Tom Griffin (London, OK): Two key figures from Barack Obama's election campaign visited London last week, offering advice for progressives about what they can learn from Obama's successful use of new media on the road to the US Presidency.
The prospect that Labour might replicate Obama's formula has been greeted with scepticism both by those, like Guido Fawkes, who have contributed to the right's perceived ascendancy in the British blogosphere, and those like Sunny Hundal, who are contesting that dominance.
Guido suggests that "one of the issues that Labour has is that it does not know what it wants to achieve." Sunny reaches a remarkably similar conclusion:
I get the feeling many within the Labour party, including Derek Draper, think implementing the online technology used by Obama alone can give them the edge. This is deluded. The technology makes it easier for voters to do existing activity: donate money and organise with others to support their candidate. It also allows the campaign to reach voters cheaply and, in certain cases such as micro-targetting, it also offers an edge above traditional voter contact.
Sunny's point is a fair summation of the picture presented by Obama's former new media director Joe Rospars and his Blue State Digital colleague Thomas Gensemer at a Compass roundtable in the Palace of Westminster.
"You can build the technology but until you do the organisational transformation to leverage the technology you're wasting time and money," Gensemer said. "If you put tools in the hands of people, they will self-organise."
Some at the meeting were concerned that such tools were open to infiltration by political opponents. Rospars and Gensemer were utterly relaxed about this. They assumed their activities were being tracked by opponents, but that any attempts at sabotage, for example, by republicans making volunteer phone calls for Obama, would have a negligible effect within the overall effort.
This might be seen as a function of the size of the US electorate, but Rospars insisted that their techniques could be replicated on a smaller scale. Their key success had been in mobilizing a greater proportion of their existing base of support, something they thought could be achieved by organisations of any size.
Asked if they had a specific strategy for 'non-politicos' they responded that: "the strategy was for mobilising those people. There aren't enough politicos in the country to make a difference."
Rospars emphasised the need to treat supporters "with respect for their intelligence and their analytical ability", and also to interact with them on an 'opt-in' basis that reflects what they have chosen to share with the campaign rather than what may be available from marketing databases.
A final key question was how the relationships established in Campaign 08 will develop in future. Rospars acknowledged that "the challenge of new media in government is different from the challenge on campaign," but added that "no President has ever walked in with that kind of mobilisation behind him."
