It’s only been a few weeks since the actual conclusion of the Neverending Campaign, but it feels so much longer. Gone are the days of breathless Drudge-checking, poll scouring, and faux outrage from Candidate 1 towards wooden attack from Candidate 2, and now all we’re left with is the meltdown of the American economy, which could not be any more boring.
So, let’s ignore the grim realities in front of us and turn the clock back and re-examine Campaign 2008:
Most Significant Achievements:
You mean besides electing our country’s first African-American President? Well, there was also the nomination of the Republican Party’s first female Vice-Presidential candidate, but within the scope of our usual stomping grounds, I’d be hard-pressed to come up with a more significant electronic achievement than Barack Obama establishing an Internet machine to be seriously reckowned with. And parsing that down even further, I have to think that his incredible online fundraising machine is probably the most impressive and significant subset of his overall Internet effort, because I’m fairly confident he’s single-handedly established a trend that will dictate future campaigns for the forseeable future. Good-bye, public financing. Hello, small repeat online donors.
Most Ground-Breaking
While it ended up not amounting to much in terms of the overall electoral college, it is noteworthy that Ron Paul managed to launch pretty much the country’s first Internet exclusive campaign. Driven almost entirely by people congregating online, Ron Paul managed to hang around much longer than a traditional “fringe” candidate without the backing of a major political party, and it included such groundbreaking events as the $6 million “money bomb,” wherein Ron Paul supporters agreed to raise as much money for their candidate online as possible within 24 hours. Between Paul’s campaign and Huckabee’s brief flicker as GOP front-runner, which was largely driven by Chuck Norris power, this campaign proved that a no-name candidate can now use the Internet to make a big splash on the national scene.
Most Surprising
Even though we’re hailing the 2008 Campaign as the first truly Internet campaign, it’s worth noting that it was basically the Internet Candidate (Barack Obama, and to a far lesser extent, Ron Paul) versus the Offline Candidate (John McCain, who, despite inventing the BlackBerry, did not really use the Internet to obtain much of an advantage). And still, even with Obama driving an unheralded social networking machine and wielding a mighty e-scythe of millions upon millions of e-mail addresses and cell phone numbers, and John McCain largely puttering along to town hall meetings, television ads, and robocalls, we should remember that it was still a 52-46 campaign. While that’s a healthy margin by most American election standards, and the electoral college picture is much rosier for Obama, it’s not as if heabsolutely blew McCain out of the water thanks largely to the Internet.
Now, one could definitely make the case that Obama was able to use the Internet to earn a few extra percentage points in a state here or there thanks to more efficient GOTV efforts and whatnot, and as a result, the Internet played a vital role in his overall victory. However, many of us Netheads would do well to remember that the Internet is not going to usurp all other forms of media as the way to win a campaign … yet.
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