I Voted Republican and I Don’t Even Know How to Play Pinochle
The latest election was most certainly decisive. The American public voiced their opinion and it was not for the Republican party. The Obama campaign absolutely destroyed McCain’s social media efforts in every single way. But I would hope that to be the case. Supposedly the Republican base is much older and out of reach from social media’s influence.
With that said… I am concerned for the future of the Republican party.
While utilizing social media in the McCain campaign might not have been very useful in the 2008 election, the Republican party cannot continue to ignore its power. The fastest growing demographic on Facebook is the 35+ group and if the Republicans want to maintain a strong presence into the future they are going to need to do something. The GOP can’t afford to have Republicans start dying off without replenishing the ranks.
Shockingly enough, there are Republicans out there who don’t know how to play pinochle, who listen to independent music, shop locally and even use the internet. Some… actually know how to end a call on a cellphone-
Brian “…leave a message and I’ll get back to you.”
Grandma “Hi Brian. Just wanted to say hi. Talk to you later. Love ya.
Grandma “How do I turn this thing off?”
Grandpa “I think you hit that button”
Grandma “Which button?”
Grandpa “The button with the red phone on it.”
Grandma “Is it off?”
Grandpa “I don’t know. Just close the phone.”
Grandma “I’m trying to drive!”
click.
Now I know these activities have been enjoyed by some democrats for a while now, but Republicans are just starting to get this social media thing. The party might actually be able to round up some of the young Republicans and organize them if they used the internet to even half its potential. It is the organizing that the Obama campaign executed on that I think that is what the GOP is missing due to not having a strong social media plan. Social media can organize people who wouldn’t have been able to organize otherwise.
Is there any hope for us Republicans? I think so. If the GOP actually looks at what social media can do and puts some thought and effort into creating a modern (and aesthetically pleasing) internet presence, I do think more Republicans will go online and contribute to the party. Is it going to happen as fast as it probably should happen? Probably not… but hey, we just happen to have a lot of people in our party who like Sit and Be Fit… we gotta take it slow.
(2 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)
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8 Comments, Comment or Ping
Joey Mornin
“Grand Old Party” has a certain ring to it in this case, I think. McCain’s online campaign was abysmal compared to Obama’s—which reflects his well-publicized skepticism of technology, and his campaign’s own technology policy (http://www.johnmccain.com/Informing/Issues/CBCD3A48-4B0E-4864-8BE1-D04561C132EA.htm).
Your post speaks to an identity crisis within the GOP, which was brought into clearer focus by Obama’s ability to generate a large and mostly unified online front, while McCain faltered and went in several directions at once. I’m not making a political aggression—it’s just a reflection of the composition of today’s Republican party, which, when it comes to technology and the internet, tends to diverge instead of self-organize. It’s no coincidence, either, that an overwhelming majority of the tech community supported Obama (http://www.techforobama.com/).
But, you’re not alone. Many Republicans are trying to figure out how to make online organizing work for their party. I think it’ll be part of a deeper soul-searching period partywide while Obama’s in office, but the gears are starting to turn. See http://www.rebuildtheparty.com—a manifesto about the GOP loss and the need for online grassroots organizing. It’ll be interesting to watch how it all takes shape.
Nov 18th, 2008
pam
Not sure how many people have noticed, but in the two weeks since Obama’s win, there have been several stories about how Howard Dean’s early use of social media set the stage for Obama’s traction with younger voters. See this story in the New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/16/magazine/16wwln-lede.html?scp=2&sq=Howard%20Dean&st=cse). The Dems had an early adopter in Dean. McCain didn’t have the same benefit. So, although McCain’s social media strategy was terribly flawed (people, including Shirky, said the same of Dean) maybe McCain’s missteps represent the Republican beta. Something tells me the GOP will be getting a lot smarter about social media over the next four years.
Nov 18th, 2008
Brook Ellingwood
When I enrolled in MCDM, I didn’t anticipate how often I’d be finding myself with vials of nitroglycerin in my hands. I’m going to try to type carefully with them there though.
Social media is, in my opinion, a side note to this election. Barack Obama won because of enormous historical forces. He was the candidate best positioned to take advantage of whatever the emergent method of communication was, because he was the candidate whose message most clearly matched the mood of the country. And what determined the mood had more to do with long-term political cycles and short-term realities than the way the message was conveyed.
The historical forces that shaped Barack Obama as a candidate are the same historical forces that shaped the emergence of social media. They may be deeply intertwined, but they also could exist without each other. There’s nothing magical about it. If the emergent communication medium had been writing messages on paper airplanes, Obama’s campaign would have buried McCain’s campaign with 100:1 paper airplane ratio.
However, I studied McLuhan in my undergraduate days. How can I reconcile what I just said with the McLuhanist tenet that “the medium is the message”? It’s because those who understand the idea also understand that they can’t take a message intended for one medium and expect it to work in another. McLuhanists change what they say depending on where they say it.
Kennedy understood that, with TV, debates were no longer about speaking, but about one’s appearance while speaking, and that lesson served presidents for 40 years. But did Kennedy win because of TV? No. He won, in part, because he was accepted by the generation that elevated TV to a central place in their lives. If instead they had elevated the Etch-a-Sketch to that place, he still would have won, because he would have understood how to use the Etch-a-Sketch to convey his message to that generation.
I love digital media. It’s been a central focus of my life and my career for quite a while now, and I’m thrilled to be taking a more academic approach to it now. I even think it’s part of a communications revolution. And I’m certain that it’s an essential part of election campaigns moving forward. But I think we need to be very careful in overestimating its power and losing site of the bigger world within which we live.
Nov 18th, 2008
Brook Ellingwood
Dang. I sure wish I could go back to my last comment and correct “site” to “sight.” That’s embarrassing.
Nov 19th, 2008
pam
I completely agree with you Brook. Obama won because of environmental forces and the fact that he was an exceptional candidate. The use of social media simply enhanced his already strong community organizational skills. It enabled more people to feel a part of the process, which in turn created a groundswell of support. But it was his highly appealing narrative that ultimately lead him to the position of president-elect.
Nov 19th, 2008
Mattso
I’m pretty sure Barack Hussein Osama, I mean Obama, won by promising all those godless liberal hippies that he would take away the guns and religion Real America(tm) clings to, redistribute Joe the Plumber’s hard-earned wealth, and enslave all the white folk while burning an American flag with his buddies Bill Ayers and Reverend Wright as they take in the view from the balcony of some highbrow cigar room at some snobby Ivy League country club for secret Muslims. I mean, the people have spoken, and they wanted a terrorist-socialist-racist-elitist-Kenyan-born President. Can’t you just accept that, Brian?
In all seriousness, one thing I think you have to take into account is the affect that new media had in quickly disarming the usual Rovian scare tactics that helped Bush win twice. There is a middle-ground of independent and swing voters in America that I would assume is a little more web-savvy than the GOP grandma’s and grandpa’s you’ve described, that only 4 years ago wasn’t able to really go on-line and find out what was actually going on with Swiftboats or flip-flops, etc, using tools like YouTube or Digg or Twitter, tools they could now look to for more even-handed expositories this time around. Ariana Huffington pointed that out a few weeks ago at HuffPo. She thinks that played a part in defeating the strategies of Karl Rove, which it would appear the McCain camp turned to in trying to rally their base of old media consumers (choosing Palin was a big part of that). So, it’s not so much that Obama and co. utilized social media to attract and empower voters, it’s also that people in general were getting their information about the candidates from social media more and more this time, totally independent of either campaign, too. That’s how stuff like the silly accusations I listed above (…like the Ayers, Wright, Muslim, Socialist, etc things) could be deconstructed and the real facts could be spread around. I’m not saying that everything echoed on-line is fact, but when you can watch videos in context, read transcripts, see what people were actually saying, get further clarity, etc, that’s what I mean. Kerry didn’t have quite the same luxury, or so Ariana Huffington argues. I generally agree.
Nov 19th, 2008
Aaron Seeley
Can social media bring the GOP back to power??? Beyond using obvious technology, I’ll be curious to see how they’ll frame the party, especially if Obama governs more like a Clinton-centrist on many traditionally Republican issues and not the pinko socialist as the GOP tried to label him. Also, Brian mentions the 35+ demographic growing on Facebook…But does that necessarily address the 2-1 advantage Obama held among the growing Latino population? Regardless of the means of communication, what message will the GOP push to become more than a party of mostly white folk? Of course Obama hasn’t even been inaugurated yet and chaos abounds, but I’m curious about what Obama/Dem missteps would overpower the national memory of the Bush catastrophe to tilt 2012 back to the GOP?
Nov 21st, 2008
Brian Johnson
I agree that there were larger forces at work in this election than just social media and that social media. Even if the McCain camp had rocked the social media world, I doubt it would have made a difference in the outcome of the election.
Nov 28th, 2008
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