Featured Buzz
"If I had to boil down what has really happened in the election cycle, it is [that] you are finally seeing the real fruition of the full power of … the Internet on politics,” says Peter Leyden, director of the New Politics Institute, a Democratic group that studies campaign tactics and technology.
"The First 21st-Century Campaign," National Journal, April 19, 2008
“What’s amazing,” says Peter Leyden of the New Politics Institute, “is that Hillary built the best campaign that has ever been done in Democratic politics on the old model—she raised more money than anyone before her, she locked down all the party stalwarts, she assembled an all-star team of consultants, and she really mastered this top-down, command-and-control type of outfit. And yet, she’s getting beaten by this political start-up that is essentially a totally different model of the new politics.”
"The Amazing Money Machine," The Atlantic Monthly, June 1, 2008
Over the past year, the Obama campaign has quietly worked to integrate the online technologies that fueled the rise of Howard Dean —as well as social-networking and video tools that didn't even exist in 2004 — with the kind of neighbor-to-neighbor movement-building that Obama learned as a young organizer on the streets of Chicago. "That's the magic of what they've done," says Simon Rosenberg, president of the Democratic think tank NDN. "They've married the incredibly powerful online community they built with real on-the-ground field operations. We've never seen anything like this before in American political history."
"The Machinery of Hope," Rolling Stone, March 20th, 2008
Click on the image below to watch the video.
"NDN Discussion of the Uncharted Terrain of Campaign 2008," C-Span, February 20th, 2008
"The Web called it early," declared Peter Leyden, head of the New Politics Institute, a liberal think-tank analyzing the Internet's impact on politics.
It was nearing 12:30 a.m. at the Google-sponsored party in Charleston, S.C., just hours after the CNN/YouTube debate. This was in late July, during those dog days of summer when Sen. Hillary Clinton was branded by pundits as the favorite for the Democratic nomination. A "flawless campaign," they said of her "tightly disciplined" machine. To Leyden, however, Sen. Barack Obama had the edge -- the Web was saying so. Go on MySpace and Facebook, type "Obama" on YouTube, look at the money he's raising on the Internet, check out the traffic on the increasing traffic on his site, Leyden instructed. There was not much of a contest on the Web. Voters flocked to Obama.
But what about Howard Dean? Dean, the darling of the Web, eventually lost the nomination to Sen. John Kerry.
"Obama is not Dean," Leyden said, "and 2004 is not 2008."
"How the Web Predicted the Real Thing," Washington Post, May 8, 2008
“The need for money is probably going to reach some diminishing return, and it’s probably going to be a pretty low ceiling, compared to past campaigns,” predicts Peter Leyden, president of the left-leaning New Politics Institute. In other words, the emerging high-tech marketplace may yet bring us closer to what decades of federal campaign regulations have failed to achieve: a day when candidates can afford to spend less time obsessing over the constant need for cash and more time concerned with the currency of their ideas.
"The Post-Money Era," New York Times, April 29, 2007
About the Buzz:
Since the New Politics Institute (NPI) began in May of 2005 we have held a number of public forums in Washington DC and have put out a series of reports, surveys and white papers. Our work has been picked up in the national and local media, as well as made its way around the web and the blogosphere. Our staff and fellows have been used as a resource for journalists trying help the public understand the changes in politics.
Below are excerpts from various web and traditional media outlets that reference our work or draw off members of our network. They are currently organized with the most recent at the top.
With Latinos appearing key to the respective general election strategies of both John McCain and Barack Obama, experts say spending on Spanish-language media is set to shatter the previous record of nearly $9 million, the overall number achieved by both parties and outside groups during the 2004 race between President Bush and John Kerry.
"The spending is going to be unprecedented," said Simon Rosenberg of NDN, a liberal group that itself spent over $2 million in Spanish-language ads in 2004.
SIMON ROSENBERG, PRESIDENT, NDN: It's too low, it should be higher, but politics tends to lag behind the commercial advertising trends.
GERSH: Control is a concern. No campaign wants to see the candidate's banner ad pop up next to something obscene. Even so, this campaign has proven the power of online social networks to raise voter interest and money.
ROSENBERG: It's exciting because what it's doing, more than anything else, is allowing average people to play a meaningful role in the life of their democracy. That's a healthy thing.
Obama had been to 30 states to campaign for fellow Democrats in 2006, and developed a keen sense of the country's mood, analysts said. Clinton, who was obliged to concentrate on her own reelection in New York, traveled to only 14 states to campaign for fellow Democrats in 2006, and did not pick up on the direction the country was headed politically, they said.
"They didn't understand how much politics has changed since the 1990s. They were slow to use the Internet and the new media. Their understanding of the new coalition was imperfect," said Simon Rosenberg, president of the New Democratic Network and a veteran of Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign.
Ever since the internet propelled Howard Dean's campaign to national importance in 2004, observers have expected the web would soon play a pivotal role in electing a president. As Obama makes history by becoming the first African-American presumptive presidential nominee, his campaign is also the first to fulfill that long-anticipated internet promise. With an enormous internet-driven donor base of 1.5 million people, more than 500,000 of whom have accounts on Obama's social networking website, Obama is the first internet candidate to win mainstream success. His online supporters have created more than 30,000 events to promote his candidacy, some of which are still underway in the last primary states of Montana and South Dakota.
"It's impossible to imagine Barack Obama's rise without the modern methods that his campaign used to organize itself, particularly around the internet," says Simon Rosenberg, president and founder of the non-profit think tank the New Democratic Network. "This really was the most successful campaign of the 21st century."
"This is what happens is when you have a charismatic candidate, and you organize on a scale not seen before," he adds. "Literally, the size and scale of this is unprecedented in American political history, and it wouldn't have been possible without the money, and passion, and support of millions of American people."
