BREATHING
FIRE
information to disseminate.
Reed pooh-poohed digital for
digital’s sake and argued that the
values and ethos that guided the
Obama campaign’s tech strategy
was the key differentiator from
the Romney campaign (Reed and
Goff also acknowledged that their
extra year or so of lead time that
the Romney campaign didn’t
have was a huge factor).
“Obviously this is way less sophisticated than I think people
would like it to be,” Reed said. “I
think people think of some like
magic robots in the sky that we
just pointed at people who were
into Obamacare and then like
anointed them and we gave them,
like, secrets. But that’s 2016. 2016
that’s what we’ll do.”
A PERMANENT GROUND GAME
THE OBAMA CAMPAIGN’S online
efforts supplemented a ground
game — Bird’s domain — “A TV
ad is intrinsically non credible,
even if it’s true,” that saturated
the key areas of swing states with
volunteers and paid staff. The goal
of the Obama campaign’s staff
(they didn’t always achieve it, according to Bird) was to have one
campaign volunteer for every 50
targeted voters, while the Rom-
HUFFINGTON
01.20.13
“ONE OF THE
CHARACTERISTICS
OF THE RIGHT
IS THAT IT’S
MUCH HARDER
TO HAVE SOCIAL
NETWORKING,
BECAUSE PEOPLE
ON THE RIGHT
LIKE BEING
ICONOCLASTIC.”
ney campaign had a ratio of about
1 to 1,000. The effect of this was
that the most targeted voters were
hearing — electronically or in person — from Obama supporters
with whom they already had a relationship, or who were from the
area and with whom they could
establish a connection quickly.
“Some of them that didn’t know
[the undecided voters] at the be-