Did the Internet win it for Obama?
By Dave Parrack
Barack Obama swept to a resounding victory in the 2008 U.S. Presidential election on Nov. 4, 2008, but what was the main reason for his win? There’s one school of thought that puts the Internet at the top, so is Obama really President 2.0?
The Internet is such a presence in most people’s lives these days that it was always going to have an impact on politics and the election, but how much of an effect it had is open to debate. Some people, including Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington, political strategist Joe Trippi, and San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom think it was the key element in Obama’s campaign.
According to CNET, in a Web 2.0 Summit panel about politics hosted by author John Heilemann, the election was discussed and the reasons for Obama’s victory dissected. Huffington went as far as to state that “Were it not for the Internet, Obama would not be president. He would not be the democratic nominee.”
The key argument seems to be that the Web has brought politics in to people’s homes as never before, with biased news organization no longer being able to veer our opinions one way or another. If we want the truth we can simply read the views of unbiased bloggers or watch the policies being put forward directly from the candidate’s mouth by way of YouTube and similar video-sharing sites.
Then there are political forums and services such as Twitter, which allow discussions to occur between ordinary people, with their views meaning as much or even more than mainstream political commentators such as Bill O’Reilly who clearly have an agenda to spread and do so at every opportunity.
According to TechCrunch, the panel also compared the emergence of the Web as a political force in the recent election to the emergence of television as a similar force during the 1960 election which saw John F. Kennedy elected despite being under experienced.
I don’t actually think the Internet was entirely responsible for Obama’s victory, it certainly played a big part, with donations being given online and the sort of exposure to real voters that candidates of old would have killed for. Ultimately though, Obama won because people wanted change and that is what he represents, for better or worse.
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November 9th, 2008
Right, “for better or worse”.
So Dave, do you consider yourself one of these “unbiased bloggers”? I mean, you reference wildly liberal sources and link to a fairly libertarian site’s analysis, so if you only evaluate those sorts of sources you get a possibly very different answer to your question than if you took an unbiased look at the entire political spectrum.
But this is a tech blog, so why you’re writing about politics I don’t get. There’s plenty of politcal blog sites you could post on, do they not pay as well as Blorge?
So, why DID Obama win? Or alternately, why DID Mac lose? Mac’s campaign throughout did NOTHING to energize or enthuse the base that would need to turn out in order for him to win, while Obama did exactly that. He energized the liberal base to beat Clinton, then remarkably held them in the the general as he went more moderate. Mac was unable to do that.
And of course, Obama probably outspent Mac 10:1, which regardless of the internet is what ultimately bought him the presidency.