President Obama has just sent a brand new email to folks in the 20th urging them to get out and vote for Scott Murphy and even providing a polling place finder link. The message was sent to those residents of the 20th who are on the Organizing for America and DNC lists.
Tomorrow, Tuesday, is the day to vote in New York's 20th Congressional District special election, and I need you to go vote.
I wrote to you last week to announce my endorsement of Scott Murphy because we need his kind of leadership and experience in Washington. It's going to be a very close race, and your vote could make all the difference.
Our movement for change has come this far because supporters like you stood up and made your voices heard every time it mattered.
With Scott in Congress, we'll work together to bring about solutions to our economic challenges and create new jobs in Upstate New York and across the country.
Having created over 1,000 jobs by starting successful businesses in clean energy and high-tech industries, Scott understands the potential we have to rebuild our economy and create a new foundation for prosperity.
That's the kind of partner I need in Washington. Please look up your polling place and vote tomorrow:
Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) is moving on two fronts to make transparency a linchpin of his campaign, opening his fundraisers to reporters and clamping down on the Democratic National Committee's fundraising from Washington insiders.
The moves, announced on his second full day as the party's de facto presidential nominee, are designed to drive a campaign message of change versus more of the same, aides said.
His likely opponent, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), closes his fundraisers to the press. Beginning last night, Obama will open all of his fundraisers to at least a pool reporter, who will share the information with the rest of the press corps.
Beginning Thursday, the DNC will no longer accept checks from federal lobbyists or political action committees, mirroring the strict standard Obama adopted for his presidential campaign.
This is a huge move in many respects, at least the optics of it, but it also is yet another sign that the days of big, transactional giving are numbered. Obama is uniquely positioned to make such a move and the DNC is in a fine position to take his lead. Barack Obama has raised close to 300 million dollars so far and he's done so in a rather spectacular way. So far, nearly 1.5 million individual donors have given to the campaign. The vast majority of those donors gave online and the average contribution was just north of $90. 94% of all those contributions were under $200.
Those are truly stunning numbers. The number of donors is so large that the FEC simply can't process them with their current spreadsheet software. Obama has built an army of small dollar donors. In fact, Democrats have built such an army, millions of people who are perfectly comfortable donating money to candidates online. This, friends, is a sea change in the way that such campaigns are funded. While there are still plenty of individuals out there who will "max out" to candidates in one lump payment and there are still "bundlers" who corral large numbers of such donors, their importance is being greatly diminished. They may even be approaching irrelevancy given the demands often attached to such giving. The donor who gives $100 online doesn't expect lunch with the candidates or demand special favors in return. They are, however, "invested" in that candidate.
This is a very, very good thing.
And don't think for a second that the Republicans haven't noticed. They are beginning to freak out about the ease with which Obama can raise large sums of money from his vast army of small donors. And numbers like these should scare the pants off of them:
• If each of Obama's donors gave him a modest $250, he'd have $375 million to spend during the two-month general election sprint. That's $186 million a month; $47 million a week.
• During the same September to Nov. 4th period, McCain will have about $85 million to spend since he has decided to take taxpayer money to help finance his campaign activities.
• Obama has more than 1.5 million donors; McCain has a few hundred thousand. If just a million of Obama's donors sent him the maximum donation, $2,300, he could raise $2.3 billion.
Right now, this phenomenon is most visible at the federal level, most specifically with the presidential race, but I do believe that will change. In the last two cycles, tens of millions of donors have been made comfortable with the idea of contributing small amounts to candidates via the internet. Once that threshold has been crossed, and now that entities like ActBlue are working working with state level candidates, I think it's only a matter of time before we see these same patterns of giving make their mark in races further down the ticket. In a state like ours, this is an unalloyed good.
Today the DNC is launching an awesome and potentially very valuable new tool they are calling Flipper TV. They are archiving tons of tracker video on the Republican presidential candidates and accepting new video from activists and citizen journalists around the country. Even better, they storing them on blip.tv allowing users to easily download and edit or re-edit them. Very smart. From an emailed press release:
DNC Launches FlipperTV New Tool Makes Raw Video Footage of Republican Frontrunners Available Online
Washington, DC - As the Republican presidential candidates prepare to finally answer questions tonight directly from the American people at the CNN/YouTube debate, the Democratic National Committee launched FlipperTV, a unique, new online video tool that is part of the DNC's ongoing efforts to hold Republican frontrunners Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, and John McCain accountable for their positions and flip flops along the campaign trail.
For months now, Democrats have been tracking the Republican presidential frontrunners in the field, compiling a video library of candid moments as they campaign across the country. Found at FlipperTV, insert link, Americans can now watch and download this video and use the footage as they wish, putting raw material into the hands of the American people to hold these candidates accountable for their comments and actions.
By crowdsourcing, the DNC is seeking to engage people by making data available for their own personal use, enabling users to sort through the video and expose the Republican frontrunners' flip-flops, contradictions, and policy positions that show how our of touch Republicans are with the American people. FlipperTV will allow activists and voters to download video to their computers, edit it to create new user-generated video, and help catch Republicans flip-flopping and exaggerating their records.
"The idea behind FlipperTV is simple: let the American people hear directly from the Republican candidates unscripted and in their own words, and let them decide if they want four more years of Bush's failed policies or a Democrat who will bring change to the White House," said Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean. "This video will come directly from the campaign trail, letting voters see who they truly are, not who their campaigns want them to be."
FlipperTV already has more than 80 separate events on video and will quickly upload new footage as it happens, starting with clips from tonight's Republican CNN/YouTube debate. Online video has played a critical role in the political process and in 2006 was essential to Democrats defeating Republicans like George Allen, Conrad Burns, and Lincoln Chaffee. Already, candid videos have captured John McCain singing the words "bomb Iran" to the tune of the Beach Boys song "Barbara Ann" as well as Mitt Romney saying that instead of serving in the military, his sons are helping the country by campaigning for him.
This is a smart move in many ways and again shows that Democrats are using and deploying these new mediums and technologies much, much better than their GOP counterparts. I'm sure many of you have heard recently about the NRCC's user generated video contest that was to pick 5 winning videos attacking Democrats. The contest, described by Chris Bowers as a "massive bellyflop", received only 5 entries, one of which was this hilarious spoof, submitted by, um, Democrats. I'm not entirely sure it didn't go completely over the heads of the judges either...
