Strategy and Organising – Lessons from the Obama Campaign
Alongside these unwavering aspects, the campaign’s success was driven by the level of trust bestowed upon its supporters. Even before Illinois’ Junior Senator had announced his candidacy, his campaign had set a course to ensure that the organisational tone and style matched the campaign message. In the words of David Plouffe: ‘We ensured that volunteers were as close to the campaign as the campaign management.’2
‘Respect. Empower. Include’ was the mantra of the campaign and the three words could be found on colourful handmade posters decorating the walls of every Obama regional office in the country. In the words of volunteers Karin Christiansen and Marcus Roberts these core values meant that, ‘at a minimum [the campaign] helped mitigate the usual tensions and frictions of campaign life while at best they inspired volunteers to do that extra canvass round, ask friends and families to join them, and even make those small donations that funded the campaign juggernaut.’3 Ensuring that the treatment of volunteers was steadfast in its commitment to these principles was the part of the strategy that did most to create the biggest ‘get out the vote’ operation of all time. The organisational principles behind the slogan are set out in Box 1.
Obama’s tactics were essentially of old fashioned variety – grassroots mobilisation, canvassing, and saturation advertising – but driven by an extremely modern set of tools. It is critical for progressives to understand where the use of the internet fitted into the list of contributing factors to Obama’s victory. As Paul Tewes, the mastermind of the insurgency in Iowa described it, ‘message and organization won the campaign; technology served it.’4
That said technology played a more decisive role in improving the efficiency of the campaign operation than had arguably been the case in any previous election cycle. For example, Obama raised $687 million with nearly three-quarters raised online from 4 million people; 13 million people signed up to receive regular emails; and countless neighbourhood events and campaign operations were organised through the social networking tool, MyBarackObama.com. In essence, because the candidate and his message were so strong, the campaign was able to capture the unprecedented enthusiasm of his supporters and garner them to donate that extra dollar and knock on that extra door.
Progressive parties must understand that Obama’s success and the level of enthusiasm that were generated will be hard to replicate. Some may think that the task is to adopt the best ideas, practices and technologies used in the US and bolt them on to how party politics and campaigning is currently carried out. But believing that this is a purely technocratic challenge would be to fail. Parties must instead understand that to emulate Obama they need that victorious mix of trust and technology. New tactics and techniques are not enough if you do not combine them with a deep-seated shift in the nature of the campaign. What set Obama’s candidacy apart from that of either McCain or Clinton was that the harmonics were right: the pitch of ‘hope’ and ‘change’ was consistent with the tone of using modern online tools.
- Remarks by David Plouffe at Center for American Progress conference, March 9, 2009. [↩]
- Christiansen, Karin, Marcus Roberts (2009), ‘Respect, Empower, Include: the new model army’, in: Anstead, Nick, Will Straw (ed.), The Change We Need: What Britain Can Learn From Obama’s Victory, Fabian Society, London. [↩]
- Remarks by Paul Tewes at Center for American Progress conference, March 10, 2009. [↩]
