News Ref
During Obama's campaign there always seemed to be talk of his great volunteer movement, getting people out to vote, and using the internet to get connected to the voters. But now that the election is over and Obama is now President-elect his internet prowess seems to be fading rapidly.
Initially after the election when Obama came out with the first of his "fireside chat" talking-to-the-people videos, it was viewed by many, however the trend lately has been fewer views with each new video he presents. While the approach is reminiscent of the "fireside chats" and seems like a good idea, this is one borrowed idea that hasn't been working as well as one would hope.
There could be a number of reasons to explain the decline. Perhaps it is the Presidential capital model starting even before Obama is in office, where his influence and effect on people is gradually decreasing. It could be because he won and now his supporters don't see as much of a compelling need to as attentive. Or maybe those videos are just boring. They should be on Youtube if you feel like looking.
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3 comments:
I think that participation and attentiveness to politics has been declining so rapidly because he had such a large support base during the election. Since so many people helped him out then, people think now that they've done their part, and it's his turn to bring us what he promised.
In a way, it's true. There isn't too much more that people can do for Obama now that he's elected. Would continuing to go door-to-door and tell others about his policies really do anything significantly beneficial for him? Probably not.
The one thing I think could be interesting would be donations. Everyone knows the economy is collapsing (has collapsed?), and the government needs a solution. Obama raised so much money during his campaign, is there a chance he could do it again? I know that the money from the campaign was only a fraction of our deficit, but hey, anything helps. I bet if he opened up online donations for people to help fund his policies, he would get a fairly large turnout. If he did that, then there would also be a great reason to continue the grassroots effort made easy by the internet. People could support federal programs by donating to the causes Obama deemed important. It's essentially voluntary raised taxes that everyone feels good about.
Ben we actually have things like tax deductible donations and donations to the government, the problem is that it takes a bunch of paperwork and time to give them, i think if Obama would just make the process easier he would get huge amounts of money for his policies.
I kind of agree with Ben Geva. It is Obama's turn to give us what he promised us, but that doesn't mean we shoud stop showing our support for him. I also think the fundraising through the internet is an interesting idea--if Obama can do it, that would be awesome!
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