The methods and tools Trippi used during the Dean campaign can be credited with laying the foundations for Barack Obama‘s wildly successful candidacy. Marc Ambinder, political blogger at The Atlantic, says this on the back cover of Trippi’s book: “He is responsible, as much as any single person, for willing to life the innovations in thought and practice that gave rise to the Obama campaign and the Democratic Party‘s grassroots reformation.” The brand of campaigning that Trippi invented with Dean was improved on and mastered by Obama’s staff.

A common theme with the handful of successful Internet campaigns thus far has been the lack of a frontrunner candidate. Those running for office who’ve reaped the benefits of taking the fight to the Web have been insurgent candidates, like Obama, Virginia Senator Jim Webb, former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura, Montana senator Jon Tester, etc. Even candidates who ended up losing (Dean, Ron Paul and Ned Lamont to name a few), but had tremendous online success, were insurgents.

It begs the question of whether or not a frontrunner candidate can successfully use the Internet, or if the Web only helps insurgents. I think that more and more, we’ll see frontrunner candidates begin to harness and perfect online campaigning, as soon as the 2010 elections. Anyone in office who turns a blind eye to the success Obama had is committing political suicide. Campaigning and politics is changing, and as Trippi says, the politicians need to adapt and they need to get it.

There are a couple of more reasons I think frontrunners will eventually enjoy success via the Web. The obvious one is that Obama will be up for re-election in 2012. Unless the next four years are even worse than the Bush administration, he will be a clear frontrunner. Do you really think he won’t have success on the Internet because he’s a frontrunner? My second bit of reasoning comes from Hillary Clinton‘s failed presidential campaign.

Despite the recommendations of Trippi to run a Web-based bottom-up campaign, the Clinton team stubbornly refused and ran a traditional top-down campaign. In Feb. 2008, when the campaign was running out of money, they finally decided to take it online. So what happened? By the end of the month, Clinton had raised $35 million, almost all of it from Internet donations. It was too little too late though as Obama’s campaign was too strong a force to rally against. If Clinton had taken the bottom-up approach and hit the Web from the very beginning, when she was the clear favorite, we may have been talking about her making history and not Obama.

Efforts to recover started almost immediately after the elections. A new site, RebuildTheParty.com, was launched less than 44 hours after the results came in. As of this posting, the site has 6,101 members, who contribute their ideas and pledge to help make the party meaningful again. Founded by young Republican activists Patrick Ruffini and Mindy Finn, the site has a 10-point mission statement outlining the changes they’d like to see from Republicans and the next chairman of the Republican National Committee. Of the four publicly-declared candidates to chair the RNC, two have signed off on the plan.

Ruffini and Finn warn that Republicans have a lot of catching up to do because Democrats‘ advantages include their higher use of the Internet, a 2-to-1 advantage among young voters (where Bush and Gore tied among this group in 2000, Obama beat McCain 66% to 32%), and a much better grassroots model. The pair argue that the GOP needs transformation and “can’t keep fighting a 21st century war with 20th century weapons.”

The Washington Post‘s Jose Antonio Vargas makes a great point when he says “the right owns talk radio; the left owns the Internet.” This doesn’t mean the right isn’t on the Web, it certainly is, but what it illustrates is that the level of organization by the right pales significant in comparison to the left. Liberal bloggers have a lot of differences, but Vargas says they still managed to rally together around opposition to Bush and the Iraq War. Vargas says bloggers on the right “haven’t united over a common enemy. They’ve been too busy arguing among themselves.”

This is essentially why Rebuild the Party has identified the Internet, and winning the tech war with Democrats, as the GOP’s top priority over the next four years. Rebuild the Party’s mission statement says that the best and most efficient way to compete against what is likely to be a $1 billion Obama re-election campaign is through online organizing. Rebuild the Party sets goals of recruiting 5 million new Republican online activists while holding local campaigns and parties accountable during elections. Hoping to end a sense of dependency on the RNC, RTP wants to hold individual campaigns “accountable for the number of emails they collect and the money they raise online.”

The RTP’s mission statement concludes by saying that the RNC should open its “technology ecosystem” to outside contractors. They would like to see technology vendors with conservative interests compete for the GOP’s business with new applications and breakthroughs that can improve the party. Clearly, they saw the level of success the Democratic Party enjoyed with companies like Catalist.

In addition to RTP, another recently-launched site is RepublicanForAReason.com. Created by the RNC itself, it’s a grassroots efforts that wants Republicans to share their opinions of the party so that the GOP can reconnect with its base. The RNC’s Internet division is headed by Cyrus Krohn, a guest speaker in our class earlier this semester.

A joint project of the Sunlight Foundation and the Participatory Politics Foundation, OpenCongress tries to make our nation’s legislative branch more transparent. The website is free, open-source, non-profit and non-partisan. It has virtually everything you need and want to know about Congress.

TechPresident.com calls My Political Notebook a “political-themed Delicious meets Google Notebook.” The feature allows you to bookmark virtually any web page to your notebook under the category of your choice. It’s a good way to store all of the political content that interests you and you’d like to keep tabs on. Additionally, you can link to any page or content that’s on OpenCongress for your future reference.

A nice feature of My Political Notebook is the easy access to bills currently in discussion. If you bookmark something on the federal bailout and save it under “Economy” for example, you will then be introduced to the latest economic bills before Congress. The notebook can also be published through an RSS stream so that it can be shared with anyone.

It’s still new and fairly basic but expect more advancements and features as more people begin to use it. Once users can comment on each other’s notebooks, the interactiveness of the site will greatly improve and open the door to thoughtful debate. There is some work to do to catch up with the likes of Delicious, but with enough publicity, My Political Notebook might be able to take off.

The report begins with this assertion: The Internet may dramatically increase the role of citizens, provide superior information leading to better informed citizenry, and in general achieve the utopia of a direct democracy. The researchers add that they believe the Internet could also “foster a new generation of politicians who ignore traditional ‘big money’ tactics in favor of grassroots campaigns.” This was proven as a viable strategy with Obama’s remarkable fundraising success.

Now on to some of the numbers from the report. In the 12-month period studied, Obama (enjoying a 39% share) was first in website visitors and page views (17%) among the eight Democratic candidates. Hillary Clinton was the closest competitor at 30% and 13% shares. The Temple researchers think that their dominance mirrors the amount of coverage they received in the mainstream media. On the Republican side, it was a whole different story and very surprising. Ron Paul (30%) led in the number of visitors and Duncan Hunter (who?) led in page views (18%). The researchers guess that site visits indicate interest in a candidate while page views indicated the depth of interest. The page views were fairly equally spread among both Democrats and Republicans, debunking the assumption that the Internet allows voters to learn more about lesser known candidates. The tool is obviously there, but most people aren’t using it, preferring to learn more about their candidate instead.

Among Democrats, Obama was second in blog mentions and first on both YouTube and MySpace. Among Republicans, Ron Paul was most prominent on YouTube and MySpace. An interesting point the researchers make is that neither Obama nor Paul were frontrunners during the period the study was conducted.

Finally, perhaps the most surprising finding was that blog mentions were significantly correlated to an increase in Gallup polling results. The researchers point out that blog mentions caused better numbers in polling than MySpace, YouTube, Web 1.0 media and traditional media. They conclude that the advantage of blogs is that they “credibly socialize and scale campaign movements like no other web 2.0 technology.” The report is well worth reading and at least checking out its graphs and tables.

In that same piece, one of Netanyahu’s top advisers is quoted with the old “imitation is the greatest form of flattery” line. That’s nice and all, but couldn’t they be a little more original? If Israeli voters are smart enough, they should see right through Netanyahu’s motives. In my opinion, the blatant mimicry just exposes a candidate who doesn’t think his appeal is strong enough to win on his own merit. So what does he do? He copies the most successful, web-savvy, “new” campaign we’ve ever seen.

It’s rather ironic that Netanyahu has modeled his campaign after Obama. If anything, his beliefs and ideologies are much closer to losing Republican candidate John McCain. Still, Netanyahu’s team takes the position that their candidate will bring “change” to Israel. Of course, not change resembling what Obama is trying to accomplish, but change nonetheless. Additionally, much like Obama tried to link McCain to President Bush and distance himself from Washington, Netanyahu has drawn a hard line between the current prime minister and himself. The strategy is working as some recent polls show Netanyahu slightly ahead.

Where Obama’s slogan was “Yes we can,” Netanyahu’s is “Together we can succeed.” It’s a somewhat similar message that Netanyahu hopes will engage Israeli voters. One way the campaign is trying to accomplish this is by using Twitter. Though the micro-blogging service is virtually non-existent in Israel, Netanyahu believes it has value and hopes it catches on.

If Netanyahu goes on to win the election, it may signal a new trend in overseas elections. More and more candidates, if they have the resources, could resort to running a similar campaign. My concern is that these candidates will be capitalizing on voters’ eagerness for a new form of political engagement, instead of truly discussing their platform. Let’s hope it doesn’t open the door for charismatic, but dangerous and rogue, candidates to rise to power.

The Obama campaign took the 2004 Howard Dean campaign’s groundbreaking new methods and drastically improved them. The level of organization and participation was nothing ever seen before in a national campaign. Much of the success can be attributed to Obama’s website and the ways his Internet team promoted and protected him. There were numerous methods which contributed to the campaign’s success.

Obama was the first candidate to use a splash page. When a user logged on to barackobama.com, the splash page appeared first. It caught their attention and got into details right away, asking them to register and donate money. In addition to the splash page, users could donate throughout the website. Obama set new standards in fundraising, and the majority of it came from very small donations. Another great thing about the website was the constant stream of new content. Thousands of videos from the campaign trail were uploaded to the site, allowing the public to keep tabs on the candidate. In many ways, the campaign served as its own press corps. The video coverage was great, but the fact that staffers were blogging with updates created a transparency not seen before. One last innovation that Obama got a lot of coverage for was the use of text messaging. He announced his choice of Joe Biden via text message. The method was a nice idea but I just found it hard to believe that nobody had thought of it before.

Of course, not everyone liked Obama, and there was a considerable effort to smear him. The Obama team was unfazed though, and had an answer for the ugly tactics. It established separate sections of the website that were intended to combat the specific smears. If someone googles “Barack Obama” and “Muslim,” one of the first sites that comes up is Fight the Smears, which was set up by Obama’s team to debunk all the lies.

It was not just Obama’s team that tried to sway public opinion. This campaign cycle saw an explosion in voter-generated content. Regular folks, and some celebrities, created their own videos, t-shirts, games, etc., all in an effort to promote Obama’s election. Several items of VGC went viral, reaching a mass audience. All of this was free advertising for Obama and allowed a level of participation by people unaffiliated with the campaign that had never been seen.

Obama’s team took campaigning to a whole new level and no doubt revolutionized the process. It will be very interesting to see what happens in 2012. Will Obama maintain his Web supremacy?

Obama has promised that his administration will be very transparent from the beginning. This means we can expect a drastic change to occur at WhiteHouse.gov. The Bush administration was intensely secretive and ran a dull, bare-bones operation of the White House’s official site. Really, the only kind of behind-the-scenes action was of Barney, President Bush’s dog. That’s entertaining and all, but does nothing to appease the American voters. We want to know what our leaders are thinking and what they’re working on to improve our lives. We don’t care what the President’s dog is up to.

I expect Obama and his staff to be very accessible to the public. This was seen throughout the campaign and continued a few weeks ago when Obama delivered the Democratic Party’s weekly radio address for a YouTube audience. Those weekly radio addresses by the President that nobody really listens to? Expect that to change once Obama takes it to YouTube. It also wouldn’t be unreasonable to expect some Obama staffers to maintain up-to-date blogs on the administration’s activities. Sure, some of the higher-ups will be too busy and have confidentiality concerns, but those not in positions that are as vital shouldn’t have any problem with this. One other thing I’d like to see is a monthly 2-hour chat session with President Obama. How great would that be? It would be a tremendous opportunity for him to be accountable to the public, who in turn, would relish the chance to interact with the President.

Obama can take things further by encouraging the public to start online discussions with issues they’d like to see examined. Users could also respond to regular surveys on the job Obama’s doing and what could use improvement. With all of these changes, the public will feel more appreciated and involved than ever before. I really don’t see a way that Obama’s campaign can mess this up. Looking at the opaqueness of the previous administration and understanding the constantly-growing popularity of the Internet and new forms of communication, the Obama administration should revolutionize how a presidency operates.

Micro-targeting was the tool that won George W. Bush re-election in 2004. While the Republicans harnessed its power first, the Democratic Party has since surpassed them. This was evident with the election of Barack Obama. A comprehensive and extremely organized effort by the Obama campaign to identify potential supporters and reach out to them is what won the election. Obama enjoyed tremendous success in the battleground states because the campaign found those on-the-fence voters and tailored its message to win their support.

As technology improves so will micro-targeting, allowing for ever-more precise campaigning. This will make sure campaign funds go to good use and provide the best possible chance of winning. Virtually all campaigns, by both Republicans and Democrats, are using micro-targeting in some fashion. The only concern is to those voters who feel the practice may be an invasion of privacy.

In my opinion, we shouldn’t have a problem with micro-targeting. If corporations have already been doing it for years in order to sell us goods and services, why should it be any different if political parties do it? After all, they are trying to sell us on their candidates. As long as there aren’t any illegal activities like intimidation of voters, etc., then there shouldn’t be a problem. Further, if I’m a lifelong Democrat and you’re the Republican candidate, I think we both know you’re probably not going to get my vote (of course, unless the Democrats have their own ‘W’ one day). Why waste your money and my time, when both sides will be better served with micro-targeting? The trade-off in personal privacy for more specific and tailored political messaging is definitely worth it and should be embraced by all.

The five states I was assigned were Connecticut, Kentucky, Minnesota, New Jersey and Wyoming. The presidential race wasn’t close in any of those states and they were all called fairly early into the night. Obama took Connecticut, Minnesota and New Jersey while McCain took Kentucky and Wyoming. Minnesota picked the Democratic candidate for the ninth straight time while Wyoming the Republican for the 11th straight time. Kentucky snapped its streak of picking every eventual president-elect since 1964.

Besides the presidential race, those states did have some other interesting developments. Connecticut voters turned down an initiative that would allow amending the state’s constitution. The main proponents of that measure were seeking to ban gay marriage. In New Jersey, they re-elected Senator Frank Lautenberg, who is 84 years old by the way. And we all thought John McCain was old. Lautenberg becomes the Garden State’s first five-term senator. Finally, in Minnesota, former Saturday Night Live funnyman Al Franken was locked in a virtual dead heat for the Senate with Norm Coleman. When I left at 4:30 or so in the morning, the race was too close to call. It turns out that Coleman won by only 477 votes, but the margin is so small that there will be a mandatory recount.

Overall, it was a great experience to be in a hectic newsroom and see history unfold. Kentucky was pretty much the first state called so I had work to do right away. We had to actively watch the wires and shout out once the Associated Press had called a state. Our rule is to never call a state because a network is, but only after AP calls it. I guess that kind of shows a tech divide in newsrooms today. I’m sure there were numerous bloggers who called states much earlier than the AP. I didn’t have the opportunity to look for myself because I was busy working.

The ways I noticed that coverage had changed were through email and Twitter. I watched CNN all night and they were encouraging viewers to email with their voting experiences and any problems they saw. In our own newsroom I overheard our bloggers talking about updating their Twitter feeds or following those of others. CNN’s hologram feature , thought not Internet related, was also pretty incredible.

The first one, is the video of former Virginia governor and senator George Allen during a campaign stop in the western part of the state during his reelection campaign in 2006. On it, Allen is seen calling and singling out a campaign aide for his opponent, Jim Webb. The 20-year-old University of Virginia student, an Indian-American, was merely taping the event for Webb. For some odd reason, Allen decided to point him out and referred to him as “macaca.”

Nobody really knew what the term meant and it didn’t draw criticism until the video became available en masse on the Internet. Once media coverage blew up, it was revealed that “macaca” was an outdated racial epithet from Africa. Allen claims he didn’t know about the connotation but the damage had already been done. He lost the senate race and his political career was virtually over.

The reason I think that video is so important is because of the effect it has caused. The 2006 race is one that Allen should have won easily and used as a stepping stone to winning the Republican party’s nomination for the presidency. Allen was believed to be the front-runner among many in the party and outsiders predicting the race. His “macaca” slip destroyed that aspiration, leading to the ever-disappointing McCain-Palin ticket.

The second video that stands out for me is former Georgetown student James Kotecki interviewing ex-presidential candidate Ron Paul from his dorm room. His dorm room! I find that incredibly entertaining and a remarkable achievement.

The reason Paul showed up is clear: Kotecki had an audience. If Kotecki was just a random college kid who wanted to post a video to YouTube, Paul would have never accepted the invitation. Instead, Kotecki was a pioneer of the political video on the Web that enjoyed a sizable audience. Paul’s handlers knew this and no doubt wanted to make their candidate appear accessible and willing to talk to the average person.

Thus, the Kotecki video is one of my favorites because it illustrates that everyone can now participate in the debate. We are no longer restricted to letting the media do what we can do from our own house. Or dorm rooms.

Here are the two videos: