Obama's Message Is In The Remix

Watching the Obama campaign message, "Yes we can," morph into a music video and then once again into a user-generated participatory project is to see the beginnings of Web Politics 2.0.

There won't be a singular moment that captures the ascendancy of the Internet in the way that the Kennedy-Nixon debates marked the arrival of television. In part this is, of course, because television dictates the "must-see moment," while the Internet connects us in both more diffuse and more pervasive ways. Yet history will credit the Dean campaign for demonstrating the power of the Web and the Obama campaign for capturing its spirit.

A year after Time announces "You" person of the year, "You" are the centerpiece of the Obama message. Call it a movement (if you're a believer), or mass delusion (if you're a cynic), or crowdsourcing (if you're a geek). What we're learning is that while average candidates stand on their platforms, potential leaders become a platform for supporters to stand upon. This is why observers who talk about the powerful Obama "brand" only tell half the story. True, the "O" logo and even the name "Obama" might well be the most generative meme since the original iPod ad. But where a professional marketer sees a meaningless political Rorschach test, an organizer sees the outline of a community coalesced around common values.

Critics who hear Obama's rhetoric as empty demand more policies, more specifics, more details. Marshall Ganz, Harvard's grassroots guru and an Obama campaign consultant, blames the left's failures precisely on this privileging of issues over values. True, the language of values sounds vague; it offers a blank slate on which anyone can scribble their dreams; it's easy to confuse with mere "emotion." But values frame political possibilities. Ronald Reagan opened one set of possibilities and closed another when he declared, "Government is not a solution to our problem; government is the problem." Obama, if he succeeds, intends to formulate a new moral consensus. And that requires the joining of his supporters' values.

Hillary Clinton describes the Democratic party -- and by extension, her own campaign -- as a fragile brand to be protected from frightening Republican attacks. There is, in this defensiveness, an echo of corporate efforts to protect intellectual property from unauthorized derivative works. Despite declaring, "Let the conversation begin," Hillary Clinton offered up inert catchwords that defied permutation -- "Ready" and "Experience" -- because they were about herself, not her community's common vision.

It's by clearly articulating shared values, not specific policies, that Obama gives supporters license to not just repeat but also remix his message. True, the high profile "Yes we can" mashup came from will.i.am, Jessie Dylan, and other Hollywood luminaries -- not exactly your average kid in the basement with a webcam. But that video is merely the sheen on deeper stories that underlie the campaign's core organizers, sometimes even appropriated by Obama and then re-appropriated by supporters.

It turns out that Web 2.0 and effective movement organizing share something in common: the expectation that we all can do for ourselves rather than wait for someone else to do for us.

Comments

[myownwings]

Gene, great post indeed! You captured the sense that is driving this process for Obama and get us past the slings and arrows about our so-called delusion. Thanks.

[Ono4Hoopono]

Gene, this is awesome. It's like you've articulated a paradigm shift that I think we've all sensed, but you brought out nuances in it that are amazing to behold, and tied it all together with social issues, revelations and insight into the impact of technological advances like the web, and even the accompanying shift in the collective unconscious that links us all as well. Thanks.

P.S. I'm one of the people who learned of your post from "lovethesinner."
Huge thanks to lovethesinner, too. Edifying.

[glorija]

"True, the language of values sounds vague; it offers a blank slate on which anyone can scribble their dreams; it's easy to confuse with mere "emotion." But values frame political possibilities."

Thank you for this idea and for your terrific article. You don't have to like Obama, but, my goodness, at least see the positive impact that his approach to politics has on people's participation in it.

[lovethesinner]

Gene, Loved your take on the movement (true believer here) and especially the link to the post by Marshall Ganz. (that was an eye opener)

I sent a link to your post to everyone I know. (I guess you can take that as a complement... I think they're nice people.)

I've been a bass player all my life, and the closest I could come to understanding all this, was to remember jam sessions in the sixties (without the drug abuse) it has that improvizational excitement and feeling of community.

GObama!

[798space]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ky8Hvq-F0U

[Anderkoo]

Thanks! I haven't seen that before. The first few chords were, I think, the same as "Yes we can," but I like how it's an original message. (It reminds of the story of how "Si se puede" itself arose among the Farmworkers -- there was, early on, an attempt to import the "We shall overcome" message, but something needed to emerge from within, not imposed from outside).

[798space]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ky8Hvq-F0U

[S1m0n]

Hallelujah!

Obama is the first democrat since Reagan WHO ISN'T RUNNING SCARED. Everyone else has been buying the big republican lies, and trying to somehow chisel out a space within them for progressive values. The defensive fretting about swiftboating, about being 'vetted', etc., are all about that tiny, frightened narrative.

It's a suckers' game to buy the other guy's paradigm, when the moment you do, he's got you by the curlies. Obama has had the sense to reject it out of hand, as the non-productive and imprisoning ideology it is. *That's* what is so exciting about his campaign.

[Petey]

Very insightful analysis, Gene. And because Obama is forging a new coalition with a moral basis, rather than just a collection of people with complementary issues, it is realistic to imagine that some progressives will feel left out -- despite the fact that we like to imagine Obama's promise of reshaping politics and redrawing electoral maps as strictly an additive endeavor.

Part of the reason some Dems are so vehement in their opposition to Obama, I'm sure, is a question of taste. They simply don't trust the associations that accompany inspiring rhetoric. But I suspect a more profound fear is at work.

To my mind, a more meaningful and current delineation of political camps than the traditional left/right split is an absolutist/humanist split. The absolutists are fighters whose very identity relies upon having "enemies." The humanists recognize their adversaries as holding cherished positions too, and there's an interest in trying to understand them rather than a determination to annihilate them as evildoers.

So, to the extent that Obama promises a new kind of politics with new coalitions, some of the old-time culture warriors will rightly feel shut out. Some, I'm sure, will come along in the end -- for that is part of the leadership that Obama offers. But others will simply feel betrayed. The Bill O'Reillys and the Taylor Marshes alike will feel pretty threatened if their mode of politics is deemed outdated.

[798space]

Yes you're onto something! Maybe you'll consider sharing this perspective at http://www.democraticunderground.com/ where the paradigm (?) you describe is rampant.

[Anderkoo]

I agree, Petey, that a realignment is in the cards, and that means that there will be some who are left out. (My in-laws, who are socially conservative/fiscally liberal, have been left out of politics for over two decades now!).

I would suggest another possible split, which is communitarian / liberal (the philosophical kind). It fascinates me that many of Obama's liberal critics accuse him of leading a "cult." While I'm sure there are some of his followers who see him, individually, as some form of personal redemption, I suspect that philosophical liberals, in valuing individualism and freedom, can only interpret the excitement over Obama as excitement about the man, rather than the community and its potential. While this manifests as an aesthetic response, I think its root lies deeper, at basic assumptions about our polity.

(The McCain/Huckabee split is actually quite similar, with Huckabee supporters definitely on the communitarian side of the divide. I can see Obama peeling off a substantial portion of the Christian vote this year).

[lovethesinner]

Excellent point. Without enemies, what will Pat Buchanan do? For the "conflict driven" MSM, this Obama thing must be very threatening. I've been noticing that even Chris Matthews has started looking like his job is about to get shipped overseas. I'm remembering the look on Tucker Carlson's face when Jon Stewart undressed him that time on "Crossfire."

[mksutherland]

"The central question of whether we're all in this together or all in this alone."
This is the bottom line- most important reason I am supporting BHO! We need change where the conversations begins - NOT - the particual health plan detail!