The Risks and Rewards of Thompson’s New Site

Bill Thompson just opened a new website designed by Blue State Digital, which also designed Barack Obama’s campaign site.

First of all, I’m increasingly inclined to give my qualified support Thompson for mayor – I don’t know if it was pure election-grandstanding, but it seems like every time he  makes a public announcement of some kind, like his workaround of the MTA fare-hike, it’s generally sensible, effective, and conscious of class dynamics in the city (for instance, as Comptroller he got city pension funds to remove their money from companies that privatise formerly public housing in the city).

But that’s beside the point – I think this will be a test case in how well folks other than Obama can use his organizing model in their campaign strategy.  While I trust that Blue State won’t apply the Obama model whole-cloth, many of the central elements of the Obama campaign revolved around him specifically, and might not translate well into other campaigns.  When someone wins, it always makes their system look better than it probably is, and thevalidity of the organizing model will be need to be tested in a vareity of contexts.

Here are some of the risks I see in adopting the Obama model:

-Looking like an Obama hanger-on: to stick in people’s minds, you need to develop a distinctive personality.  The individualist tendancy in American politics asks that politicians be in a way self-made.  Trying to ride the coattails too overtly undermines credibility and might hurt the campaign.

-Social Media can hurt too: trying to mobilize folks via twitter/Facebook/etc. can become a conspicuous display of a lack of support as well.  Having 50 people on a Facebook group demonstrates weakness in a citywide or statewide campaign.  Thompson should be  sure that embracing new media will build support among his target constituencies before over embracing the technology.

-You need a good story: Obama mobilized a series of glittering generalities based on his personal story.  Thompson needs to develop a central story that reduces to a short-worded theme and three key policy proposals to organize people behind the campaign.  One of the clear differences between Obama and Thompson’s site is the lofty quote Obama put on the top of every page.  Thompson doesn’t have the same type of cred, or story to get people together.

Mayoral Race Shaping Up

Avella at Atlantic Yards. from Tracy collin's flickr.

Tony Avella put out his first campaign literature of the Mayoral Campaign just as Bloomberg got his way on term limits. I think the themes on his first page – “a fighter for our neighborhoods” and “the revolution” (!) will shape up as the key themes of the campaign. With Bloomberg planning to run another all out $50 million plus campaign, challengers will need to mobilize natural constituencies – class most importantly. Bloomberg’s effort to upscale the city amounts to a spatial class-war, pushing poor folks to the margin of the city.

Avella’s rhetoric and his appearance at Atlantic Yards (above) shows how his campaign plans to approach dealing with the changing face of the city. I’m interested to see how it works out – I think there’s a risk with being so overt about the class terms used (the election isn’t actually a revolution and Avella is no Che), and I think there’s a good chance the community/grassroots organizer vote will be split among a number of candidates, including at least one that pulls a John Kerry and makes a ‘viability’ appeal the center of their campaign.

The Palin Payout

When the Sarah Palin nomination was announced, Pat Buchanan called her selection “the biggest political gamble, just about in American history”

I think we can now conclude what the payout from that gamble will be: Palin is hurting McCain big time, and she has started to out-Maverick McCain.

Palin was an unknown to America, and apparently also to the McCain campaign. Obama should hold on to that 130 million and invest in housing or something, it looks like it might be a waste to spend it in other ways.

Obama and Anti-Semitism

not what you think.

I think this argument has been made elsewhere, but I think it should be made again.  Comments about Obama’s character – specifically about him being a Muslim double agent and the like – strongly resemble anti-Semetic rhetoric. (Watched “The Eternal Jew” in class today, and it set me off) Here’s one recent example, and note the similarities.

1. “double agent” rhetoric – that he looks like us, but has shaved off his beard and attempted to walk among us, while maintaining allegiance to his ‘true’ religion.

2. Suspicion of the cosmopolitan/urban – both arguments assume that the ‘real’ volk reside in rural areas, working the land while the threatening other (Jew, Obama) reside in the city and lead intellectual lives

3. Marxim – For the Germans, Jews were simultaneously greedy and ideologicla descendents of Karl Marx; Obama is both ambitious and a closet Socialist.

4. The Mob – anti-Semetic propaganda painted the Jews as the face of organized crime, and some of the GOP’s recent talking points focus on Obama as a product of the corrupt Chicago political establishment run by the Mob.