Barack vs. Fear / The Internet / Ignorance / Haters

This political season has already shaped up to be unprecedented on many levels. Senator Obama has dealt with things we can only imagine, all in a package of class, dignity, eloquence, and intelligence. I remember seeing a special awhile ago of how he stopped smoking. With all the stress he has had to endure these past months, I can’t really blame him that he ever took it up initially. Well, he is stepping his game up again, using his trusty friend ‘The Internet’ to fight…well, ‘the Internet’.

credit: springhill2008

Barack Obama is confident

We were ALL slack-jawed at his fund raising success through his website. For the first time in a very, very long time, one of our American politicians was put to the forefront with the dollars of ordinary Americans. By ordinary, I mean those who make less than six figures. With over a million and half donors, many pledging $5 regularly, he was able to put a lot of money where his mouth wanted to go. So, step 1, get money through your website.

If you signed up on his website, you were regularly updated by his right-hand man, campaign manager, and strategist, David Plouffe. Email has always been a great way to communicate your message. Ask the Color of Change campaign. People forward-it, reply and talk about it. So, step 2, maintain a healthy email campaign.

Steps 3 and 4 are ‘brush the haters off’ and secure the nomination. Done and done.

Now, we’re seeing Barack step it up a notch with Step 5, use your presence on ‘the Internet’ to fight your mythical presence floating in ‘the Internet’. His new ‘Fight the Smears‘ campaign does just that. With the social aspect of engaging users to submit false idioms slinking around, the website aims to keep Americans informed. A-la theTruth.com-esque, this move is brilliant on a lot of levels.

Fight the Smears

First off, it provides a concrete avenue the mis-informed without having to search for a soundbite that hasn’t been edited on YouTube. Second, the move represents how his administration addresses issues. It evolves, it learns, and it is open to practical solutions. Politics is steeped in red-tape, and I hope Barack continues to use these tactics in his presidency. I mean, even a presidential blog I could read periodically would be just shy of awesome, gleaming into the mind of our commander-and-chief as he tackles the world’s issues.

The second part of Step 5 that is being reported over at Black Enterprise is his use of new-age tools like Twitter. While I have been resisting jumping into ANOTHER platform that will inevitably deter me from my work (Jabber, AIM, Wordpress, Google Reader), Twitter is fast becoming the Internet’s information syringe. A shot from a popular Twitter-er (Barack has over 30k followers) can send the pipes into a tizzy, jump-starting bloggers to get the information on their site, even if it’s to get in the top Google search terms and increase their traffic. Can’t be mad at that. Get the people what they want, quick, fast, and efficiently.

In this information age, it is a definite must. To see how bad the slander has gotten, peep the dialogue from Jon Stewart the other day:

Classic.