Stop-Obama

Two points of disagreement with Jeff.

1) Hillary does not need Mark Penn to win this campaign. His departure means he will no longer be officially involved, but will continue to give advice. Penn’s wife, Nancy Jacobson remains a Senior Finance Adviser to the campaign, and then there is Penn’s private firm.

2) Obama’s internet presence is not the direct work of Axelrod, rather the result of his ability to integrate the internet into the Media.

I reported on Axelrod in my “Obama A Dream Come True.” He is the brains behind Obama the Candidate, Brand and Image.
From my reading about Axelrod (about 20 articles), I can categorically state that his professionalism resides in:

Image and Perception
Packages and Framing
Understanding the Communication Terrain
Buzz, Spontaneity, Grass-Roots (Astro-Turfing)
Personalizing, Narrating, Enthusing, Change
Bridging Distance Between fan and star
Attack Ads, Opposition Ads, Controversy
Hire the Right People
Overall Strategy

First things first. Axelrod is not just Obama’s strategist, he is his Media Strategies. Axelrod’s deputy from Axelrod and Associates, David Plouff, is Obama’s Campaign Manager; power is firmly in Axelrod’s hands.

No similar structure exists in the Clinton campaign.Mark Penn’s presence as “pollster” clashed with Mandy Grunwald’s chief “Consultant” role; his presence as Chief Strategists, clashed with Williams, Howard Wolfsohn, Harold Ickes designations.

Axelrod doesn’t have this headache. He runs Obama’s campaign, and Axelrod and Associates are Obama’s Chief Consultants. Where the firm’s expertise does not suffice, they call in GMMB, but it is Axelrod doing the calling.

As Chief Media Strategist, Axelrod understands that all most Voters will ever get from a Candidate, is an Image. The Image is rarely communicated directly; it is filtered through a variety of mediums, which we call the Media. Axelrod understands that we are living in a media age, and hence mediated Image is Image.

The media demand viewers, and to get them, they sell stories. Axelrod is the supreme master of giving the media the stories, he knows they can sell. Stories that are intimate, emotional, moving, and based on a simple “Hero-tale” of Good Guys vs. Bad Guy. What Juanita and Jamal often decry as “playing the victim” is in fact a central Axelrodian device for playing the Hero-tale. Axelrod’s Candidates are always either unprecedented and unappreciated, hence agents of change fighting the old and gray. It is Axelrod’s way of bringing heroism and Hollywood, Antagonists and Evil Forces, into politics. It hits the young, naive, and wishful. It is engaging, and always a blockbuster production.

***

Axelrod has a supreme handle on the Media’s appetite, and taste. Unlike any other Communications Consultant in this country, he has consistently placed African-American candidates in Public Office, and is more familiar with the Media terrain involved in such racial Campaigns. (The Clinton campaign, is simply clueless, while the Republicans have already done some hard preparation for this terra incognita)
I already mentioned in my “Obama a Dream Come True”, that Axelrod has a particular ability to use front-groups and networks to organize Social and Political Movements while giving them the appearance of being spontaneous, and popular. To be grassroot, bottom-up, rather than top-down and organized by elites.

This is what is called Astro-Turfing, and Axelrod, who until recently has remained silent on his work with Corporate Clients, is considered the best corporate Astro-Turfer in the corporate world. He is simply unmatched for getting something to look natural, unofficial, unaffiliated, and driven by popular demand.

He knows how to get the buzz going, how to get people excited by dangling carrots and dissimulating his true intentions. He knows what words to use and what stories to fabricate for people to stand up, and emphatically say “I want that”.

Rather than giving the carrot directly, Axelrod plays coy, subtly pushing the singular “I want” into a plural “We want“. His subtlety allows Axelrod to ratched up enthusiasm to levels heretofore unseen in politics, using very solid narratives, framed appropriately for various audience segments.

Even more importantly, everything he does, has a Media edge to it. He doesn’t take a step without considering the implications for Hype, for Popularity, for Image, and for Identification.

Underlying all his work is the key term of “identification”. Unlike his competitors, Axelrod admits that his overriding objective is to narrow the distance between Voters, and the Candidate. For this, he looks for literary devices to make voters identify with his Candidate. He relies heavily on biographies, stereotypes, expectations, and tension.

Axelrod creates tension through anticipation, and through tantalizing his audiences with an eventual release. The purpose is as novel, as it is radical - to give trite words and cliches, new and living meaning.

“Change” as a term, does not click automatically with Voters. Neither does the word “Unity”. Both have been worn out by previous candidates, from Reagan to Dukakis to Clinton and Bush, and had been considered consigned to the dustbin of political rhetoric.

Until Obama appeared, and the tension Axelrod has been building since 2005, was finally released towards the end of 2007, with the word Unity stripped of its totalitarian overtones, and Change suddenly tangible and present, in a really cut-Fresh, and USDA Organic way.

***

Axelrod’s talents are not just limited to the positive- to framing and packaging Candidates in ways the Media find appealing and voters can best identify with. When need be, Axelrod is vicious and cold-blooded. His ability to dig up dirt on opponents, and feed it into the Media, is legendary. Veterans candidly speak of a fear were they ever to find themselves in his crosshairs.

When Axelrod isn’t narrating and packaging, he displays exceptional skills in collaborating and finding the right people to get any campaign job done. Since he places a premium on hierarchy, he is always able to clearly communicate his intentions, and quickly penalize any deviance.

In short, Axelrod is as unique as they get. He has unmatched experience selling African-Americans to the mainstream, loves to play games with attribution and non-attribution, can break bones, prepare long-term, and execute strategies. His focus is on candidate Image, which relies on the media, but Axelrod’s notion of what constitutes Media, are broader, and more accurate than that of his competitors.

Axelrod’s definition of the Media, includes the internet; which he credits with having the peculiar quality of being able to convey a campaign message directly to Voters, without any intermediation. Fully sensing the opportunity of this, Axelrod has staked a lot on a heavy Obama internet presence. He has made the net more central to the Obama election Strategy than any preceding, or competing, campaigns.

***

To conquer the internet, Axelrod hired the most talented Internet Communication Professionals out there; he took on board a total of 13 such professionals, a staggering number compared to Hillary’s 3, or to Ron Paul’s one.

Chief among these individuals, was Joe Rospars, who in 2004 was part of the team who helped put Howard Dean on the Political Map, through the most aggressive and engaging internet strategy of the 2004 presidential election.
Rospars and his team went on to found Blue State Digital whose product all Clinton supporters know intimately. Don’t know what I am talking about? How about Hillary 1984?

The news at the time of 1984’s launch, was that its creator (Vallis) had immediately been fired from Blue State Digital. The press reported on Valli’s connection to Obama, only through his having cohabited with Obama’s press Secretary. The press conveniently forgot that the Chief of Internet Strategy for Obama, was a Blue State Digital co-founder, and that Blue State Digital is under contract with the Obama campaign for internet services. Even if Blue State claims that it does not produce content for Obama, knowing Axelrod’s methods, I doubt the relevance of Blue State’s claim.
Along with Rospars, Axelrod hired Facebook co-founder Christopher Hughes, who modeled Obama’s own networking and rapid response site, on Facebook. Hillary only recently, a month ago, finally copied Obama’s model. Rospars went on to promote Obama on MySpace. Both sites favored Obama to Hillary, in a very biased fashion. Facebook especially, since it receives money from the Obama campaign.

For a detailed article of the Obama push on the internet, read this article.

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One of the most phenomenal pro-Obama successes on the internet, was Obama Girl. Its creator Ben Relles claims he was not under contract from Obama, and would go on to make videos supportive of other candidates. I’ll believe it when I see it. So far, there have been five new Obama girls, and no Relles work supportive of Clinton.
Obama girl owes its success to exchanges on Obama’s Facebook-like website, and the Obama campaign never distanced itself from its appalling content; it simply stated that the video was not its own work.

Obama initially praised its creativity, and only later admitted his children were not fond of it. However, the campaign never distanced itself from a video which by any measure, was the lowest-point any political campaign has reached in our country’s history.

Knowing what I know about David Axelrod, I believe he knew of the video’s creation, and if not, then he knew not to distance himself from it. It is too much like him, to Astro-Turf something so low-brow across the internet, and reap the benefits.

Benefits? Keep Obama’s young supporters enthusiastic… and hopeful. Their idealist, after all, is still driven by their hormones.

National campaigns have all the resources at their disposal, to distance themselves formally from any messages made on their behalf, which detract from the campaign. Enforcement of this principle, has been ferocious in this campaign.

In keeping with his Media Strategy, Axelrod had made a deliberate choice not to distance his campaign neither from 1984 nor from Obama Girl.

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To date, the Obama campaign has spent $59 million dollars on Broadcasting media, $3.5 on the internet, and $2.5 on the press. Compare this to Clinton, who spent $33 million on the Broadcasting media, $1.7 million on the internet, and a measly $50,000 on the press.

That’s $66 to $35 million dollars, in Obama’s favor. Almost double. The two campaign’s internet presence on the spending level, and structure of spending, is simply incomparable. You have your media bias explained, and you have your culprit named.

Of its internet money, the Obama campaign has spent more on Blue State Digital and Facebook, than any other contracts (GMBB, and Centro) .

Hillary’s internet money has largely gone to a non-descript internet boutique which doesn’t even have a website.

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