Obama 2012 Hiring More Staffers To Manage Campaign Data
BY Sarah Lai Stirland | Thursday, April 26 2012
Barack Obama's re-election campaign is once again on the look-out for data geeks. Specifically, the campaign is creating an "Obama Field Tech Academy" to train new staffers to manage the volumes of information generated ... Read More
Jon Stewart and Barack Obama's "Techno-Wizard" Ways
BY Nick Judd | Friday, April 6 2012
By now you may have seen this video of Jon Stewart taking Barack Obama's re-election campaign to task for the barrage of casual requests for money that tend to crop up towards the end of each month and as campaigns approach quarterly filing deadlines with the Federal Election Commission. Besides Stewart being Stewart, the idea that the President of the United States doesn't need to resort to headlines like, "Hey," to get money, and a brief clip of techPresident publisher Andrew Rasiej, the video is worth watching because it's an example of another thing the Obama campaign is casually doing: Figuring out exactly what to say to you online. Read More
The Obama Campaign Online, Easter Edition
BY Sarah Lai Stirland | Friday, April 6 2012
President Obama took off the gloves this week and started to attack Republican presidential frontrunner Mitt Romney by name in speeches throughout the week. That freshly confrontational stance manifested itself in the ... Read More
Conservative Grassroots Group To Arm Tea Party Activists With Mobile Canvassing Tool
BY Sarah Lai Stirland | Thursday, March 29 2012
American Majority Action, a conservative "social welfare" group, is unveiling a new initiative on Thursday that it hopes will help Republicans catch up with Democrats in the political technology arms race in the 2012 ... Read More
Obama Loves You Back
BY Micah L. Sifry | Friday, March 16 2012
We don't think it's a coincidence that just days after the site ObamaLovesYouBack.com appeared online, the Obama '12 team sent out an email from Michele Obama titled "I Love You Back" and reading: Dear _____ I see this ... Read More
Romney Campaign Hijacks Obama Campaign Manager's Fundraising E-Mail Again
BY Sarah Lai Stirland | Wednesday, March 14 2012
Mitt Romney's campaign manager Matt Rhoades sent out a fundraising e-mail Tuesday night, but most of the writing in the note was done by Jim Messina, President Obama's campaign manager. Rhoades had forwarded Messina's ... Read More
Yes They Can: What Voters Have Lost and Campaigns Have Gained From 2008 to 2012
BY Micah L. Sifry | Tuesday, March 13 2012
Is the Internet empowering voters as much as it did in 2004 and 2008? Or have campaigns regained the upper hand, with their sophisticated use of data-mining? That was the question we debated Sunday afternoon in Austin, at the annual South by Southwest Interactive conference. Read More
From left to right: Chris Kelly, Christine Pelosi and Fred Davis at Rally's Super Tuesday party. Photo: Rally.
San Francisco, Organizational Hub for a New Class of National Politicos
BY Sarah Lai Stirland | Thursday, March 8 2012
What was unusual about an evening Super Tuesday gathering in San Francisco was that many of the people there aren't working in a startup aimed at making some commercial aspect of life easier, faster and more fun. Instead, they are part of a generation of people with both political and tech savvy, using the web to fundamentally alter politics in general and specific campaigns in particular. For these people, the promise of a networked world and a new, networked politics — where people connecting outside the by-all-accounts-flawed and scandal-fraught party apparatus are starting to make an impact — is coming into focus. And rather than using their knowledge of the technology world to start the next Facebook, they're building a cadre of Silicon Valley companies that work in public affairs — not just non-profits, government, and civic life, but politics and campaigns. Read More
GOP Campaign Vet Leaves CRAFT Media/Digital to Start a Firm Focused Outside the "Partisan Arena"
BY Sarah Lai Stirland | Wednesday, February 29 2012
Longtime GOP digital and communications strategist Michael Turk is branching out on his own after having spent the past two years with his partners and colleagues at the Republican-leaning political media consulting firm CRAFT.
Read MoreTeam Obama's Questlove Endorsement
BY Miranda Neubauer | Thursday, February 16 2012
In a video, Questlove, the drummer and joint frontman of the The Roots, the in-house band for Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, endorsed Barack Obama's reelection as part of the campaign's African Americans for Obama effort. "When I started supporting Barack Obama in 2008 he promised to bring real change and hope to our country and community as a whole," he says in the video. "This is not a quick fix. It's not like you can take a wand, 'BING,' and just make magic overnight. He needs eight years to finish the mission and we need to have his back." Read More