MyMcCain and MyObama: How the candidates are using the web...

[carpe diem]

If Obama makes the most of this, it could be reap huge benefits down the road for him...good planning, preparation on his part.

http://www.techpresident.com/node/97

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BarackObama.com

The tools are far ahead of anything available on the GOP sites. It pains me to say that, but it's not even close. There far ahead of anything on the Democrat sites as well.

Obama allows users to create their own blog, to create events, to fundraise, and to network together. The ability to organize laterally is present in every one of Obama's tools and stands in stark contrast to McCain's top heavy style.

What happened to 2004?

Achievement in almost any field comes from taking that which came before and building on it - making it better, faster, easier to use, or more attractive. The Bush campaign learned from the Dean folks in 2004. We saw the power of lateral organizing and empowering our supporters. We didn't, in my opinion, go far enough, but we moved the ball as much as the GOP system would allow.

We focused our attention on finding and recruiting supporters, and giving them tools to reach voters, whether by phone, e-mail or door knock. We allowed them to host events, but more importantly, we allowed them to open the doors to other volunteers. Their invite lists wasn't pulled from their personal address book. It included other Bush Volunteers who lived nearby. It connected neighbors who had never met, and allowed them to work together for the benefit of the campaign.

The current crop of Republican sites indicates that nothing was learned from the success we had. Nobody is building on what was done before. Nobody is taking the last generation and making it better. Nobody saw, in that model, the power you can have by opening the system and giving control to the user.

On the Democrat side, the only one I see who has actually learned from 2004 is Obama. He has taken the best of the Dean model, and the best of the Bush model, and come up with a very good package.

The only thing I am not seeing is the inclusion of voters in the mix. I suspect that's coming. The inclusion, specifically, of "Organizing" as an event type leads me to believe they're already hard at work.

If Obama can tie the events on his sites to arranging precinct walks with maps he provides, or volunteer phone banks with scripts and call lists from his voter file, he may well be unstoppable. There's certainly no indication on the right that any of the candidates know what it's going to take to compete.