I Feel For Ya, But I’m Glad You’re Still Losing

I really feel for my GOP online counterparts on the other side sometimes. While there are plenty of clueless hucksters lining their pockets to deliver a shitty product to their billionaire clients, there are also a number of smart, thoughtful folks who really get the art and science of how we do politics and elections online these days. They’ve been begging the money folks in that party for years to invest in the infrastructure that would allow them to compete to little or no avail, which, to be perfectly honest, is good news for those of us who disagree with their party on most everything. 

Here’s another example of an election post mortem pointing out how far behind they still are.

Largely the Right still views digital politics the way it views TV ads – they use it to drive a message to voters. And while you can certainly effectively deliver a message through a digital campaign, that is like using a smartphone for nothing more than to make and receive calls. The Internet today offers campaigns tools, data and insights that operatives could have only dreamed of a few years ago.
 
But the Obama campaigns of 2008 and 2012 took a completely different approach. The digital campaign wasn’t about driving a message as much as it was a tool that impacted each and every aspect of the campaign. You saw it in the write ups following the 2008 campaign and we will see more in the coming weeks and months as people analyze how the 2012 Obama campaign was able to engage and mobilize the left, leaving the GOP in complete shock on election day.
 
The Obama campaign knew they needed to do more than just drive a message. They needed a full blown digital campaign, integrated with a traditional campaign to give them data on how voters were reacting to their messages, what motivated them and how to engage them going forward. In a certain respect, the Obama campaign was able to use its online efforts to turn the electorate into a daily, real-time focus group that it used to direct every aspect of the campaign.
 
While Conservatives were focused on driving poll-test messages on TV, radio and online – the Obama campaign was using its digital efforts to engage in real-time two way communications to learn about voters, speak to them in a more intimate way and find the best ways to motivate them to engage with the campaign and ultimately get them to vote.