Frank Rich cites their work in an op-ed for the New York Times:
For five years boomers have been asking, “Why are the kids not in the streets screaming about the war the way we were?” The simple answer: no draft. But as Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais show in “Millennial Makeover,” their book about the post-1982 American generation, that energy has been plowed into quieter social activism and grand-scale social networking, often linked on the same Web page. The millennials’ bottom-up digital superstructure was there to be mined, for an amalgam of political organizing, fund-raising and fun, and Mr. Obama’s camp knew how to work it. The part of the press that can’t tell the difference between Facebook and, say, AOL, was too busy salivating over the Clintons’ vintage 1990s roster of fat-cat donors to hear the major earthquake rumbling underground.
The two authors were also recently featured on PBS's NewsHour, where they were interviewed by Judy Woodruff.
More and more, the importance of the Millennial generation is becoming generally accepted as its impact is being felt in this election cycle. It's a demographic group that we at NDN and the New Politics Institute have long been interested in. You can find some of the work we have done on this topic here and here.
Moveon.org has just announced the winner of their Obama in 30 Seconds ad contest. It has been a very successful project with over 5.5 million votes cast and over 1,000 videos submitted. Peter Leyden discussed the contest earlier on our blog here.
Personally, I find the winning ad to be quite powerful. It strikes a nice bi-partisian tone while simulatenously packing in a multifaceted agrument that addresses many of Obama's perceived weaknesses. It features a white male (maybe working class?) who is a military vetern (national security) and at one moment appears with a flag flying in the background (patriotism). While not as creative as many of the other submissions, the ad is able to present a strong advocate that may appeal to a constituency that Obama has struggled with as of late. This ad certainly shows the wisdom of the crowd, and perhaps, the wisdom of Ben Affleck, one of many celebrity judges.
MSNBC reports that MoveOn.org will air the ad in Ohio, Wisconsin and Colorado spend around $200,000.
With record breaking fundraising comes record breaking spending. A recent NYTimes article cites CMAG figures showing that the Democratic candidates are spending more on TV advertising than in any previous primary, but given that none of these ads cast aspersions in the direction of the Republican nominee, this has led some to worry that McCain is getting a free ride.
After spending nearly $16 million in Pennsylvania, Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama have already passed the $100 million mark on television advertising in the states that have had primaries so far. The two Democrats' aggressive campaigns against each other have left little in the bank to mount an attack against Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee.
Given that the Democratic candidates have maintained their focus on each other—at least when it comes to TV advertising—the DNC, Moveon.org and the SEIU are picking up the slack and have begun running TV spots critical of John McCain.
While McCain is on the bus peddling his newly unveiled healthcare plan, the SEIU has put together an ad featuring healthcare workers' take on the Republican Senator's proposal. (Hint: they don't think much of it.) The ad will air in Ohio and Washington, D.C.
In time for the five-year anniversary of Bush's famous "Mission Accomplished" pronouncement, which has come to symbolize how acutely Bush has misunderestimated the difficultly of waging a war in Iraq, Moveon.org has seized the opportunity to remind us of where McCain stands on Iraq with both a quotation from his "100 years" remark and a picture of his lovely Bush embrace. The ad will first be aired in Iowa and New Mexico. The SEIU reportedly plans to spend $1 million over the course of next month on ads critical of McCain.
Lastly, the DNC has been getting some media attention for the two ads it has launched in the past few weeks. Taking a similar tact as MoveOn.org, the DNC's most recent ad makes use of McCain's "100 years" response to a question about the length of the US troop presence in Iraq. The ad powerfully couples the McCain sound byte with disturbing imagery and facts from Iraq.
Note: For more on political TV advertising, check out the video from a recent event we did on this very topic.
The ad, slated to begin airing next week during 6 p.m. newscasts, begins with a fundraising pitch followed immediately by the narrated lines, "For twenty years Barack Obama sat in his pew listening to his pastor." Lest we have forgotten about Reverend Jeremiah Wright and the ten seconds of sermon that had brought down upon a Obama a little fire and brimstone, the ad quickly reminds us. We get a split screen with Reverend Wright on one side giving his sermon and a photo of Obama with his arm around the Reverend on the other—in case you didn't get it, they know eachother. The ad's stated purpose is to voice opposition to N.C. gubernatorial candidates Bev Perdue and Richard Moore. So how do you get from the Wright scandal to an attack on these two candidates? Well, they both endorsed Obama and according to the ad, Obama is, "Too extreme for North Carolina." Thus, drawing on the transitive property of "endorse", if Obama is too extreme for North Carolina, and Bev Perdue and Richard Moore endorsed Obama, then they must be too extreme for North Carolina. Q.E.D.
Based on 1,032 ratings on YouTube, this video has an average of two out of five stars. If that were a letter grade, it would be a solid F. Also, if you look at the RCP average of head-to-head polling pitting Obama against McCain in N.C., Obama holds a slight advantage. So if North Carolinians really think Obama is too extreme then, in their eyes, McCain is a fanatic.
Sidestepping the issue of whether he can stand the heat of the "Kitchen", Obama's response to Hillary's ad follows the campaign's usual parry to the the experience jab by highlighting his judgement and unifying quality. The reply seeks to shift the terms of debate from which candidate would be best in a crisis to which candidate can best bring about change.
And a quick side note, some in the media have disparagingly described Hillary's recent attacks as a "kitchen sink" strategy. Now, it's not a stretch to say that entitling an attack ad "Kitchen" seems to invoke that very characterization. Seems like a strange move on the part of the Clinton camp.
A deeper look at the Democrats' TV ad spending in Pennsylvania yields a significant validation of an argument NDN and the New Politics Institute have long been making.
As Gail Shister wrote for the Philadelphia Inquirer, candidates are beginning to increase their spending on cable advertising.
Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama together will spend close to $5 million on TV ads in the closing week before the state's Democratic presidential primary Tuesday.
Philadelphia stations will take in more than $2.5 million of that total, including $445,000 spent on cable - an impressive 17 percent. Cable's average for the five weeks running up to the primary is even more impressive: 22 percent.
Nationally, cable accounts for about 20 percent of political ads this election cycle, experts say, up sharply from the 2004 presidential campaign.
Then, candidates bought cable time "to an embarrassingly low extent," Gallagher says. "They didn't understand we were able to deliver such power for them."
A greater interest in cable isn't suprising given cable's ability to provide much more granular targeting than broadcast. In the same piece, Evan Tracy, a panelist for our upcoming April 24 Reimagine Video event, sums up this point nicely saying, "Cable sells by the pint. Broadcast sells by the gallon."
Turning to the content of the advertising, Hillary's latest ad is very much in keeping with the uniformly strident tone the campaign has been taking in the final days leading up to the Pennsylvania primary. Thematically in harmony with her now notorious 3 A.M. ad, "Kitchen" repackages the readiness question. It begins with the narrator describing being the US president as "the toughest job in the world" while we are shown images of past US crises. Our attention is then brought to the current slew of challenges facing our nation ending with, "If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. Who do you think has what it takes?" Presumably the implication is that Hillary does have what it takes, turning on its head the demeaning sexist quip that Hillary should be relegated to the kitchen by inferring that yes, she should be in the kitchen, because it is a very hot kitchen and no one else can handle it.
Of course Hillary isn't the only one on the attack. In a break from the generally positive tone of the Obama camp's Pennsylvania ads thus far, "Afford", which began airing on Saturday, goes after Hillary's health care plan. The ad focuses on the same critique we have heard Obama lodge in debates, charging that people who can't afford health care will be penalized. (Another Obama ad, "Reason" also begin airing in Pennsylvania on Saturday.)
Major political candidates spend more on television advertising than on any other facet of their campaigns. And currently, the world of television is undergoing a sea change. More people watch cable today than broadcast and by the end of the year about a third of all homes will have a DVR, with 60 percent of those skipping all television commercials. Meanwhile, more and more people are watching commercial TV on the web. These are amongst the many changes which compel us to Reimagine Video and signal The End of Broadcast.
To discuss all this, the New Politics Institute and NDN are bringing together leading private sector practitioners to discuss the profound and historic ways the ruling media of politics - television - is changing and how new technologies must be mastered to reach new audiences.
Joining us will be:
Todd Juenger, leader of TiVo's Audience Research and Measurement business, which provides detailed insight into how TiVo viewers consume and interact with television programming and advertisements.
Tara Walpert, President of Visible World, Inc., a company that uses new tools to customize and target advertisements so that the right message reaches the right audience at the right time.
Evan Tracey, the founder and chief operating officer of Campaign Media Analysis Group, the leading custom media research company for politics and public affairs advertising expenditure data.
Simon Rosenberg, President and Founder of NDN and the New Politics Institute.
We believe this event will provide you with a practical understanding of how to navigate the changing world of television and how to make the most effective use of new technologies. So please join us on Thursday, April 24, at 12 p.m., in the ballroom at the Phoenix Park Hotel, 520 N. Capitol St., NW, Washington, DC.
Please make sure to RSVP here. If you have questions, please contact Courtney Markey at 202-544-9200 or cmarkey@ndn.org.
Finally, be sure to hold the date, May 9, for The New Tools and New Audiences of Campaign 2008, a day-long event on how to best harness the potential power of new technologies and demographic shifts.
On the airwaves Clinton and Obama are engaged in a back-and-forth over his now infamous "bitter" remark. According to Evan Tracey, a speaker at an upcoming event of ours, Obama is outspending Hillary on TV ads by a factor of 5-to-1. Outside groups are joining the fray with the American Leadership Project airing a pro-Hillary ad on healthcare. There is simply an enormous amount of political activity on Pennsylvania televisions.
Here's a little glimpse into the latest TV ad sparring. First, in an ad called "Pocket", Hillary challenges Obama on his commitment to take on oil companies.
The Obama camp was quick to respond while being careful to stay close to his narrative of harkening a new kind of politics.
Building on a post Simon Rosenberg wrote yesterday morning and a paper he co-authored a year ago advocating a one laptop per child program, I would like to elaborate on a theme NDN has been developing on the Democratizing power of technological developments. The argument is based on the assumption that making technology available to all people—across socio-economic delineations and geographic boundaries—is having a profound and world changing effect where previously disenfranchised peopled are becoming increasingly empowered. More and more, we are seeing a mounting body of evidence, as manifested in world events, to support this world-view.
While the article in The New York Times Magazine that Simon mentions focuses primarily on economics, it is not difficult to see the link between the promise of aiding millions (if not billions) in pulling themselves out of poverty and engendering citizens with greater freedom, as increased wealth pushes them up the hierarchy of needs. But I would like to focus in on some of the many examples—some of which Simon alluded to—of ordinary people using what is becoming ubiquitous technology to make their voices heard.
Most recently, the protests in Tibet showed how even the Chinese government, infamous for it's ability to control the movement of electronic information, wasn't able to silence news of the violence.
Tibetan monks at a monastery in Sichuan province sent word to exiled monks in Dharamsala, India, that two monks were arrested after they e-mailed photographs of monks killed in protests to the news media. Internet and phone service has since been interrupted to the Amdo Ngaba Kirti Monastery in Ngaba County, the exiles told CNN.
Of course, the Chinese government continues to exert its control over digital information as is evidenced above and its move to block YouTube and other online video sites. Still, these efforts are not fully effective as is noted here:
Beijing's blocking of the Web sites was not 100 percent effective: Tests by researchers at UC Davis and the University of New Mexico showed that banned words reached their destinations on about 28 percent of the paths they tested. Filtering was least effective during periods of heavy Internet traffic.
Last week in Egypt, we saw the use of cellphone messages to organize strikes. Not only were people using the medium to congregate, but the messages also helped citizens unify their message.
What may have most spooked officials was the way technology, especially cellphones, was used to spread the word, political analysts said. Mass messages circulated listing “demands” that included increased security, no more inflation, housing aid for young couples and an end to “torture in police stations.”
These are not isolated incidents. During the violent suppression of protests in Myanmar, ordinary citizens equipped with mobile devices were able record video, take pictures and transmit this information outside the country fostering international condemnation of the Burmese government's actions. Cuba has seen the emergence of a vibrant blogger community, which openly questions the government. (Although this may amount to the spread of an unhealthy habit.) Looking a little further back, in 2006, marches for immigrant-rights were strengthened by new communication tools. One reporter in San Francisco notes:
What's equally clear is that the immigrant protests in recent weeks haven't been the result of a formal plan issued by pro-immigrant organizations. Rather they've been fueled by word of mouth reinforced by Spanish language talk radio and television, and a plethora of new technologies, including cell phones, instant messaging and Web sites such as myspace.com.
The examples listed above may simply be the portent of a much larger shift. A shift that isn't merely a suped up vehicle carrying the same forms of communication, but rather a change that fundamentally alters the nature of our communication. One such alteration could be what Simon referred to as the virtuous cycle of participation, where new tools allow for a dynamic and fluid kind of networking. One where the barrier to entry is so low that anyone with an internet connection or a cellphone can immediately become an active member of a muscular and potent organization.
As further evidence emerges of new technologies giving voice to dissenting views and pulling people out of poverty, I'll try—along with others and NDN and NPI—to document these developments.
At the New Politics Institute we have already done a great deal of work examining the power of these new technologies to influence politics. That work can be found here.
According to the Washington Post, Congress is moving deeper into the world of web video, a tact the New Politics Institute has long advocated, but House member Kevin McCarthy has found that, in some cases, doing so breaks House rules.
More than 100 House members have multimedia pages and YouTube links on their Web sites -- all in violation of House rules that date to when lawmakers communicated with voters through snail mail and newsletters.
Amazingly, Rep. McCarthy and others have worked out a deal with YouTube whereby the tech giant will establish a commercial free section that Congress can use, which would put Congressional YouTube users back on the right side of this particular rule.
It's encouraging to see elected officials push further into the content creation side of web video. As George Allen and others have learned, it's probably better than solely being on the side where content is created against you.
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