Over the past year, the White House website has posted a "West Wing Week" summary blog with highlights and human interest stories looking at the goings on in the Obama Administration. (Here is this week's installment.) This comes in addition to a substantive, constant updates from the White House blog.
Yesterday, the Obama 2012 campaign website (at the good old BarackObama.com domain) launched a Weekly Wrap-Up highlighting campaign activities and the work of the Obama campaign and volunteer organizers. The week's highlights include information about the summer organizer program, an update on one-to-one organizer meetings, the President's town hall events and a discussion of new White House apps recently released.
The launch of the 2012 campaign has focused mostly on a simple set of action steps targeted at the low-hanging fruit in the new media organizing apparatus. There is a simple question: Are you in? There's an easy way to sign up for campaign updates, purchase campaign materials (bumper stickers, posters, stickers), information on groups, volunteer opportunities, and grassroots fundraising (three of the big developments in 2008 that are likely to play a central role in the early success of the 2012 re-election campaign), and a blog with ways to link in and comment using Facebook, Twitter, and other social media.
Facebook is pretty clearly one of Obama's biggest campaign assets. With over 19 million "likes" on his Facebook page, Obama has a powerful medium to share his message. And the "Are You In" app is one more way that Obama is able to pivot from a latent passive set of observers to an active group of organizers capitalizing on their social networks to power one-to-one relationships.
I had my one-on-one meeting with my community organizer yesterday. She and I talked about our experiences over the past couple years (we know each other well), the frustrations and challenges of the 2010 elections, and the retooling of the Obama campaign for 2012. One clear point that was highlighted is the reliance of the Obama Administration on people-centered politics and grassroots organization. With National Field, MyBO, and other social networking tools, the Obama Administration is working to listen and respond in real time to the events on the ground all over the country. This is one reason why the Obama Administration is focused on job creation and gas prices - and why Obama feels confident that a vast majority of Americans will support Democratic budget proposals over the proposals from Paul Ryan and the Republicans.
I'll be working to contact 44 voters (Obama is the 44th President - get it?) over the next several weeks and host a series of neighborhood team meetings, phone banks, and one-on-one meetings. I'm doing this completely on a volunteer basis. My day job (two, actually) and parenting responsibilities will still be a priority, which means that I'll have to be extra-disciplined about making time for organizing work. The value of this kind of organizing, however, is immeasurable. We know that the volunteers are out there - I was able to identify a number of top-tier potential volunteer team leaders who have already said they're willing to take action in my neighborhood. (Many of them are friends.) Of course, this is no substitute for the kind of traditional campaign efforts that we're familiar with (big-dollar fundraising, media, candidate events, polling, etc.). But the synergy between the "top-down" and grassroots organization is going to be fun to watch.
Democrats were right in 2008. They were right in 2010, but lost the election because Republicans were able to dampen enthusiasm among progressives and use outside anonymous campaign contributions to press their financial advantage during a time of high unemployment. The key here is for organizers to get past the distractions and disappointments of the past 2 years and renew commitment to the same core values that we've always shared as progressives.
I'll try to keep you posted about how things go over the next week. Feel free to follow me on Twitter.