An Internet strategist for President Bush's reelection campaign and one of the few new media leaders for the GOP, Patrick Ruffini, cut a video Friday analyzing some new recruitment tactics over at BarackObama.com. Ruffini reports that Obama's website is carefully testing several messages and images to recruit new email registrations, using a splash page "for the first time since the election."
Tracking Obama's online marketing is likely to interest only junkies and insiders, of course, but Ruffini speculates that the move may indicate that Obama's aides are working harder to replenish his 13 million person email list. "It might actually be a sign that their subscription rate has certainly gone down," he says, suggesting that "the President's core supporters are maybe not as enthused by the lack of progress ... on health care reform or on Afghanistan."
While Obama supporters may be concerned about Afghanistan policy, the email list has not shied away from presenting the argument for more troops. This week, Vice President Biden emailed millions of Obama supporters a video of Obama's Westpoint address, asking them to watch and share the footage. "It's a clean break from the failed Afghanistan policy of the Bush administration," he wrote, "and a new, focused strategy that can succeed."
Ari Melber
An Internet strategist for President Bush’s reelection campaign and one of the few new media leaders for the GOP, Patrick Ruffini, cut a video Friday analyzing some new recruitment tactics over at BarackObama.com. Ruffini reports that Obama’s website is carefully testing several messages and images to recruit new email registrations, using a splash page "for the first time since the election."
Tracking Obama’s online marketing is likely to interest only junkies and insiders, of course, but Ruffini speculates that the move may indicate that Obama’s aides are working harder to replenish his 13 million person email list. "It might actually be a sign that their subscription rate has certainly gone down," he says, suggesting that "the President’s core supporters are maybe not as enthused by the lack of progress … on health care reform or on Afghanistan."
While Obama supporters may be concerned about Afghanistan policy, the email list has not shied away from presenting the argument for more troops. This week, Vice President Biden emailed millions of Obama supporters a video of Obama’s Westpoint address, asking them to watch and share the footage. "It’s a clean break from the failed Afghanistan policy of the Bush administration," he wrote, "and a new, focused strategy that can succeed."
Here is Ruffini’s new video:
Ari MelberTwitterAri Melber is The Nation's Net movement correspondent, covering politics, law, public policy and new media, and a regular contributor to the magazine's blog. He received a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and a J.D. from Cornell Law School, where he was an editor of the Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy. Contact Ari: on Facebook, on Twitter, and at amelber@hotmail.com. Melber is also an attorney, a columnist for Politico and a contributing editor at techPresident, a nonpartisan website covering technology’s impact on democracy. During the 2008 general election, he traveled with the Obama Campaign on special assignment for The Washington Independent. He previously served as a Legislative Aide in the US Senate and as a national staff member of the 2004 John Kerry Presidential Campaign. As a commentator on public affairs, Melber frequently speaks on national television and radio, including including appearances on NBC, CNBC, CNN, CNN Headline News, C-SPAN, MSNBC, Bloomberg News, FOX News, and NPR, on programs such as “The Today Show,” “American Morning,” “Washington Journal,” “Power Lunch,” "The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell," "The Joy Behar Show," “The Dylan Ratigan Show,” and “The Daily Rundown,” among others. Melber has also been a featured speaker at Harvard, Oxford, Yale, Columbia, NYU, The Center for American Progress and many other institutions. He has contributed chapters or essays to the books “America Now,” (St. Martins, 2009), “At Issue: Affirmative Action,” (Cengage, 2009), and “MoveOn’s 50 Ways to Love Your Country,” (Inner Ocean Publishing, 2004). His reporting has been cited by a wide range of news organizations, academic journals and nonfiction books, including the The Washington Post, The New York Times, ABC News, NBC News, CNN, FOX News, National Review Online, The New England Journal of Medicine and Boston University Law Review. He is a member of the American Constitution Society, he serves on the advisory board of the Roosevelt Institute and lives in Manhattan.