BREATHING
FIRE
such realities. It’s simply that conservatives must do better.
“Republicans have done a pathetic job of reaching out to people
of color,” former Arkansas Gov.
Mike Huckabee (R) said on Fox
News on election night.
Woodson warned that “outreach” has to begin from the
ground up, and that conservatives can’t approach it paternalistically (an approach that has
bedeviled liberals, too).
“You need to come with an open
heart, to really believe that you
have got as much to gain from this
relationship,” Woodson said. “If
you don’t come with an attitude
of, ‘I am going to learn something
from this,’ it’s patronizing. I would
rather you stay home.”
MAGIC ROBOTS
THE OBAMA CAMPAIGN’S
ground game was built around the
idea of relationships. Campaign
staffers could not get to know every targeted voter, but they leveraged data and technology tools
to reach out to undecided voters
through preexisting relationships,
seeing that as a far more effective tool for recruiting many voters than mere communiques from
their own campaign.
HUFFINGTON
01.20.13
“A TV ad is intrinsically non
credible, even if it’s true,” said
Obama digital director Teddy Goff.
Goff said that many voters in focus groups, when shown ads from
both campaigns with competing
“THE REPUBLICAN
PARTY HAS FOR
TOO LONG TALKED
AT PEOPLE RATHER
THAN SPOKEN
WITH PEOPLE.”
claims, threw up their hands and
said, essentially, “It’s all bullshit.”
“The best thing we can do at
least now with the technology
we’ve got is try to get people talking to their friends,” Goff said.
“That’s when you have to get into
the sort of nitty gritty of how
these different [online and social] networks operate and the
sort of language and vernacular
of each of them and how you can
actually be a part of it.”
Using tools built by its in-house
data and tech teams, the Obama