BuzzMachine

I wonder whether, quietly, Barack Obama is to become the first candidate elected by the internet.

It’s not as if he has been all that aggressive in his internet strategy. That is, he has been no more and probably less disruptive in his online tactics than Howard Dean was. But I wonder whether it is the internet that has brought together the factors that are making him victorious.

First, the higher turnout among young people in Iowa — and, it appears, New Hampshire — is being credited as a key factor in his win(s). It has been said plenty of times that young people may get excited about a candidate but they don’t show up. Now they’re showing up, not only to vote but to jam public events that show the mo’. What’s different this time? It could be some magic potion of Obama as Pied Piper, but I think the change may well be the internet. He spoke to young people on their turf and they responded. They made it a point to befriend the bejesus out of him on MySpace and Facebook — they made that their own crusade — and I think media and political strategists thought that was cute but didn’t understand the full power and impact of that. It’s significant that one of Obama’s advisers is a founder of Facebook, Chris Hughes.

This leads to the second factor: the organizing power of the internet. To hell with the phone bank and campaign office downtown. And to heck with rallies, for that matter. The internet is the greatest organizational tool ever and both the campaign — and, importantly, the citizens themselves — used it to organize supporters to get out and support.

Third, of course, is money: It’s not just that Obama raised a helluva lot of money. It’s far more important, of course, that he raised it from a helluva lot of people. But what’s really important in that is that those people felt invested in Obama and his campaign. Yes, he got lots of money to pay for commercials. But what he really got was citizens with an equity stake in his victory. That wasn’t being done before Howard Dean showed how to raise money online and Obama made brilliant use of it.

There are, of course, other factors. The fact that older voters — like me — are the ones favoring Clinton shows that we hold nostalgia for the Clinton years, but young people have no fond memories of the era; they’re too young. I thought that Clinton ran a flawless campaign at the start but now it turns out to be flawed. I do think the media have from the start made Obama their darling and the mo’ was there for him to grab. See my post in April showing how the coverage of him was out of proportion to the polls. You could argue that the media were merely more in touch than the polls but I don’t think so; I believe Obama’s rise became a self-fulfilling prophecy that only he could screw up — and he didn’t.

It would be unwise to count Clinton out yet. She is smart and experienced and tenacious. And Obama is inexperienced and can mess this up. But as a Clinton supporter, I’ll concede the trajectory here.

My point is that as we analyze this fairly incredible and rabid shift in power between the two candidates, I haven’t heard the internet being given the credit I think it may deserve. And that’s not because he ran the campaign on the internet; no one will call him the internet candidate. It’s because he used it to speak to the right people and in ways that weren’t noticed or understood by big media. What do you think?

There are some good and meaty comments about the emptiness of Barack Obama’s change rhetoric at Comment is Free, where I crossposted my remarks from below, and also on Eamonn Fitzgerald’s blog. First, Eamonn:

The Austrian novelist Robert Musil began writing his masterpiece The Man without Qualities (Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften) in 1921 and was still working on it when he died in 1942. The three-book work is set in a country called Kakania, a parody of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the story includes a patriotic movement called Parallel Action, which is devoted to the “redemptive idea”. The leaders of the movement evoke it constantly in the vaguest terms because they have no idea what it means or how it might be applied. One of the group’s most ridiculous figures is General Stumm, a man who has almost no experience with ideas. Despite this drawback, he is determined to discover the “redemptive idea” before anyone else, and with the utmost efficiency. Says Stumm: “It turns out that there are lots of great ideas, but only one of them can be the greatest — that’s only logical, isn’t it? — so it’s a matter of putting them in order.”

In his excellent essay “Exhuming Robert Musil”, Ted Gioia says that the protagonist Ulrich “… changes his ideas with the ease of an actor learning a new role. He is prone to making sweeping statements, such as: ‘In times to come, when more is known, the word ‘destiny’ will probably have acquired a statistical meaning.’ His eloquence and ability to turn a phrase are stunning, yet his ideas never cohere into a philosophy or a belief system. They are as ephemeral as a passing storm.”

Is the mantra of “change” the “redemptive idea” of our times? Jeff Jarvis now hates the word.

From Comment is Free, Ebert says:

The word means exactly nothing. Every tinpot workplace has a ‘change programme’ with a ‘change director’ and a ‘change manager’… everyone has to ‘embrace change’ and ’show a commitment to change’. Nothing changes but the organisation often gets ‘restructured’, putting any real work back for six months while those who have still got jobs (which they have had to re-apply for) get used to the new structure. The word seems to have crept in since the fall of the Soviet Union to give the illusion that capitalism is ‘going forward’ (another empty useless expression).

Polygram says:

Obama is a fantastic example of the hollow man, the tabula rosa on which the campaign consultants can write whatever script they wish, and Obama, with no idea what the hell it means, will deliver it in just that kitsch and florid way so beloved in American campaign rhetoric.

Yesterday says:

I worked in a place where a ‘change director’ was appointed who had come from a deadbeat job at a bank. We called him the ’small change director’. ‘Embracing change’ always made me think of Alcoholics Anonymous and a lot of the training techniques seem to have come from that body.

Christopherhawtree:

The word “change” is of course always on the lips of Gordon Brown. But the past decade has shown that “change” can simply mean misdirected busyness; apparent change is in fact stasis. Real change is not announced but happens as a result of more complex social and artistic forces than any such proclamations can engender.

Chewtoy:

If they’re not referring to the Buddhist and quantum theory notion that all matter is in constant flux, then surely they must mean by “change” that they’ll change to a totally different story once they get elected.

Edwardrice:

“What is most important in the age of Change is not change itself but continuity in change and change in continuity”
(The Collected Thoughts of Comrade Brown) - Private Eye

Giuseppeh:

t’s all about subconscious associations. By saying the word enough and having it on as many banners surrounding the candidate, each of them hope to become that brand.

Of course it would be great if we lived in an adult world in which issues were discussed, candidates gave us their specific points of view on each and every major issue facing our world and people listened and analysed.

Of course it would be great if the advertising men didn’t dominate the political stage as they dominate the commercial stage in our world, peddling people like honda cars.

But we live in this world and people do respond to ridiculously simple subconscious messages, people are like five-year-olds asking their mum for the latest transformer toy for christmas because they saw it in the adverts between a postman pat cartoon.

We live in this idiotic world, in which people are just going to get dissappointed later on, like the kid who gets bored with his new, flashy transformer toy after five minutes and then realises christmas doesn’t come every day.

I’m sick of hearing the word “change.” Last night, during the Democratic debate in New Hampshire, we heard it 90 times. Change, change, change. Blah, blah, blah. It’s an utterly empty word. Meaningless. The worst of political rhetoric. The worst of political bullshit. Pure spin. Cynical marketing. Juvenile pandering. ‘I’m change.’ “No, I’m change.’ ‘Are not.’ ‘Am, too.’ Nya, nya, nya.

Oh, just shut up and do something. Or at least say something. And don’t say “hope,” either. Say something about the economy (note that on Facebook — which is overwhelmingly and disproportionately in Obama’s camp — the users wanted to hear a lot more about that). And health care. And education. And technology. And Iraq. And energy. And the environment. Or just tell us what change means.

God bless Charlie Gibson last night — the best moderator on any debate so far, I’d say — who pointed to the emptiness of change when Barack Obama and John Edwards bragged about doing in those evil lobbyists and stopping them from corrupting democracy by buying legislators meals. Charlie pointed out that the only change in the rule is that they can’t buy lawmakers meals while sitting down. Here’s the solution to that: a one-handed a plate-and-glass holder.

And the truth is that we don’t really like change all that much. Corporations, universities, governments, and marriages are built around avoiding change. We fear change.

Don’t get me wrong: There’s plenty we should be changing, starting with this primary system that is drowning us in rhetoric and advertising and attacks, not to mention undue influence given to the ministates of Iowa and New Hampshire (I say we should hold a national primary no earlier than July). We need to get health care. We need a broadband policy. We need an energy policy. We need so much. It’s not change. It’s the work of government.

Here’s a cloud — and what an appropriate metaphor that is — from the transcript of last night’s Democratic debate (thanks to Tagcrowd). I suppose I should take comfort in the fact that “think” is bigger than “change.”

If you saw a post about the YouTube campaign flash by on this page or your RSS, it was a mistake I too often make: I meant to post to Prezvid, where it now is. Just letting you know that you’re not going crazy, I am.

Incredible that this has gotten next-to-no coverage but at Falwell’s Liberty University, Mike Huckabee claimed divine providence as the reason for his rise in the polls. More and the video at Prezvid.

: LATER: Lots and lots of comment over at Comment is Free.

Digg, the social news site, has created pages for all the candidates and already, there’s a rush to follow and befriend them. Tops on the Republican side: Ron Paul by a gigantic margin (they are a tenacious bunch, those Paulites… or are they the Ronnies?), followed by Huckabee, Thompson, Romney, then Giuliani. On the Democratic side: Obama followed by Kucinich (!), Gravel (!), Edwards, Clinton, and Biden.

True to form, Diggers find the stories that are overlooked in mainstream media. They’re also generally befriending the candidates overlooked by MSM.

(Crossposted from PrezVid.)

If you ask me — and you didn’t, so I will — it’s pretty damned incredible that Michael Arrington and TechCrunch is getting interviews with presidential candidates: McCain today; Romney earlier. It’s just a blog. It’s just a tech blog. But it’s powerful and has an important audience in a critical industry. So candidates are paying attention. That and 10Questions and the YouTube debates are evidence of a political process that’s just beginning to open up.

Incredible. Fox goes after John McCain’s campaign to cease and desist use of a clip from the last debate that has the Fox logo on it.

It would be shocking enough for Fox to go after a citizen who put this online — and we should all fight for that citizen’s right to do so. It’s all the more shocking that Fox is going after a presidential candidate. It’s triply shocking that Fox is going after Republican McCain.

This precisely why we have been fighting for the networks to assure that they would make debate footage available to all of us. When I spoke with FoxNews about their policy in May, they said they would abide by fair comment and use. Well, as Stanford’s Lawrence Lessig has pointed out often, this is the problem with fair use: you can argue about it (and have to hire attorneys to do so).

McCain, to his credit, is telling Fox to shove it.

But one way to solve this is for all the candidates to pledge that they will not appear on any network’s debate unless that network frees the footage for all candidates and citizens. It is, after all, our election.

The AP reports:

In the ad, McCain is shown at the debate saying: “A few days ago, Senator Clinton tried to spend $1 million on the Woodstock concert museum.”

“Now my friends, I wasn’t there. I’m sure it was a cultural and pharmaceutical event,” he says. “I was tied up at the time.” It was a referance to the 5 1/2 years McCain spent in a North Vietnamese prison.

The Fox News logo is in the corner of the ad.

But Fox News bars candidates from using debate clips in ads, and officials there sent a cease and desist letter to McCain. McCain rejected the request, arguing that he is within the law’s “fair use” rights to use an 18-second clip of a 90-minute debate.

Here’s the commercial. Take that, Fox:

(Had the wrong commercial up before; corrected now.)
(Crossposted from Prezvid, where there’s lots of interesting stuff lately.)

I’m pround to be a cosponsor, via Buzzmachine and Prezvid, of 10 Questions, an attempt to hold one more Presidential debate but to do it better this time. It’s elegantly simple: You tape the questions. We, the people, select the best ones. They are submitted to the candidates. They respond. We grade their responses. Have at ‘em.

Here is another example of either lazy or agenda-laded — or both — political reporting in the Times: Adam Nagourney’s exercise in apparent wishful thinking as he muses on Barack Obama attracting young voters. On Obama:

He has clearly struck a chord among younger voters. And his campaign has made what seems to be the most sophisticated effort of any of the Democrats to reach out to them, taking steps like sending recruiting teams to Iowa high schools and trying to ensure that New Hampshire college students who might be out of state on primary day get absentee ballots.

What will this mean in the end?

Now that’s a rhetorical question. Clearly, Nagorney doesn’t know and so one wonders why the story was done. The impression was certainly out there that Obama had younger supporters and that’s the premise of the story. But Nagourney’s first fact belies that:

The truth of the matter is that every four years – as sure as a sunset – stories appear about a surge of interest among younger voters in presidential politics, typically predicting a jump in turn-out that will benefit one campaign or another. It rarely turns out to be true: the percentage of voters under 30 in the total electorate was basically unchanged between 2000 and 2004– 17 percent, according to surveys of voters leaving the polls. Polls taken by The Times and CBS News last month suggest that there is no difference in the level of support between Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton among younger Democratic voters, though they view Mr. Obama slightly more favorably.

One wonders again why the story was done, then. But Nagourney goes on to sell his now-questionable premise:

But could this finally be the year – and this the candidate – that produces the ever-expected burst of interest among younger voters? Polls aside, the kind of crowds Mr. Obama is drawing – and a walk through his campaign headquarters in Des Moines – certainly suggest that some young people have taken a strong interest in his candidacy.

Polls aside. Facts aside. History aside. Damnit, he’s determined to write this story, to push the image of Obama as the political Pied Piper. He moves to meaningless observations:

At 46, Mr. Obama has just the slightest streak of gray hair, no creases in his face and works out every day to keep trim. Democrats may debate whether his youthfulness makes it tough for him to come across as presidential; at the least, it means that he does not come across as parental, at least not to the newly voting age crowd.

The story is utterly uninformative. And I have to wonder whether there is an agenda here: another slap at frontrunner Clinton or an effort to boster the flagging Obama. In either case, I wish that we could have a dialogue with Nagourney over this story to ferret out the motive and method behind stories such as this.

I posted this comment on the story:

In one breath, you quote polls saying that there is essentially no difference between Obama and Clinton in youth’s support of them.

In the next breath, you try to argue that Obama is the youth candidate with little more to back up your contention — is it a wishful one? — than your vague, generalized observations about his hair and fitness and tactics, still unproven.

Why was this story written? What is the news here?

In this video from last night’s debate, Barack Obama makes politics a bit too cause-and-effect, in my book.

Sound bite: “One of the things the next president has to do is to stop fanning people’s fears. If we spend all our time feeding the American people fear and conflict and division then they become fearful and conflicted and divided. If we feed them hope and we feed them reason and tolerance then they will become tolerant and reasonable and hopeful.”

Isn’t that essentially insulting? We are politicians’ empty vessels. We are molded by their rhetoric?

The Presidency isn’t a PBS self-improvement show. It’s an executive job.

Sounds like Obama has been hanging out with Oprah too much.

Next he’ll get elected by giving us all free cars.

Prezvid)

The much vaunted Yahoo/Huffington Post/Slate presidential debate “mash-up” is a pathetic insult to the voters that is years behind in internet culture.

According to Wired.com’s Sarah Lai Stirland, it was Yahoo who wussied out and decided not to put up the footage up on its mash-up video site for voters and viewers to remix.

No mashing here. Just more mush from the wimps.

So we end up with watching Charlie Rose and Bill Maher asking the candidates questions on the usual topics — do we have a shortage of this on TV debates? Where’s the interactivity? Well, we get to pick which videos to watch. Oooh, the freedom. It’s like a bad children’s museum: ‘Here, children, push this button. You won’t do any harm.’

We should be the ones asking the questions. We should be the ones selecting the questions. We should be the ones editing the questions.

Instead, they give us buttons to push. What an insult.

I am shocked that Huffington Post and Slate did not pull out of this venture when Yahoo ruined it. They should have. It’s yet more proof how behind Yahoo has left itself. The last old-media company, that’s what I call them. But they’re even older in mind and spirit than NBC, CNN, and ABC, which at least opened up their debate footage for us to reuse. Yahoo doesn’t put such an open license on this content. Yahoo doesn’t even make it easy for us to embed the videos. You can’t do it on their alleged “mash-up” page, only if you find the video on their video site, which isn’t easy with their bad search. Here’s one:

Huffington Post, Slate, and the candidates should insist that Yahoo make good on its word and make this video available for us to remix. It will still be pathetic — since we did not get the chance to ask and select the questions — but it would be just a little less pathetic.

LATER: I just posted this to Huffingtonpost, ending with this suggestion:

But I do wish that you would force them to enable the mash-up. For you see, it’s not just about us watching. It’s about us producing and broadcasting. We should be able to make our mash-ups and show them to the world. Indeed, why not go one step farther and take all the video from all the debates — since they are open to our unrestricted reuse — and put them together so we can produce and publish the ultimate mashups from the election so far? And then we can also see what questions have note been asked and answered. Then we can ask them the next time.

UPDATE: I just got email from Arianna Huffington saying that users will be able to take their playlists to Yahoo’s Jumpcut and then embed the results in their blogs. This is supposed to happen this afternoon. More later.

UPDATE: Here is the mashup page.