiatives, such as overhauling health care and conserving energy.

At the same time, McClatchy has learned that Obama’s Internet army, which is in the course of moving from his campaign communications Web site to his transition site, www.change.gov, may be asked to move again in January.

Here’s an opportunity for conservatives:

A prototype of sorts went live this week at www.Obamacto.org. It’s enabled thousands of respondents to vote on what the top priorities should be for a new position that Obama has created, chief technology officer.

However, you can only FOR an idea, not against it. Still, get involved!

AND - Pressure the RNC to keep up with Obama’s internet army or our last best hope for political internet parity will be torn away from us! Email the RNC: RNCommunications@gop.com

Here’s a suggested message:

The liberals already dominate the broadcast news and print news - will we let them overrun the internet “new media” as well?

Obama’s victory was in large part a success of his well-planned and well-executed internet campaign - but that was only the beginning! See http://www.icallbs.net/blog/index.php/2008/11/15/liberals-winni…new-media-raceliberals-winning-the-new-media-race for just a few of the ways that the liberals are outrunning conservatives in the internet race.

It is imperative that we AT LEAST keep up with their use of technology, but only EXCEEDING it will win us elections!

PLEASE start a serious internet program that rivals Obama’s and keep me posted as to what I can do!

Thank you!

(your name, zip code and email address here)

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 15th, 2008 at 10:29 am and is filed under Election '08, Government, Media Comments, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.