Blame

us
WITHOUT BAY AREA TECHNOLOGY,
INGENUITY, RIGHTEOUS INDIGNATION,
AND CASH, BARACK OBAMA WOULD
NOT BE PRESIDENT TODAY.

PHOTOGRAPH BY MONA T. BROOKS

 HE’S OURS
The prodigious
energy of the San
Francisco Bay Area
flowed freely into
Barack Obama’s
campaign for two
intense years. Here,
supporters clamor
to touch their candi-
date at a record-
breaking Fairmont
San Francisco event
last August that
raised more than
$8 million.

FEBRUARY 2009 SAN FRANCISCO

57
 SAN FRANCISCO FEBRUARY 2009
58
 A FLASH ORAL HISTORY OF A
NATION-CHANGING COLLISION
BETWEEN A) A LONG-SHOT CAN-
DIDATE WHO BELIEVED THAT ONLY
PEOPLE CONNECTED COULD FIX
A BROKEN DEMOCRACY AND
B) A RAMPED-UP REGION OF
IDEALISTS AND WEB WIZARDS
FIGHTING TO DO JUST THAT.

David Talbot, F O U N D E R , S A L O N . C O M 1 : I was stand-

ing in the wings in Boston when he delivered his
speech in 2004. I was covering it for Salon, doing
a convention blog. Ironically, I had heard about
him, the buzz about him, from all the Clinton
people. So I went back to the hotel room and I
told my kids, “That guy is going to be the next
president of the United States.” They always
remember that: “Dad, you were right!”
Brian Lesh, M E M B E R , S T U D E N T S F O R B A R A C K O B A M A
2 : I was 17 when I first heard Obama speak in
’06, and the main thing I was struck by was that
he talked to people like they were adults. He
wouldn’t just say what he thought was right and
wrong. He’d say, “Here’s what I think, and this is
why it’s up to you.” It moved me to tears.
Markos Moulitsas, F O U N D E R , D A I LY KO S . C O M 3 : In
late 2006, when the first rumors about Obama
running came out, I wrote, “If Obama runs, he
wins.” I never doubted it. You had a choice
between Hillary Clinton, the pick of the establish-
ment, or the white guy from North Carolina, who
had a lot of money and looks too good for him-
self. To me, it was clear. There was a need and a
desire to make history this time around.
Mayhill Fowler, C I T I Z E N J O U R N A L I S T 4 : I went can- FEBRUARY 2009 SAN FRANCISCO

vassing in an African American neighborhood in

Oakland in June 2007. People couldn’t have cared
I WANT YOU 2.0 less about Obama, didn’t want to hear about him,
Starting out, Obama didn’t seem like they would leave their houses to
knew his only hope
P ETE R YAN G /AU G U ST

of recruiting the vote for him. I remember saying to myself, “My

nation was to adopt god. I think this guy is going to be the next pres-
the online spirit of ident. But how is he going to get from here to
local companies like
Google, Facebook, there in 16 months? That is going to be the great
and Craigslist. election story of my lifetime.”
59

TO REACT AND TELL YOUR OWN OBAMA STORY, GO TO

sanfranmag.com
 CHANGE AGENTS
PA R T Y I N G H A R D T O
R AISE HARD CASH
Who: A N G E L A P E T R E L L A
A N D H E R G A L PA L S
The big idea: Online tools
shot Petrella’s skill as a
Mission-district publicity pro
into the stratosphere. Relying
on email, My.BarackObama,
and Google Docs, she and a
bunch of friends got more than
100 people to donate $100
each, party down, and dance
for Obama last October at the
headquarters of McSweeney’s
publishing house, where Petrella
works. The viral planning process
also netted goods and services
from many local businesses,
including Bi-Rite, Tartine, and
the Make-Out Room. In the end,
they raised close to $15,000.
The nugget: “I’m middle class,
so $100 is a lot of money,”
says Petrella, “and every single
person we invited was like, ‘This
is gonna be hard, but this is how
much I care about it.’ It was just
empowering to a lot of people
to give that much away. It was
almost a weird tithe, like, ‘I want
this to happen, so I’ll eat ramen
for a month.’”
SAN FRANCISCO FEBRUARY 2009
THE SIMULTANEOUS
RISE OF OBAMA
AND THE INTERNE T
60
Craig Newmark, F O U N D E R , C R A I G S L I S T. O R G 5 : I
started realizing that we were in the beginning
of a historic period of transition from top-down,
big-money democracy to bottom-up, networked,
grassroots democracy. And that was something I
felt I should stand up for, so I got involved with
the Obama team early. I’m not politically savvy,
and like most people, I prefer not to be bothered
by politics. But this was too important. Somehow
I made a good guess.
Lawrence Lessig, F O U N D E R , S TA N F O R D ’ S C E N T E R
F O R I N T E R N E T A N D S O C I E T Y 6 : He had me at hello.
Christine Pelosi, D E M O C R AT I C A C T I V I S T A N D S U P E R -
D E L E G AT E 7 : You have this independent spirit in
the Bay Area. It’s people saying, “Well, I’ll chal-
lenge authority, no matter what the authority is.”
That’s where the spirit of Barack Obama met the
spirit of the Bay Area.
David Talbot: People may run against San Fran-
cisco values, but it was our visionary way of
thinking—and our ability to get the Internet
going and to exploit it as a political tool—that laid
the groundwork for Obama to be elected. No mat-
ter how he’s going to inevitably disappoint people,
8.04.61 1973
Barack Obama is born, one The Internet is born when
month after Leonard Klein- Google’s future chief Internet
rock publishes the seminal evangelist, Stanford assis-
essay “Information Flow in tant professor Vinton Cerf,
Large Communication Nets,” and Robert Kahn invent it.
a precursor to the web. Sorry, Al.
he’s certainly going to push this country forward.
San Francisco deserves a lot of credit for setting
the terms of that.
Joe Garofoli, S TA F F W R I T E R , T H E S A N F R A N C I S C O
C H R O N I C L E 8 : The Bay Area has been ground zero
for what’s next in politics. People here said, “We
need to get more power in the hands of real peo-
ple, not political consultants” and, “Let a thou-
LE FT: W I N N I W I NTE R M EYE R; C E N TE R AN D R I G HT: M O NA T. B R O O KS
sand flowers bloom.” The Internet is geared to
that. It’s a Bay Area philosophy from way back.
So a lot of Obama’s brainpower came from here.
Wes Boyd, C O F O U N D E R , M O V E O N . O R G 9 : I don’t want
to get into a credit-taking kind of thing. It was an
amazing campaign, and a lot of really great stuff
came together, stuff we’ve all been working on for
years. It was beautiful to see. But I will say this:
A lot of the political culture that has taken hold
came from Bay Area culture. Many of Obama’s
techniques were invented by folks around here:
the social-networking stuff that he leveraged, the
online-to-offline political organizing, the blogging.
Peter Leyden, F O U N D E R , N E X T A G E N D A 10 : I’ve never
said it on the record before, but there is no way
he could have won—he could not have beaten
2005 1.17.98
Former San Francisco Exam- The four-year-old, online-
iner editor David Talbot starts only Drudge Report breaks
Salon.com, the first general- the Monica Lewinsky
interest online magazine. Three scandal—and the fact that
years later, the site outflanks Newsweek had the story
the mainstream press with its earlier but killed it.
impeachment coverage.
 TOUGHENING
HIM UP
Clockwise from left:
Markos Moulitsas,
founder of the “anti-
establishment” poli-
tical site Daily Kos, OUR
always believed that STORYTELLERS
Obama would win, We spoke to everyone,
though many on his from local business
site backed Edwards; figures to national
at this Pac Heights pundits to a folkie who
fundraiser, the crowd raised $300, to recount
heard Obama say the Bay Area’s central
that parts of middle role in the implausible
Obama drama.
America are “bitter”;
in that crowd, with a
recorder, was Mayhill 1 San Francisco jour-
Fowler, who says her nalist and entrepreneur
controversial Huffing- David Talbot founded
ton Post write-up of the first general-interest
online magazine, Salon,
his comments made
and is the author of the
Obama a better can- recently published Broth-
didate; Craigslist’s ers: The Hidden History
Craig Newmark sup- of the Kennedy Years.
ported Obama early 2 A Marin County native
on, putting up photos and the son of Grateful
like this one on his Dead bassist Phil Lesh,
Facebook, LinkedIn, Brian Lesh is a fresh-
and Twitter pages. man at Princeton Uni-
versity and is still active
in Students for Barack
Obama.
3 Berkeley resident
Hillary Clinton—if he hadn’t adapted to the new fought back. It looked like he was cruising to Markos Moulitsas
technologies. He would have gone the way of Bill reelection in ’96 against Dole. Things were Zúniga is the founder
of what is arguably the
Bradley and Gary Hart. No frickin’ way could he pretty ho-hum. It was before the storm. Left’s most influential
have won. Wes Boyd: Joan and I were working on edu- political website, Daily
Kos.
Tim Dickinson, C O N T R I B U T I N G E D I T O R , R O L L I N G S T O N E cation software.
4 Campaign blogger
11 : No question, the Bay Area was the crucible. Joan Blades, C O F O U N D E R , M O V E O N . O R G 12 : I was Mayhill Fowler got
also a mediator, by training and inclination. famous twice—first by
breaking Bittergate on
David Talbot: I was working at the old Examiner, the Huffington Post, then
which was a very interesting place in those days, by taping Bill Clinton on
a rope line calling a Van-
filled with refugees from weekly newspapers and ity Fair reporter “slimy.”
1996–2006 novelists and nutcases. What I really was desper- Fowler lives in Oakland
TO P: J E F F R EY B RAV E R MAN ; B OTTO M : M O N A T. B R O O KS

and is writing a book

ate to do was start a national magazine. There was
S AV I N G T H E L E F T so much talent here. But it would have cost $25
about her experiences.
5 Craigslist founder and
FROM ITSELF million to launch a national magazine in print. San Francisco resident
Craig Newmark has
Marc Cooper, S P E C I A L C O R R E S P O N D E N T, H U F F I N G T O N blogged on the Huffing-
THE RISE OF SALON, MOVEON, BLOGGING, P O S T. C O M 13 : No matter how sophisticated you ton Post about citizen
journalism, politics,
AND THE NETROOTS—AND SOME BRILLIANT NEW thought our democracy was, up until the mid-’90s democracy, and more.
IDEAS ABOUT HOW TO BEAT THE RIGHT AT ITS or so it was very difficult to publish anything. You 6 Silicon Valley cyber-
law guru Lawrence
OWN MEAN-SPIRITED BUT VERY EFFECTIVE GAME. had to own the means of production in order to Lessig first met Obama
get published. when they were both law
school professors in Chi-
David Talbot: It’s easy to forget, but 1995–1996 David Talbot: Then this new thing, the Internet, cago. The founder of
was a strange kind of quiet, almost apolitical came along. It was like a gift from God. We were Stanford’s Center for
Internet and Society, he
period in America. The Republicans and Newt in the right place at the right time. This is where now teaches at Stanford
Gingrich had retaken Congress, but Clinton had the capital was, where the talent was, where the Law School.
FEBRUARY 2009 SAN FRANCISCO

9.18.98 3.27.02 10.02.02 2002 5.26.02

Furious Berkeley software
entrepreneurs Joan Blades and
Wes Boyd launch an online
petition to stop President
Clinton’s impeachment. Within
days, hundreds of thousands
join MoveOn.
John McCain seals his own
doom with a campaign finance
reform bill that shifts power to
small donors.
“I am not opposed to all wars.
I’m opposed to dumb wars,”
says Illinois State Senator
Obama as Congress autho-
rizes the Iraq War.
Silicon Valley VC Andy Rap-
paport and his wife, Deborah,
throw in the towel on their
hapless political party and
throw $6 million at mavericky
netroots efforts.
Berkeley resident and former
Republican Markos Moulitsas
begins his Daily Kos blog with
these words: “I am progres-
sive. I am liberal. I make no
apologies.”
61
 CHANGE AGENTS
FREEL ANCE
30 -SECOND SP OTS
FOR OBAMA
Who: J E F F G O O D B Y
A N D R I C H S I LV E R S T E I N ,
OWNERS OF AD AGENCY
G O O D B Y, S I LV E R S T E I N &
PA R T N E R S
The big idea: Moonlighting
apart from their day job, this
brilliant duo made eight political
ads for the Obama campaign,
most of which ran only on the
Huffington Post, YouTube, and
their agency’s own website. But
their mash-up featuring Ronald
Reagan, many of whose real
ads were created by Goodby
and Silverstein’s former boss,
ad giant Hal Riney, was aired on
CNN. The killer concept: It used
Reagan’s “Are you better off
than you were four years ago?”
debate line to endorse Obama.
The nugget: “Obama had a paid
staff doing this stuff,” Goodby
says. “They didn’t need out-of-
control people like us, who were
working for free and would have
told them to go jump in a lake if
they didn’t like what we did.”
SAN FRANCISCO FEBRUARY 2009
2003
Howard Dean turns the Inter-
net into the ATM of politics,
raising $15 million for his pres-
idential run. Right tool, wrong
candidate.
62
vision was. We got a little bit of money from
Apple, 60 grand, and we started Salon, which was
really the first online general-interest magazine.
Marc Cooper: The Internet allowed the means of
production to be seized by the citizenry, and that
totally changed the game.
David Talbot: In the beginning, we wanted to
focus on books and movies and culture. But then
the Clinton administration headed into crisis, and
Salon found its reason to exist.
Wes Boyd: Joan and I had sold our business, and
just as we were raising our heads from that, all
this crazy stuff was happening—Monica Lewinsky,
Ken Starr, the impeachment.
David Talbot: We were so sick of the obsession with
the blow job. Our view was that Bill Clinton, what-
ever you think about him, doesn’t deserve to be
impeached over a consensual sexual act. We were
frustrated by the pack mentality in Beltway journal-
ism, whereas we had a let-it-rip, gonzo-journalism
mentality, in the tradition of what Rolling Stone and
Hunter Thompson were doing here in the ’70s.
We figured, if you really want to play this game,
let’s expose the hypocrisy of Clinton’s critics.
Mid-2004 7.27.04
Obama makes his first visit After Obama’s keynote at the
to Google, which he writes Democratic National Conven-
about in his book. He waxes tion, everyone and their grand-
rhapsodic about Ping-Pong ma calls him our future first
and entrepreneurialism—but African American president.
not about the lack of black and
Latino faces in the audience.
Joan Blades: Six months into the impeachment
fiasco, we’d had enough, so we sent out a one-
C LO C KW I S E F R O M LE FT: YO UTU B E .C O M; M O N A T. B R O O KS; TRACY R U S S O ; AM I N A H O R O Z I C
sentence petition to less than a hundred of our
friends and family. It was just sensible: Congress
must immediately censure the president and
move on to the more pressing issues facing the
nation. Within a week, we had a hundred thou-
sand people sign that petition. Ultimately, we got
half a million signatures. That was the beginning
of MoveOn.
David Talbot: Salon ran a sex-scandal story about
an affair involving Henry Hyde, the House Judi-
ciary Committee chairman, who was overseeing
impeachment for the Republicans. The rest of
the media jumped all over us—we were sleaze-
mongers, we were this, we were that. We had
bomb threats. But we were also in the forefront of
those saying, “There’s a poisonous political agenda
behind this impeachment process that needs to be
derailed.” We actually defined the right-wing con-
spiracy before Hillary put a name to it.
Wes Boyd: People were feeling really cynical. Pro-
gressives had forgotten the basics. So from the
very beginning, MoveOn took on the tone of civic
11.02.04 8.06.05
MoveOn raises more than Vacaville mom Cindy Sheehan
$30 million online to help stokes the antiwar movement
elect a Democrat. Average with her Bush ranch stakeout,
donation: $50. Bush wins chronicling it on the brand-new
again. HuffingtonPost.com.
 NET WORK
7 Christine Pelosi
ANCHORS trains aspiring political
Clockwise from candidates. Her book,
bottom left: Former Campaign Boot Camp,
Howard Dean cam- was published in 2007,
paign manager Joe and she was very popular
Trippi (shown here last spring as an uncom-
with Katie Couric) mitted superdelegate.
helped invent the 8 San Francisco Chroni-
online approach cle reporter Joe Garofoli
Obama took; Hillary wrote a truth-squadding
series called “Lies, Half-
Clinton stumbled
Truths, and Contradic-
with the blogosphere tions” for SFGate’s poli-
when she defended tics blog last fall.
lobbyists at YearlyKos 9 In 1998, Wes Boyd
in August 2007; and his wife, Joan Blades,
stirring images of founded the first effec-
Obama floated from tive online political force,
the web to the street MoveOn, after selling
and back, unauthor- their software company,
ized by the campaign; Berkeley Systems, for
when Obama was $14 million.
nowhere in the polls, 10 A San Francisco–
Peter Leyden fore- based new-media thinker
saw that the cam- and former journalist,
Peter Leyden ran the
paign’s Internet strat-
progressive New Politics
egy was taking off. Institute until July 2008.
His policy think tank and
new-media company is
called Next Agenda.
engagement. A couple weeks after we started, we next viral moment for us was the Iraq War. 11 Before covering

said, “OK, let’s just ask volunteers to visit the local Markos Moulitsas: When I started Daily Kos in Obama for Rolling Stone,
San Francisco journalist
offices of their members of Congress.” Every email 2002, there was no way anyone would have pre- Tim Dickinson divulged
we sent out was basically a treatise in civics: If you dicted how big we would become. Blogs were in the Bay Area’s emerging
do something, even just attend this meeting, it will the hundreds, and you’d go, “600 visitors in a day, digipopulism for this
magazine (May 2006;
make a difference. wow!” But it was clear that the media was under- see sanfranmag.com).
David Talbot: I remember getting those first serving people. Someone needed to bypass those 12 Along with her
MoveOn emails and going, “Hey, these are our media gatekeepers who were dictating what the husband, Wes Boyd,
soul brothers.” They were doing the political- public consumed and squashing dissent. Joan Blades founded
MoveOn in 1997. She is
organizing version of what we were doing in Craig Newmark: The traditional press has often a Huffington Post blog-
journalism. They also struck me as very Bay been weak when it comes to speaking truth to ger, and she cofounded
Area—not beholden to the media and political power. Bloggers have no trouble with that. MomsRising.org to bring
about “a more family-
establishment, reflecting a frontier sensibility that Markos Moulitsas: What does the Left believe in? friendly America.”
you don’t find in New York or Washington. Those Everyone’s got a different opinion. Now, sudden- 13 Prolific progressive
places are provincial and suffocating and incapable ly, we have a medium that embraces that diversity journalist Marc Cooper
of creating breakaways like Salon or MoveOn. I of feeling and allows it to thrive. coedited the famous
Bittergate piece for the
like to think that what we started in the mid-’90s Joan Blades: We discovered our members were Huffington Post and was
filtered throughout the country and gave rise to willing to pay for advertising. They were willing the editorial director of
the whole blogging phenomenon. Arianna Huff- to pay to be heard. The fundraising potential was the Huffington Post’s
OffTheBus campaign
ington got her start online as a columnist for Salon. huge. And we could get people mobilized very blog, which was written
M O N A T. B R O O KS

And Keith Olbermann, when he was in the wilder- quickly. The vigils prior to the Iraq War were by citizen journalists. He
ness—he had been fired by everyone, including jaw-dropping, and we did them online in a week! teaches at the Annen-
berg School for Commu-
Fox—came to Salon and did columns for us. Andy Rappaport, V E N T U R E C A P I TA L I S T A N D F U N D E R nication at the University
Joan Blades: After the Clinton impeachment, the O F P R O G R E S S I V E C A U S E S 14 : By 2004, we really of Southern California.
FEBRUARY 2009 SAN FRANCISCO

2005 8.14.06 11.07.06 January 2007 2.09.07

The number of PayPal
accounts hits 96 million,
up 50 percent in a year.
America finally feels just
fine about sending dough
via the web.
YouTube’s first “gotcha”
moment: Virginia senator
George Allen loses his seat
over one word—“macaca.”
Netroots show their first real
clout when 5 of the 17 candi-
dates they back win, and the
Democrats retake the House.
Web 2.0 wunderkind Chris A day before announcing
Hughes takes a sabbatical his candidacy, Obama goes
from Facebook to join the on YouTube to introduce
Obama campaign. My.BarackObama.com. “Let’s
go get to work,” he says.
63

CHANGE AGENTS
DESIGNING AN OBAMA
IPHONE APP
Who: T R I S TA N O ’ T I E R N E Y
AND A GROUP OF OTHER
PROGR AMMERS
The big idea: Last summer,
O’Tierney and a bunch of friends
spent two grueling weeks of
unpaid, Red Bull–fueled nights
building the Obama ’08 iPhone
application that excited Mac
geeks and campaign volunteers
alike. O’Tierney personally built
the Call Friends feature, which
automatically pulled up the
phone numbers of iPhone users’
friends in key swing states.
The Issues tool offered a quick
summary of Obama’s major
positions. O’Tierney checked his
iPhone minutes after Obama
won the election and found that
39,802 volunteer calls had been
made using the app.
The nugget: “It was intense,
but people were just sucking
it up because we all knew that
the project was bigger than us,”
says O’Tierney. “I hope to be
there when the next innovation
is created. An application that
calls your congressman, a virtual
phone bank on your iPhone…the
possibilities are endless.”
SAN FRANCISCO FEBRUARY 2009
3.05.07
ParkRidge47 uses his MacBook
to mash up Apple’s 1984 Super
Bowl ad and broadsides Hillary
Clinton. It goes viral.
64
believed—and I’m not overstating—that another
four years of George Bush would mean the end
of the American way of life, the destruction of
our position in the world, and possibly the literal
destruction of the planet. If there ever were an
incumbent who should have been defeatable, it
was Bush. But there was also a very great sense
among many of us that the Democratic Party had
lost its way.
Joan Blades: Before the 2004 election, MoveOn
reached out to all of the presidential candidates.
Howard Dean’s campaign is the only one that
took us up on it.
Joe Trippi, P O L I T I C A L C O N S U LTA N T 15 : The majority
of the Democratic establishment thought the
Internet and the netroots were like a bar scene
out of Star Wars or a small group of people talking
to each other in their underwear. They thought it
was a big waste of time, a fad.
Markos Moulitsas: With Dean, the online money
started to be there, but the rest of it wasn’t. The
ground part fizzled.
Andy Rappaport: The Democrats had no infra-
structure to build on. As the election approached,
we asked, “Is the Democratic establishment going
to win against that Republican machine that’s just
been building for all these years?” No. Democrats
didn’t know how to win. So, what are we going to
do to change that? If you’re here in Silicon Valley,
the answer is, you try a bunch of experiments.
Then you invest in the ones that work, scale them
up, and kill the ones that don’t. I’ve just described
venture capital to you. So a few of us donors and
activists—some here, some elsewhere—figured,
let’s throw a lot of money and energy and ideas at
the problem and see what we come up with. Let’s
see, for example, if we can figure out how to get
young people engaged.
Matt Buchanan, ASSOCIATE EDITOR, GIZMODO.COM 16 : His-
torically, the youth vote was, like, a giant bucket of fail.
Angela Petrella, O B A M A C A M PA I G N V O L U N T E E R 17 :
For years, nobody my age gave a shit.
Andy Rappaport: Our approach was very contro-
versial. We weren’t putting our money behind
Kerry or even the Democratic Party—we were
going outside the system. Plus, the Democratic
establishment worried that if young people do
vote, they’ll vote Republican. In many cases, the
party said, “You’re stupid and dangerous, because
4.10.07 4.29.07, 12:04 p.m.
All the major Democratic presi- Obama’s first Twitter post:
dential candidates discuss the “Thinking we’re only one sig-
Iraq War in a virtual town-hall nature away from ending the
meeting hosted by MoveOn. war in Iraq.”
TO REACT AND TELL YOUR OWN OBAMA STORY, GO TO
sanfranmag.com
 THE FOLLOWERS
TA K E T H E L E A D
Many thousands
of local volunteers
moved from online
support to offline
organizing. Three
days after these
volunteers were
rallied by senator
John Kerry at Everett
Middle School Audi-
torium in the Mission,
they helped Obama
best Hillary Clinton
in San Francisco in
the primary. Many
residents got inten-
sive training to travel
to battleground
states as Obama
operatives.

14 Menlo Park venture

capitalist and activist
Andy Rappaport, along
with his wife, Deborah, is
one of the nation’s larg-
est and most hands-on
donors to progressive
causes.
15 Dean campaign man-
ager Joe Trippi is still
credited as a pioneer of
web politicking, despite
having backed John
Edwards in ’08. He
authored The Revolution
Will Not Be Televised:
Democracy, the Internet,
and the Overthrow of
Everything in 2004.
FEBRUARY 2009 SAN FRANCISCO

16 Matt Buchanan is
an associate editor of
gadget blog Gizmodo.
17 San Franciscan
Angela Petrella and
her friends hosted a
$100-a-ticket party that
STE VE R H O D E S

raised nearly $15,000

for Obama. She handles
publicity for McSwee-
ney’s, Dave Eggers’
publishing house.
65
 CHANGE AGENTS

TURNING
FA C E B O O K E R S
INTO FUNDR AIS ERS
Who: M E E N A H A R R I S ,
O B A M A’ S S I L I C O N
VA L L E Y G R A S S R O O T S
FUNDR AISING HEAD
The big idea: Harris did
through Facebook what her
father, Tony West, Obama’s
California finance cochair, did
through business networks,
only on a much smaller scale.
He convinced individuals to
donate the maximum ($2,300)
to the campaign, which won
them entrée to the Fairmont
San Francisco meet-and-greet
for Obama, while she used her
Facebook page to persuade
a bunch of friends to each
give enough to send her to
the event. Then she enlisted
them to do the same with their
Facebook friends—so 15 or so
young people short on funds
were able to attend the record-
breaking fundraiser, which
netted more than $8 million.
The nugget: “I did have one
24-year-old friend who wrote
a check for $2,300—it was an
entire month’s salary. It shows
the lengths people will go to
ANGELS IN
T H E VA L L E Y
Clockwise from top
left: Former state
controller Steve
Westly (with his
wife, Anita Yu, and
Joe Biden at a fund-
raiser at Westly’s
Atherton home) saw
Obama as a kindred
spirit—and invested
in him early; Obama
stops at the Atherton
home of software
executive Sohaib
Abbasi and his wife,
Sara, on one of his
fundraising mara-
thons; other key
backers included
Wilson Sonsini CEO
John Roos (clasping
Obama) and Hum-
mer Winblad VC
Mark Gorenberg
(with name tag).
you’re just pulling money away from the things Peter Leyden: After 2004, the netroots and blog-
that are, quote unquote, proven to work.” gers were the only people holding off the conser-
Angela Petrella: In 2004, I was superinvolved vatives. In mythic terms, they were the band of
in the Kerry campaign, living in Ohio, working warriors that was doing battle, giving everyone
in the shitty little headquarters office in my home- else breathing space to get their shit together.
town. It felt like an uphill battle. None of my friends They were completely outmatched, but totally
were that involved, so it was like a lone-wolf feeling. fearless. They were absolute heroes.
Everyone was much older than me—old hippies. Tim Dickinson: People like Kos and Joe Trippi
Then Kerry lost, and I felt so defeated. reinvented the possible. They started to show that
Peter Leyden: It was the darkest of times. People there was a totally different way to run politics.
were talking about a permanent Republican major- Markos Moulitsas: A lot of my activities and ideas
ity. The Democrats who were still in power were have been predicated on the right-wing example.
cowering, spineless. I like that Karl Rove would basically do whatever
David Talbot: There was the feeling that the it took to win, and that he worked toward victory
Republicans had been getting away with murder in a very unconventional manner. Traditional pro-
for so long, and the Democrats were the nerdy gressives act as if politics is a high-minded debate
kid with glasses. The bully grabs our glasses and about ideas. No! Politics is politics, you have to
crushes our glasses and slaps us around, and we win to make a difference, and you can’t bring a
just—well, we just cry. spork to a gunfight. I’m not above getting down
Markos Moulitsas: I had feared that if Kerry won, in the mud when it’s called for, as long as it’s legal.

for a cause they support.” the Democratic Party hacks would think all the prob-
lems were fixed. So instead of feeling defeated and
wallowing in self-pity, we recognized the opportu-
nity to really shake things up.
SAN FRANCISCO FEBRUARY 2009
M O N A T. B R O O KS
I may hate doing it, but if it’s gonna help my side,
I’ll use it. I’m happiest when I’m attacking.
Peter Leyden: Truth squadding was part of what
the blogs were doing. But they were also organiz-

6.13.07 7.23.07 8.10.07 8.25.07 11.14.07

Model Amber Lee Ettinger’s
seductive lip-synching of “I’ve
got a crush…on Obama” goes
live and winds up with 12 mil-
lion hits on YouTube.
66
Channeling Gwen Ifill and Jim
Lehrer, YouTube users partner
with CNN to mediate a debate
between Democratic candi-
dates. (They do the same for
the Republicans in November.)
The West Coast’s first Camp
Obama—2.0 community-
organizing training for high-
powered campaign volun-
teers—is held in San Francisco.
Barbecues for Barack, the
first group events organized
via My.BarackObama’s new
Action Center page, take place
in more than 25 states.
At his Web 2.0 coronation at
Google, Obama announces his
tech platform—and sides with
Silicon Valley on everything.
 ing when no one had any hope of organizing and
supporting people who were running for office.
Markos Moulitsas: The presidential race is all the
media elite wants to talk about, but people care
about what’s happening in their own backyard.
What you learn quickly is that you don’t need to
be the expert anymore. You let the local diarists
on Daily Kos who know what they’re talking about
fill you in. We’ve been talking about Barack
Obama since early 2003, when he was 5 or 10
percent in the polls in the U.S. Senate primary.
Why? Because I follow the Illinois state senate?
No. Because the locals were telling me about him.
Peter Leyden: Blogs started figuring out ways to
squeeze out money for candidates. They started
the intellectual thinking that made 2006 and
2008 possible.
Markos Moulitsas: We built the grassroots level
with a true 50-state strategy, focusing on races all
over the country. That’s been in the DNA of Daily
M O N A T. B R O O KS
came specifically from our 50-state strategy.
Andy Rappaport: People thought a 50-state
strategy was craziness. Well, it wasn’t crazy. It
was really, really smart.
Peter Leyden: It was the netroots’ critical work
in certain races—like the Virginia Senate race,
where they helped bring down George Allen, and
in Montana, where they defeated Conrad Burns
and elected Jon Tester—that flipped the Senate
for the Democrats in 2006, which was huge.
Andy Rappaport: We were learning that to get
young people to vote, you have to make it easier
for them to register. Another thing that really
works is when your friends encourage you to take
action. So we funded more organic, locally based,
peer-to-peer organizations, like New Era Colo-
rado, Washington Bus, and Forward Montana.
Everybody is wondering, how the hell did deep-
red Montana elect Jon Tester? The answer is, it
has an overwhelmingly large young population,

Kos from the beginning—me railing against how
the Democratic National Committee hasn’t been
to Louisiana or Alabama, so how are we supposed
to win there? Howard Dean’s 50-state strategy
and we’d been working to mobilize it for years.
Peter Leyden: Back when all these efforts began,
I thought that they would take 5, maybe 10, years
to bear fruit.
FEBRUARY 2009 SAN FRANCISCO

1.03.08 1.30.08 2.02.08 2.05.08 2.13.08

The candidate for change wins
Iowa (and, unlike Howard Dean
four years earlier, refrains from
screaming).
John Edwards (and his “oh
so pretty” $400 haircuts)
steps down. Obama instantly
annexes his former rival’s blog-
osphere base.
Sampling Obama’s speeches,
Will.i.am of the Black-Eyed
Peas posts the celebrity-filled
“Yes We Can” video. It gets
18 million hits.
Obama loses California by
9% to Clinton, but wins San
Francisco by 8%.
San Francisco blogger
Matthew Honan puts up
the “Barack Obama is your
new bicycle” site. Don’t
ask—just go check it out.
67
 CHANGE AGENTS

MICROFINANCE
F O R N E E DY O B A M A
VOLUNTEERS

Who: A L E X W I S E A N D
MOIRA DE NIKE
The big idea: In September
2008—saddled with busy tech
jobs, a new baby, and no time
to travel to a swing state—this Andy Rappaport: Suddenly, we had a community had to make the decision to run within those cou-
Glen Park couple created a way saying, “We know how to do this! Presidency? ple of weeks from Christmas 2006 to the begin-
for people like them to invest in
ready-to-go but cash-strapped Let me at ’em. So what people here did—again, ning of January 2007, and in that period he
volunteers who registered on this is the Valley way—was say, “Who do we want sought startup financing to get off the ground.
their site, ObamaTravel.org. to run? Who represents what we want the Demo- You had an unbelievable political brand in the
Among the 220-plus beautiful
connections that resulted: cratic Party to become? Who has a chance to win?” Clintons, and this young rising star taking that on

LE FT TO R I G HT: J E F F R EY B RAVE R M AN; FAC E B O O K.C O M; M O N A T. B R O O KS

San Francisco resident Justin
Wiener, who was so upset by
Sarah Palin’s convention speech
that he turned down a job offer
to work full-time on Obama’s
campaign, signed up and got
exactly $257 for airfare to the
swing state of Pennsylvania.
The nugget: “The Bay Area’s
got hippies ready to go knock
on doors, guys with BlackBerrys
ready to write the code, and
VCs ready to write checks.
We wanted to get all those
archetypes under one roof,”
says Wise.
SAN FRANCISCO FEBRUARY 2009
as a long shot. If you look at any startup, Google
being a prime example, the initial odds are typi-
cally viewed as being almost insurmountable. But
2006–2007 we take those kinds of bets.
Tony West, PA R T N E R , M O R R I S O N & F O E R S T E R 19 : I had
I N C U B AT I N G A B O L D met him during his U.S. Senate campaign. He’s
NEW BRAND always had a very natural tie to Silicon Valley that
he’s cultivated. In 2004, he came out here for a
THE BAY AREA NETELLIGENTSIA FINDS THE day to campaign for my sister-in-law Kamala Har-
CANDIDATE OF ITS DREAMS, HELPS HIM RAISE ris, who was running for San Francisco district
SEED MONEY AND DEVELOP AN UNPRECEDENTED attorney, and he was intensely curious to figure
ARSENAL OF NEW TOOLS, THEN WATCHES HIM out what was going on out here that was so excit-
TURN INTO THE FACEBOOK—MAKE THAT THE ing. He has a philosophy of approaching chal-
GOOGLE—OF PRESIDENTIAL POLITICS. lenges that is very entrepreneurial. That’s some-
thing you have to develop as a community orga-
John Roos, C E O , W I L S O N S O N S I N I G O O D R I C H & R O S AT I nizer, because it’s such a difficult job.
18 : When many of us first met with him, Obama Steve Spinner, S TA R T U P I N V E S T O R 20 : I think Barack
was a classic Silicon Valley startup. Literally, he spoke to us because we live this every day. Most of

2.27.08 3.10.08 3.18.08 4.11.08 5.15.08

The Obama campaign passes
the one-million-donor mark.
68
Obama Twitters: “In Colum-
bus, MS & wondering how
somebody who’s in second
place is offering the vice pres-
idency to the person who’s in
first place. Vote Tues!”
Obama’s 37-minute speech
on race sweeps YouTube,
getting 10 times the views of
Reverend Wright’s diatribes.
Citizen journalist Mayhill Fowler
attends a Pacific Heights fund-
raiser and posts the infamous
Obama quote about “cling[ing]
to guns or religion or antipathy”
on the Huffington Post.
“Evil Empire” Microsoftians
support Clinton, $148K
to $120K. “Do No Harm”
Googlers go for Obama,
$190K to $68K.
 INFRASTRUCTURE
SPENDING
From left: In 2007,
the campaign rode
the rocket-ship pop-
ularity of the Palo Alto
social-networking
site Facebook to gar-
ner supporters; Tony
West, a prominent
San Francisco attor-
ney, helped raise
tens of millions of
dollars from wealthy
locals to tool up
the growing online
machine; Obama
brought on Facebook
cofounder Chris
Hughes, 25, to help
build the campaign’s 18 John Roos, the
website, My.Barack CEO of Silicon Valley
Obama.com, in Face- legal powerhouse
book’s image. Wilson Sonsini Good-
rich & Rosati, served
as Obama’s California
finance committee
cochair. In prior elections,
what we do has never been done before, and peo- she had him by the balls. Obama had to have a he backed Bill Bradley
and John Kerry.
ple tell us we’re crazy to even consider it. But this new way to raise money and blow her away.
19 A partner at Morrison
valley knows that if you have a well-thought-out Andy Rappaport: Campaigns tend to be lumber- & Foerster, Tony West
idea with a good strategy and plan, and you sur- ing, hierarchical things that succeed despite their was the cochair of
Obama’s California
round that with a clear vision, a passionate leader, inherent ineffectiveness. And Obama’s team said, finance committee and
and an experienced management team, you can “You can’t out–General Motors Hillary Clinton, campaigned extensively
with BFO (best friend
be successful. right? So if there’s a means by which the upstarts of the Obamas) Valerie
John Roos: A friend told me that Obama was take on the establishment, we should learn that. Jarrett.
heading toward a potential announcement and What’s that Google thing? How did that happen?” 20 Silicon Valley investor
Steve Spinner, a fre-
asked if I would be willing to sit down with him. Joan Walsh, E D I T O R - I N - C H I E F, S A L O N . C O M 21 : Hillary quent adviser to tech-
I went to D.C. for Nancy Pelosi’s swearing-in and sorta missed Google and Silicon Valley. With all nology startups, worked
full-time to elect Obama
met with him then. His vision was that the change of Al Gore’s connections down there, that might and founded Entrepre-
would come from all of us and not from him. He be why. She relied on a somewhat outdated neurs for Obama.
21 Former San Fran-
was the person who was encapsulating the energy, approach to California donors and where the
cisco magazine political
the message, and everything else, but it was going money was—Hollywood more than the Valley. writer Joan Walsh has
to be an election from the ground up. Steve Spinner: Other candidates had gone to been Salon’s editor-in-
chief since 2005. She
Christine Pelosi: Necessity being the mother of all the leading fundraisers in the Valley. But the spars weekly with Chris
P ETE R WYN N TH O M P S O N / N YT

invention, he had no choice. It had to be done Obama campaign did a much better job of meet- Matthews on MSNBC’s
Hardball.
from the bottom up. Why? Because Hillary Clin- ing and exciting them. 22 Chris Lehane, a
ton was the juggernaut. Chris Lehane, F O R M E R B I L L C L I N T O N A I D E 22 : I mean, former lawyer for Bill
Clinton and press
Peter Leyden: She had all the big donors. She had the 415/650/510 is not only the latte-liberal capital secretary for Al Gore,
all the special interests. She had basically every of the world, it’s the epicenter of the online world now advises candidates
and businesses from
relationship locked down—more than any candi- that is reshaping how the world looks and interacts. his Tiburon- and San
date before that. Even frickin’ Gavin Newsom, Mark Gorenberg, M A N A G I N G D I R E C T O R , H U M M E R Diego–based PR firm.
FEBRUARY 2009 SAN FRANCISCO

6.07.08 6.09.08 6.17.08 6.19.08 7.30.08

Clinton finally, finally, finally
calls it quits.
McCain on the VP search:
“You get a whole bunch of
names, and you…well, basi-
cally, it’s a Google,” the candi-
date says. “You just, you know,
what you can find out now on
the Internet. It’s remarkable.”
Obama reaches the critical
mass of one million Facebook
friends.
Obama does the math and
says no to public financing—
and finishes with three-
quarters of a billion dollars,
more than Kerry’s and Bush’s
campaign coffers combined.
McCain grabs the YouTube
limelight with a video compar-
ing Obama to Paris Hilton.
Hilton responds with a video
comparing McCain to Yoda.
69

CHANGE AGENTS
FOODIES GET COOKING
FOR THE CAUSE
Who: D A N I E L C O X , L O U I S
EISENBERG, BENJAMIN
R AT T R AY, A N D B R A D
WOLFE
The big idea: Scared out of
their minds by Sarah Palin’s
nomination and McCain’s post-
convention surge (“We were
like, ‘Oh my god, what just hap-
pened?’” says Eisenberg), these
Noe Valley housemates dreamed
up Hungry for Obama, a network
of what they called “viral dinner
parties.” Hosts sent out email
invites to their friends, who came
together to eat, schmooze about
the election, open their wallets
(or laptops) for the campaign,
and then also commit to hosting
a party of their own. A party for
10 soon led to 10 parties for
100, and ultimately, 1,331 people
attended 147 dinners—mostly in
the Bay Area—and, um, forked
over a total of $50,577.
The nugget: “We didn’t
have any direct contact with
the Obama campaign,” says
Eisenberg. “We’d kind of hoped
that the word about us might
get out. But we never ended up
talking to them—which is fine. I
mean, we didn’t need their help.”
W I N B L A D V E N T U R E PA R T N E R S 23 : Obama looked at
technology as a differentiator, just like startup
companies do.
Christine Pelosi: He is a man who, in his mid-40s,
came up professionally online. I worked on Capi-
tol Hill, and some people there still think Black-
Berrys are for jelly and not for communications.
Tony West: He was never without his BlackBerry.
Christine Pelosi: It’s the difference between having
someone who leaves tech stuff to the interns and
someone who understands the Internet’s libertar-
ian streak.
David Talbot: There was also the racial mix. To
me, the Bay Area is the land of the racial mix.
The first event I went to, a big percentage of
the crowd was wealthy Indian entrepreneurs.
Joan Walsh: I heard Maria Shriver say that if
Obama were a state, he’d be California. It’s
kinda hokey but true on a lot of levels—mixed
and young and forward-thinking.
Mark Gorenberg: It was very fast. There was this
almost instantaneous combustion in Silicon Valley.
Andy Rappaport: It was, “Wow, this Barack Obama
guy, he looks terrific. Let’s get behind him. Let’s
make it happen.”
Tony West: The very first event held for him in
California was a huge gathering at John Roos’s
house, where checks were written to his explor-
atory committee.
Mark Gorenberg: We raised $300,000 with the
candidate on the speakerphone. That, to all of us,
was a revelation of how many people really
wanted to get involved.
John Roos: That now looks like peanuts—we
later did over $8 million at one event in San
Francisco—but I remember Barack saying at
the time, “Boy, you raised $300,000. That’s
pretty good.”
Peter Greenberger, A D V E R T I S I N G E X E C U T I V E , G O O G L E
24 : Another thing that impressed us about Obama:
LE FT: C O U RTE SY O F LO U I S E I S E N B E R G

He had a very skilled team. He hired several

search-optimization experts, which is rare.
Mark Gorenberg: Chris Hughes, who was one of
the founders of Facebook, left the Bay Area to go
work in Chicago just after Obama announced.
Joe Garofoli: That guy’s 25 years old. He’s a
genius.
Mark Gorenberg: Obama’s friend Julius Gena-
chowski had a huge influence. He was a law
SAN FRANCISCO FEBRUARY 2009

8.01.08 8.17.08 8.17.08

The first of many carpools
leaves Berkeley for Reno, filled
with volunteers organized via
My.BarackObama.
70
Bay Area supporters donate
more than $8 million at a Fair-
mont San Francisco fundraiser—
the campaign’s single highest-
grossing event up to this point.
Brave New Films’ video on
McCain’s many houses is sent
to subscribers and then posted
on YouTube. It eventually gets
600,000 hits.

TO REACT AND TELL YOUR OWN OBAMA STORY, GO TO

sanfranmag.com
 THE FEELING’S
MUTUAL
Google loved
Obama; Obama
loved Google. That
became clear in
2007, when Obama
introduced his tech-
nology policies in
Mountain View. “If
you wanna know
how I’ll govern, just
look at our cam-
paign,” he told CEO
Eric Schmidt and the
crowd. “We believe
that real change can
only come from the
bottom up. And
technology empow-
ers people to come
together to make
that change.”

23 Hummer Winblad
Venture Partners’
managing director,
Mark Gorenberg, was
John Kerry’s California
finance chair in 2004
and helped raise $2
million for House candi-
dates in 2006. He also
sat on Obama’s national
finance committee.
24 Former Al Gore
campaign staffer Peter
Greenberger runs
Google’s Elections and
Issue Advocacy team,
which sells candidates
on the value of Google
advertising.
FEBRUARY 2009 SAN FRANCISCO
K I M B E R LY WH ITE / G ETTY I M AG E S

71
 CHANGE AGENTS

SINGING FOR
O B A M A’ S S U P P E R

Who: J I M K L A R ,
F O U N D E R O F A L L- C L E A R
PRODUCTIONS
The big idea: Unable to afford
more than a few hundred
dollars in personal donations,
this passionate amateur singer-
songwriter decided—with
barely three weeks left in the
campaign—to produce and sell
a CD of 13 of his own originals,
then donate all the profits to
Obama. He was inspired, he
says, by Obama campaign
manager David Plouffe’s call- classmate of Obama’s at Harvard, worked at a works for Facebook, why wouldn’t it work for
to-arms email looking for bunch of major tech companies, and galvanized us? This is a powerful thing. Why is the political
volunteer fundraisers, and
by a website that let people people around the country to make sure the world operating like it’s still 1998?”
marry their personal logos with campaign had tech and businesspeople involved, Mark Gorenberg: A lot of the Valley’s newest tech-
Obama’s official circular logo. regardless of their ideological beliefs. nologies were being brought to My.BarackObama.
At $10 a pop, Benefit for Barack
netted $300, almost doubling Nick Thompson, S E N I O R E D I T O R , W I R E D 25 : We had Steve Spinner: I thought it was absolutely brilliant
Klar’s contribution. Klar plans to a Wired get-together, and one friend came up and to not have the website be all about “donate,
keep selling the CD through at said, “You know, I shouldn’t tell you this, but I’m donate, donate.” It was about “If you’d like to
least 2010 to raise money for
liberal political causes. about to go work as CTO for the Obama cam- read policy, here are all these incredibly robust
The nugget: “I was surprised by paign,” and I thought, “Great.” Then another policies; if you want to make phone calls, make a
some of the people who came friend comes up and says, “Hey, I’m about to go call; if you want to canvass, go canvass; if you want
out of the woodwork to buy this,”

L E FT: C O U RTE SY O F J I M K LAR; R I G HT: DAVI D A. LYTLE

says Klar. “There was even a
McCain fan who told me, ‘I don’t
like Barack, but I want your CD.’”
SAN FRANCISCO FEBRUARY 2009
work as CTO for the Obama campaign.” If all
these friends of Wired wanted to go work for this
campaign, he was clearly doing something good.
Thomas Gensemer, M A N A G I N G PA R T N E R , B L U E
S TAT E D I G I TA L 26 : Ten days before Obama’s official
announcement, we got hired to do My.Barack
Obama.com. I had been with Dean in 2004. The
campaign’s idea from the start was to allow tradi-
tional community organizing to scale nationwide.
So with MyBO, we took a hyperlocalized effort—
much like door-to-door community organizing—
and supercharged it.
Tim Dickinson: Obama came in and said, “If this
to go see Barack or Michelle speak, here’s where
to go; if you want to hold a house party, here’s
how.” It was so inviting for people to play their
own role—here were all the tools you needed to
do it in a very successful manner.
Thomas Gensemer: From the first day, the traffic
of people who expressed an interest in owning a
piece of the campaign—either through giving,
volunteering, or creating their own network—was
huge. So any naysayers were convinced pretty
quickly that the website was going to be the cen-
terpiece of the campaign, especially if we kept
investing in more tools, making things more local-

8.23.08 8.28.08 9.01.08 9.03.08 9.08.08

Obama announces his running Obama accepts the Demo- With Hurricane Gustav bearing Sarah Palin sneers at Obama Already a megaphone in the
mate via an early-morning text cratic nomination. Afterparty down, Obama emails and texts during her acceptance speech blogosphere and on the radio,
message. thrown by Google (oh, and supporters with an appeal to at the Republican convention. Castro Valley’s Rachel Mad-
Vanity Fair). help victims. Fifteen minutes Within a day, the “community dow launches her TV show
later, the Red Cross website organizer” she disparaged on MSNBC.
reportedly crashes. raises $10 million online.
72
 CELLING OBAMA
Left and top right:
Two days before
the election, taking
advantage of their
free long distance,
volunteers filled the
alley behind Mission
coffee shop Four
Barrel to make calls
to battleground
states. Bottom right:
On election day, even
Internet bigshots
like Obama’s former
law school colleague
Lawrence Lessig
took to the phones.

ized, having it play a role in every field office and
state office and state strategy.
Andy Rappaport: Usually, we look at political cam-
paigns and say, “My god, they’re so primitive,” or,
“They just don’t get it.” But none of us could have
come up with a better way to use technology than
Obama did.
John Roos: By mid-2007, the ideas from the startup
community were coming from everywhere. Clean-
tech for Obama and Entrepreneurs for Obama both
sprang up here and went national.
Steve Spinner: In May, about 120 of us had an
TO P: DAVI D A. LYTLE; B OTTO M : B ETTI N A N E U E F E I N D
mirror what was happening on the general web.
Tony West: The Chicago headquarters was unlike
that of any campaign I’d ever seen. It was so quiet—
mostly young people on their own laptops. It had
that very familiar hum of people just typing, like a
startup you’d see in Silicon Valley.
Tim Dickinson: There was a foresight and deter- 25 Wired senior editor
Nick Thompson first
mination and seriousness about it. It was that pro- wrote about an Internet-
gression we’ve seen in the tech world where the centric presidential can-
didate—John McCain—
proof of concept happens—that was the Dean back around the turn of
campaign—and then someone else swoops in with the millennium.
26 Thomas Gensemer
the killer app.

is a managing partner at
Entrepreneurs for Obama video teleconference Andy Rappaport: It was like Lotus to the Dean Blue State Digital, which
with Barack. Afterward, Steve Westly and some campaign’s VisiCalc. Wait, I’m showing my age a was hired to mastermind
My.BarackObama.com
other senior Silicon Valley executives stayed and little bit. I’ll give you a more contemporary exam- just 10 days before the
put forth their ideas on tech issues and initiatives ple: It was like Google to the Dean campaign’s site launched. Previously,
he was the online direc-
and the campaign. I really loved that I could help Infoseek. tor for general Wesley
differentiate this campaign’s technology from any Tom Rosenstiel, D I R E C T O R , T H E P R O J E C T F O R E XC E L- Clark’s 2004 presiden-
tial bid.
other’s in history. I knew most of the venture capi- L E N C E I N J O U R N A L I S M 27 : When the political estab-
27 Bay Area native
talists and entrepreneurs, and if there was some- lishment is trying to figure out early on whether Tom Rosenstiel is the
director of the Project
thing good, I could bubble it up to the campaign. someone is a serious candidate, one proxy is, how for Excellence in Jour-
My personal favorite was the relationship we robust and sophisticated is the website? Another nalism, as well as a for-
mer media critic for the
forged with LinkedIn. is fundraising, where the mainstream press says, Los Angeles Times and
Mark Gorenberg: My.BarackObama started to “Barack Obama, he’s not showing up in any polls a reporter for Newsweek.
FEBRUARY 2009 SAN FRANCISCO

9.14.08 9.14.08 9.15.08 9.24.08 9.29.08

Lehman Brothers files for bank-
ruptcy; Merrill Lynch agrees to
sell to Bank of America; AIG
teeters.
Within two days, more than
five million viewers race to
NBC.com and YouTube to
watch Tina Fey’s first stint
imitating Sarah Palin.
Proclaims McCain, “The fun-
damentals of our economy are
strong.”
Palin’s implosion on Katie
Couric’s show gets 1.4 million
views on YouTube in a week.
The House rejects a $700 bil-
lion bailout plan, and the Dow
Jones plunges 777 points—but
despite the failing economy,
Obama finishes September
with a one-month record of
$150 million in contributions.
73
 CHANGE AGENTS

A N O N PA R T I S A N “ G E T
O U T T H E YO U T H V O T E ”
YO U T U B E V I D E O

Who: W R I T E R A D A M
O T T L E Y, D I R E C T O R C O R E Y
ROSEN, AND ALICE R ADIO
HOST HOOMAN KHALILI
The big idea: Khalili wanted
to make sure that whoever got
elected (and he wanted it to be
Obama) would be supported
by a genuine majority, not just
a majority of people who voted.
So he decided to target young
people—the biggest abstain-
ers, and the most likely to be yet, but look at all the money he’s raised.” itself and mount its own campaign, to be self-funded
Democrats—with a crackerjack Mark Gorenberg: From a fundraising point of and to free the party from the special interests.
video that would play on their
guilt. (“They need a fire lit under view, we knew right away. Obama nearly caught Peter Leyden: Obama went to Google in Novem-
their ass,” he said). A Citizen’s up to Hillary in the first quarter of 2007. ber 2007 and gave an amazing speech about the
Cry shows an old woman regret- Tony West: A lot of these fundraisers weren’t sanc- centrality of technology not just in his campaign,
ting not having gotten politically
involved when she was young. tioned events. People were spontaneously using but in his vision of what to do with the country.
The video eventually garnered the online tools to organize their own. That was a huge moment, to see that this guy was
more than five million views; Peter Leyden: I went down to South Carolina for really going to swing for the fences. This unlocked
that’s more than three times the
the first YouTube debate in July 2007. Everybody another big surge of support here.

LE FT: C O U RTE SY O F H O O MAN K HALI LI; R I G HT: M O N A T. B R O O KS

number of hits earned by Leon-
ardo DiCaprio’s celebrity-laden
GOTV video, which launched
the same day.
The nugget: “I’m hands-down
the most connected person I
know,” says Khalili about why
the video succeeded beyond
anyone’s wildest expectations.
“Every single person I know asks
me for something. It’s nonstop,
and I always do it—so, for the first
time, I was able to call on nine
years of built-up favors.”
in the traditional press was saying Hillary was
anointed, she was a steamroller, there was no way
you could beat her. Obama was flatlining in the
polls. But I told the Washington Post guy, Jose
Antonio Vargas, “No way this is over. No one has
any idea how powerful this fundraising and other
stuff ’s going to be.” Then I made a rash predic-
tion: Obama would probably beat her and then
win the presidency.
Tim Dickinson: The funding problem was finally
Andy Rappaport: I see business plans all the time
that are well written and well reasoned, but the
business never develops until the market instructs,
“OK, here’s your opportunity.” Obama started out
with pretty good underpinnings, but what made
the difference is that the public got to know him.
The tipping point was the candidate himself—this
is the guy that we’ve been waiting for.
Molly Kawahata, N AT I O N A L H I G H S C H O O L C O D I R E C -
T O R , S T U D E N T S F O R B A R A C K O B A M A 28 : I joined the

being solved. Instead of having to rely on the party
establishment and their friends—the Barbra Stre-
isand circuit in Hollywood, the Susie Tompkins
Buell types here—there was now a different way for
a more democratic Democratic Party to assemble
SAN FRANCISCO FEBRUARY 2009
campaign because Obama represented a progres-
sion from the pundits and party politics, and I
saw that come to life in Iowa. It was freezing out-
side—at least, it was for me, because I’m from Palo
Alto—and among those lining up and caucusing

10.02.08 10.06.08 10.20.08 10.20.08 10.21.08

The Obama ’08 app for the
iPhone launches and grabs
headlines worldwide.
74
Obama uploads ads to 18
Electronic Arts video games,
including Madden NFL ’09
and Guitar Hero.
Big surprise: Google CEO Eric
Schmidt endorses Obama.
The McCain campaign
encourages voters to make
“I’m Joe the Plumber” videos.
Two months later, Joe publicly
denounces McCain.
In the final two weeks of the
campaign, Obama gains
400,000 new Facebook
friends.
 up for grabs, and he’s from Chicago,” so they did
a little Chicago back and forth. Then I said to her,
“What are you going to do with these young peo-
ple? How are you going to measure what they’re
doing? Because they’re not even on laptops any-
more—they’re just texting on their phones.” She
TAPPING THE said, “Don’t worry about it. We know how to reach
ZEITGEIST them. We’re South Side Chicago, we’re organizers,
Left: Bloggers
convene in 2007 we’re going to stay in touch. And by the way, Chris-
at YearlyKos (now tine, no one’s neutral.”
called Netroots Joe Trippi: James Carville used to say, “It’s the
Nation), where
all but one of the economy, stupid.” Well, in this election it was the
Democratic presi- network, stupid. The fact is, Barack Obama won
dential candidates nearly every caucus state, including Iowa. And
appeared. Right:
During this election he did it because of the tools.
cycle, citizen jour- Peter Leyden: If you had to boil it down to the one
nalists and netroots reason why Obama is president, it’s Web 2.0.
activists—you can’t
tell them apart Joe Trippi: At the end of the Dean campaign, Face-
anymore—uploaded book was limited to Harvard and a couple other
enough blogs and college campuses. YouTube wasn’t even a gleam in
video streams to
make presidential anyone’s eye. Twitter didn’t exist until 2006. So in
politics vivid, acces- four years, the technology and know-how skipped
sible, even thrilling. Mercury and Gemini and went straight from the
Wright brothers to the Apollo program.
Wes Boyd: In the ’60s or ’70s, when people came
for Obama were Republicans. That was inspiring. out and marched—maybe even did a million-man
We were all just Americans coming together. march—there was no way to reach them the next
John Roos: Walking the streets of Iowa, the energy day, no follow-through. That’s all changed. In the
for Obama was just amazing. That was the first Obama campaign, the synergy between online and
validation that we had moved from the startup offline was immense.
stage. This had the potential to really take off and Peter Leyden: Television had shifted people from
be something big. being active participants in the electoral process to
Steve Spinner: I couldn’t stop crying for three being consumers. You just looked at the commer-
days after Iowa. cials and got manipulated, and then, on Election
Day, you went to the polls and pulled a lever. The
result of all this was complete alienation from poli-
tics. Barely 50 percent of the voters turned out.
2007–2008 Wes Boyd: Even among the Democrats, participa-
tion had become almost a dirty word. The cam-
G E T T I N G S U P R E M E LY paigns were very wary of volunteers, because they
WE LL ORGAN I Z E D would screw things up.
Peter Leyden: These new tools radically dropped
MAR K W I LS O N /G E TTY I MAG E S

OBAMA USES EVERY BAY AREA–GENERATED TOOL the threshold of getting involved. It was just click,
IN THE BOOK TO CREATE A CAMPAIGN COFFER AND click, click…boom: You’d given money, and now 28 While still a senior at
A VOLUNTEER ARMY THE LIKES OF WHICH NO ONE they had your name and email. So you were con- Gunn High School, Molly
Kawahata served as
HAS EVER SEEN. stantly getting pulled into politics. People were the national high school
like, “How many emails can you get from Barack?” codirector of Students
for Barack Obama. She
Christine Pelosi: I met Michelle Obama at an It was this freewheeling, interconnected social- is now a freshman at UC
event, and I said, “I’m neutral, but my boyfriend’s network/web-connectivity thing. Berkeley.
FEBRUARY 2009 SAN FRANCISCO

11.04.08 11.05.08 11.14.08 12.30.08 2016

Obama wins in a landslide, Change.gov launches, Obama announces that his 62% of Obama backers will The year the prediction made
even though a substantial giving campaign junkies weekly radio address will pester friends and fellow citi- by Howard Dean’s campaign
minority of America still a new web-surfing fix. also be posted on YouTube. zens to support his policies, manager, Joe Trippi, comes
believes he’s secretly a a Pew survey finds. true: “Get ready for the cam-
Muslim. paign that makes Barack
Obama’s look like a joke.”
75
 YOUTUBE NATION
Left: Steve Grove
managed political
content for San
Bruno–based
YouTube. Traffic
spiked on the
world’s second-
most searched web-
site as watching vid-
eos all day became
synonymous with
being an informed
citizen. Right: The Nick Thompson: The smartest idea I ever saw was
scripts for Tina Fey’s the way the Obama campaign used Facebook.
Sarah Palin satires
wouldn’t have been Before the Iowa caucuses, he set up that app that
as funny if they would troll through people’s friends lists, identify
hadn’t been based friends who were in Iowa, then automate an email
on journalisic investi-
gation of her record, to them that said, “Hey, here’s how the caucus sys-
much of it done by tem works. Go vote.” It was totally brilliant.
political websites. Meena Harris, S I L I C O N VA L L E Y G R A S S R O O T S F U N D -
R A I S I N G M A N A G E R 29 : I did a lot of work with Stan-

ford students: getting volunteers, translating the

online stuff into a field operation, lower-level
fundraising. It was standard procedure to put
all our events on MyBO, but I barely used it. I
used Facebook.
Lawrence Lessig: People could become soldiers,
not just supporters. They could volunteer late
at night in their pajamas. They could volunteer
20 minutes a week. They didn’t have to go outside
and march; they could stay inside and make a dif-
ference.
29 Facebook employee
Meena Harris, 24, is the Raven Brooks, E X E C U T I V E D I R E C T O R , N E T R O O T S
daughter of Tony West N AT I O N 30 : People are on Facebook daily, checking
and the niece of San
Francisco district attor- out what their friends are doing, posting on their
ney Kamala Harris. She walls, fooling around with applications. So if you
served as the grassroots
fundraising manager for posted an invitation to an Obama event on Face-
Obama’s Silicon Valley book, they were more likely to read it.
LE FT: R I C K K LAU; R I G HT: DAN A E D E LS O N / N B C U P H OTO BAN K VIA AP I MAG E S

office.
Meena Harris: The first thing I did when organiz-
30 Raven Brooks is the
executive director of Net- ing youth-vote directors—in New Mexico, say—
roots Nation (formerly was to figure out how many Facebook groups they
YearlyKos), which hosts
an annual convention of wanted to have: UNM students for Obama, Santa
progressive bloggers that Fe for Obama, Albuquerque for Obama. Then we
has become de rigueur
for the nation’s most created this group called Street Team to hand out
powerful Democrats. flyers at bars and make contact on the ground.
31 In 2006, San Fran-
Cheryl Contee, F O U N D E R , J A C K A N D J I L L P O L I T I C S . C O M
cisco’s Cheryl Contee
cofounded Jack & Jill 31 : On Facebook and other sites, people created
SAN FRANCISCO FEBRUARY 2009

Politics, a top African their own groups to express what they think
American political blog.
She is a devout Obama about global warming, the economy, housing, to
supporter. connect on those issues. It’s going beyond “Hey,
32 Sarah Lai Stirland is
a San Francisco–based
I’m going to a party tonight—want to come?”
freelance writer who Steve Spinner: Eventually, the campaign had
covered the campaign
for Wired.com. She has
relationships with at least 15 to 20 social net-
reported on politics and works, maybe more.
technology in print and
on the radio for eight
Wes Boyd: The sense of openness in general
years. was extraordinary.
76
Tim Dickinson: Before the primaries, I went to
Obama’s headquarters in Oakland for an organi-
zational meeting. One of the people there said,
“OK, you can just download the voter lists and go
make calls.” And I went, “Wait a minute. You’re
not worried about people hacking into the lists?”
And they went, “Well, you know, it’s out there.
Who cares?”
Sarah Lai Stirland, C O N T R I B U T I N G W R I T E R , W I R E D . C O M
32 : The whole open-source model that came from
the Bay Area poured over to Obama. It wasn’t a
specific piece of software; it was the whole radical
idea of open sourcing a campaign.
Tim Dickinson: The lack of central control and the
ability of anyone to jump onboard and start doing
their own thing were amazing. It was a spirit of
empowerment that no longer required anyone
to give you permission to do something—and it
came out of the mindset that built things like
Craigslist and Wikipedia.
Chris Lehane: If you want to give out fishing poles
to a million people so they can go fishing on your
behalf, you have to let them choose the poles they
want and pick the ponds and lakes they want to
fish in. That’s something that political campaigns
generally have been reluctant to allow.
Tim Dickinson: It was nuts! On MyBO, people
could organize themselves by “I like ice cream
and Barack Obama” or “Georgia women for
Barack Obama” or “Texans for Barack Obama.”
In Texas, this sort of “just add water” operation
was what allowed Obama to win the caucus there,
even though Hillary won the primary itself. Any-
one with the drive to do something for Obama
could. I could have started “Journalists secretly
for Obama,” you know?
Joan Walsh: I was in Henderson, Nevada, and
you would go to HillaryClinton.com and type in
the zip code, and you’d get three to six speeches,
or an announcement that Teachers for Hillary
was doing some event in the state that day. Then
you did the same thing on MyBO, and you got
dozens of results. In L.A., on the weekend before
Super Tuesday, it was hundreds. If you wanted
to, you could build your whole social life around
events you found on the site, all mapped on
Google.
Angela Petrella: Ridiculously large events were
mixed in with small ones. When I was looking
on MyBO in Ohio because I was going there to FEBRUARY 2009 SAN FRANCISCO

volunteer, Jay-Z and LeBron James were having

a free concert to support Obama. And that was
next to “Meet here to learn how to canvass at
so-and-so’s house at 2:00.”
Tim Dickinson: I went to this big rally in Oakland,
and to be admitted, the only thing they asked
for was your email address. That was 12,000
addresses, and he was doing the same thing
around the country.
77
 SAN FRANCISCO FEBRUARY 2009
78
 Peter Leyden: At his acceptance speech in Denver,
the campaign asked the audience to send text
messages to Obama, which they randomly selected
and streamed up on the stadium scoreboard. It 33 Randy Shandobil
was cool to see your message up there in front is the political editor of
KTVU Channel 2 News,
of 80,000 people. And the campaign was getting where he has worked
80,000 cell phone numbers, which are like gold, for more than 30 years.
34 Biz Stone is a
because something like 20 percent of Americans cofounder of the two-
don’t have landlines. year-old instant-blogging
service Twitter (maxi-
Randy Shandobil, P O L I T I C A L E D I T O R , K T V U 33 : There mum post: the length of
were people signing up for Obama’s text messages this sentence), based in
San Francisco.
who didn’t even support him, just because they
35 Jim Klar is an acous-
thought it was so cool. tic rock musician who
Matt Buchanan: The Obama iPhone app—even sold his self-produced
album to raise money
though it’s a small little app—is when it clicked for Obama. By day, he’s
for me how hyperlocal and constantly connected a web director for San
Francisco computer
the campaign would be. company OQO.
Biz Stone, C O F O U N D E R , T W I T T E R 34 : When we first 36 “It took 40 years of
saw Obama Twitter, we were like, “Wow, if he wins, wandering the desert,”
says Marshall Ganz,
we’ll have a president with a Twitter account.” who advised on Obama’s
Angela Petrella: I signed up for the McCain volunteer effort, of our
new president’s path to
emails, but I couldn’t stomach them. They were the White House. He
just attacks, whereas Barack’s always said things was a field organizer
for César Chávez and
like “Did you see Michelle speak last night? I’m so Robert Kennedy and
proud of her. I’m the most positive human ever.” now lectures on public
policy at Harvard’s John
Jim Klar, M U S I C I A N T U R N E D O B A M A F U N D R A I S E R 35 : F. Kennedy School of
The whole style of his emails reeked of Web 2.0: Government.
37 Steve Grove,
open graphics, a simple, single message, a big
YouTube’s news and
“Donate” button. And you would think, “OK, political director, com-
I can afford $10.” municated daily with
both campaigns last fall.
Christine Pelosi: The fact that you could email Before moving to the
someone and ask them for just $10 made things so Bay Area, he was a
reporter at the Boston
easy. You’re gonna send in that 10 bucks because Globe and ABC News.
you have this vivid picture of it: It’s half a pizza. 38 Huffington Post
cofounder Arianna Huff-
You can visualize the volunteers eating it while ington is a blogger, col-
they make campaign calls, and ringing a little bell umnist, radio host, and
author. “She’s the Zsa
when they get a yes vote. It paints the whole pic- Zsa of politics,” says fan
ture for you in a way that telemarketing just can’t. David Talbot. “She under-
stands that politics is
Peter Leyden: When you raise money the old way— also a party.”
all those people in a room, paid an hourly wage, 39 Rich Silverstein is
calling constantly—literally half of what you bring the cochairman, along
with Jeff Goodby, of
in goes toward overhead. But if you do it online, legendary San Fran-
A LONG TIME the costs just go whomp—they drop through the cisco advertising agency
Goodby, Silverstein &
COMING floor. So you essentially double your money because Partners.
The victory celebra- you haven’t spent the money to make the money. 40 David Carr has
tions in San Fran-
cisco, including this Chris Lehane: There’s this concept in Silicon Val- covered the media for
more than 25 years
one outside the Cas- ley called the cascade effect: the idea that you can and is now a media
tro Theatre, were as use online organizing to break through old ceil- columnist for the New
joyful as any the city York Times.
has seen since the ings that used to exist. Obama’s campaign did
41 San Francisco super-
49ers were winning that with fundraising—it raised $150 million in visor Ross Mirkarimi
Super Bowls. But
FEBRUARY 2009 SAN FRANCISCO

one month! ran Ralph Nader’s pres-

anyone young idential campaign in
enough to think Angela Petrella: I watched the acceptance speech, 2000. He is considering
that the Obama era and I was like, “What am I doing? I need to running for S.F. mayor.
would be easy got become more involved.” So I sent out an email, 42 Former San Fran-
a quick wake-up cisco resident Sean
call that dampened and it turned out that everyone I wrote to felt Quinn took a hiatus
TR I STAN SAVATI E R

from playing poker

liberal spirits: Early the same way. So then I sent out another email for a living last year
reports showed that that said, “Why don’t we raise money by hav- to write for Nate Silver’s
Proposition 8, which addictive and highly
bans gay marriage, ing some kind of fun event?” Everyone I sent respected polling site,
was likely to pass. it to had some kind of CONTINUED ON PAGE 88 FiveThirtyEight.com.
79

TO REACT AND TELL YOUR OWN OBAMA STORY,

GO TO sanfranmag.com
 CONTINUED FROM PAGE 79
incredible skill in event planning, so it
became sort of a supergroup of females.
Sarah Lai Stirland: The idea of sending out
emails to your address book is really key; it’s
peer influence in its highest form. People see
what you’re doing and get interested because
you’re an actual friend of theirs.
Peter Leyden: My email list has 3,000 people.
It would have taken me half a year to call all
those people up.
Christine Pelosi: These days, you don’t know
who the most valuable person on a campaign
is going to be. It could be a kid with 50,000
friends on Facebook. Or it could be a young
entrepreneur who gets all his friends to give
$50 a month over time.
Wes Boyd: Social networking was the open
door that brought people in. But it’s much
more nuanced than what the Dean campaign
thought, which was: “Invite people in, they’ll
self-organize, amazing things will happen.”
The Obama campaign knew that mobilizing,
say, 7 million phone calls or 20 million voter
contacts is a significant managerial challenge.
They were extremely innovative in training
volunteers to play middle management, and
they had a great program for having people
share their stories about why they’re committed.
Brian Lesh: I got an email about Camp Obama.
It was a three-day training session for people
in the Bay Area who wanted to be volunteers.
It was pretty intensive—from early in the morn-
ing until late at night. That’s where I met Mar-
shall Ganz.
Marshall Ganz, P U B L I C P O L I C Y L E C T U R E R , H A R -
VA R D ’ S J O H N F. K E N N E DY S C H O O L O F G O V E R N M E N T
36 : We felt that Obama’s organizing had to be
values based. The heart of social change in
America has always been rooted in values and
communicated through narrative. Where do
we find hope? How do we fight fear?
Brian Lesh: Marshall emphasized what he
called the “story of us”: When you call and
say, “Hi, my name is Brian, I’m a student, this
is why I care, this is why you should care, and
this is what Barack offers,” you build a connec-
tion between the person you’re trying to con-
vince, the candidate’s ideas, and you. At one
point, we would tell our stories to the group.
SAN FRANCISCO FEBRUARY 2009
One woman stood up and said, “I have to get
this off my chest: I’m a Republican.” And
everyone started clapping. It was really quite
powerful.
Molly Kawahata: At Camp Obama, I met a lot
of people from Silicon Valley who went back
and ended up creating one of the strongest
volunteer bases. A lot were adults who’d never
voted before and were inspired to campaign.
88
88
The predominantly online organization really
resonated with people in Silicon Valley. It was
consistent with how they organize their lives.
Wes Boyd: I can’t remember another cam-
paign that was so well put together. And we
got into it as one big, happy family, throwing
all of MoveOn’s weight behind it and helping
almost a million volunteers connect with it—
more than 600,000 people in battleground
states. I don’t think anything like that had
ever happened before on that scale.
Tony West: Suddenly, people who had never
given money to a candidate before were flying
to New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Florida, or Ohio
to do grassroots, “get out the vote” stuff.
Steve Spinner: The secret sauce was that peo-
ple felt like they owned a piece of the cam-
paign. That encouraged them to play an even
larger role. I started out at 20 hours a week,
then went up to 30, then 50. And I’m just
one of hundreds of thousands of stories.
Andy Rappaport: My daughter is a criminology
major in college, and she had to go to Houston
to research death-penalty cases. She called me:
“Hey, Dad, how ’bout a road trip?” So, looking
for some offbeat places to drive through, we
found out that there’s something called the
Texas Prison Museum in Huntsville, where
there are five prisons. We visited the museum,
where we saw, among other things, Old Sparky
the electric chair. It was very disturbing. Then,
as we were heading to downtown Huntsville to
see one of the prisons, we saw an Obama cam-
paign office a block away. And we said, “Shit, if
there’s an Obama campaign office in Hunts-
ville, Texas, where the number-one industry is
killing people, there must be one everywhere.”
2008
TA K I N G C O N T R O L
O F T H E STO RY LI N E
HOW YOUTUBE, CITIZEN JOURNALISTS, AND
CHARGED-UP PROGRESSIVE BLOGGERS
CRUSHED THE RIGHT-WING ATTACK MACHINE—
AND ALLOWED THE TRUE OBAMA TO SHINE
THROUGH.
David Talbot: In the past, the Fox echo cham-
ber would just drown everything else out.
That’s what I expected again. But online
media finally fought the right wing to a draw.
That was because the Karl Rove game plan—
freak people out, divide and conquer, run a
campaign based on fear and bogus issues—
kept getting derailed by counter-
stories, counternarratives.
Marc Cooper: The ability of millions
of people to generate their own con-
tent and go around the channels of
the mainstream media make it more
difficult for political strategists of any
stripe, including Karl Rove, to mani-
pulate the entire population by man-
ipulating a couple of TV networks.
All it takes to get around them is a
simple YouTube video that you post
on a site or send to your friends.
Steve Grove, N E W S A N D P O L I T I C A L
D I R E C T O R , YO U T U B E 37 : We knew

after the 2006 midterm election

that YouTube would be big in 2008.
I trace it to George Allen’s infamous
“macaca” moment [when he was
caught on video calling an Indian
American man a racial slur]. Allen
ended up losing to Jim Webb by
just over 7,000 votes out of some
2.3 million cast—and the “macaca”
moment is, arguably, what allowed
the blue team to win back the Senate.
Joe Trippi: What happened was that
this medium demands authenticity,
whereas television demands fake-
ness, for the most part. You can
fool anybody for 30 seconds. George
Allen could run millions of dollars’
worth of 30-second ads and seem
like a decent guy; then the “macaca”
stuff turns out to be who he really is.
I don’t believe there’s anybody who
can fake it 24 hours a day, 7 days a
week, 365 days a year.
Steve Grove: Knowing YouTube
would be important, we coached
the campaigns on how to use the
site and were in contact with their
new-media teams on an almost daily
basis. From day one, Obama’s team
was the most sophisticated and active
of all the campaigns. They even hired
an Emmy-winning CNN producer
to be on their video team.
Peter Greenberger: The campaign
uploaded more than 1,800 videos, FEBRUARY 2009 SAN FRANCISCO

at least 16 of which got over a mil-

lion views.
Christine Pelosi: The videos and the
rest let Obama bypass the filters and
talk right to the American people.
I think that’s why he was very effec-
tive in combating all the lies.
Chris Lehane: From early on, there
was a very, very aggressive email
89

89
 campaign trying to raise ques-
tions about Obama’s religion:
where he was born, who his for-
bears were, what churches he
may or may not have gone to.
Lawrence Lessig: One of the
biggest issues for the campaign
was, how should Obama respond
to those questions? In 2004, Ker-
ry’s response was to not dignify
the Swift Boat attacks—and look
what happened to him.
Christine Pelosi: Obama under-
stood that to counter all the
things being said about him, he
needed to do two things. First,
he was going to have to Google
himself, which is terrifying the
first time you do it. Second, he
was going to have to commun-
icate with people in ways that
wouldn’t allow him to be cari-
caturized.
Peter Greenberger: The cam-
paign invested heavily in key-
word advertising, which allows
you to rebut accusations. For
example, if someone did a
search about Obama’s being
a Muslim, because Obama had
invested in that keyword, an
ad with a headline like “Barack
Obama is a Christian. Learn
more…” would appear on the
side of the screen. He couldn’t
have done that with TV or
print.
Christine Pelosi: He under-
stood that you have to be your
own messenger. The right-wing
blogs are smearing you? Set
up your own website to stop the
smears. Also, Obama wouldn’t
depend on what else we were
seeing in other places. He
would email the speech directly
to us and say, “Watch the whole
thing.”
Arianna Huffington, C O F O U N D E R ,
H U F F I N G T O N P O S T. C O M 38 : One
SAN FRANCISCO FEBRUARY 2009
of the most fascinating things
to me was the number of peo-
ple who watched Obama’s
Philadelphia speech on race
in March from beginning to
end. It was 37 minutes, and
over six million people watched
it on YouTube. That made a
huge difference when his oppo-
90
nents tried to present him as
some kind of radical black
man, like Reverend Wright.
Peter Leyden: Who would
have thought that in the 21st
century—when the average
sound bite is down to eight sec-
onds and everything is quick,
quick, quick—oration would
even matter? That a brilliant
orator like Obama, a speaker
on the level of only a handful
of folks in American history,
could break through?
Joan Blades: The race speech
was just an amazing turning
point. It had real substance,
communicated by a leader, from
the heart, and it wasn’t being
chopped into little nuggets.
Peter Leyden: With YouTube,
you don’t have to hook some-
body in just eight seconds.
You can take 10 minutes, or
37 minutes, or an hour. And
you’re not just reaching 500
people in one room—you can
have millions of people watch-
ing for as long as you can keep
them hooked. So the actual lan-
guage Obama used to get the
audience to hang on as he
made his case was really, really
important.
Steve Grove: Another beauty
of YouTube is that the Obama
campaign didn’t have to fight
the battle on its own. Even if
the campaign didn’t respond
to an attack right away, some-
one else would. For example,
Obama did an interview with
George Stephanopoulos in
which he uttered the phrase
“my Muslim faith” in saying that
he wasn’t Muslim. But some-
body uploaded just those few
words, taken out of context, so
it sounded as if he were saying
that he was Muslim. But then an
Obama supporter uploaded the
entire interview, so people could
hear what he was really saying,
and that video actually outpaced
the other one in view counts.
Chris Lehane: The empower-
ing of people happened in
all kinds of ways. Look at the
advertising side.
Rich Silverstein, C O C H A I R M A N , G O O D B Y,
S I LV E R S T E I N & PA R T N E R S 39: The qual-

ity of political advertising by the

campaigns is so low. They focus-
group everything—everything—and
they run it through pollsters. What
you get is the advertising equivalent
of USA Today, aimed at the lowest
common denominator. And the pro-
cess is so slow—you do an ad on some-
thing like Joe the Plumber and by
the time it comes out, it’s irrelevant.
Chris Lehane: Now anyone—
everyday people, as well as the
campaigns—can do their own ads
and get enormous play without
having to spend anywhere near
the amount of money that you
used to have to spend. And the
impact can be huge, because when
you click on one of those YouTube
videos, chances are that you’re
actually going to watch it—versus
what happens when an ad comes
on TV and you just change the
channel.
Rich Silverstein: The creative com-
munity has been so pent up for eight
years—artists, musicians, advertising
people. We all came out.
Tony West: Someone did a video
remake of the Apple 1984 ad that
was a definite hit on Hillary. It
was completely unsanctioned by
the Obama campaign, yet it was
very well produced and got so
much mainstream-media play that
it became an issue for the next two
or three days.
Peter Leyden: Obama’s response
was pretty funny. Basically, he said,
“My team isn’t talented enough to
come up with that kind of thing.
That’s much better than we could
ever have done.”
Tim Dickinson: So many campaigns
are obsessed with controlling the
message. But [Obama’s chief cam-
paign strategist] David Axelrod had
the balls to say about this other stuff FEBRUARY 2009 SAN FRANCISCO

that started going on in the ecosys-

tem, “Go ahead and do that. We’re
not going to shut it down.” I’m talk-
ing about the “I got a crush...on
Obama” video in mid-2007 and the
Will.i.am “Yes We Can” video in early
’08. All this brilliant, creative stuff.
Jim Klar: I joined the Obama site
after watching that Will.i.am video.
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91
It just struck the most emotional chord—the star power,
connecting the music with his words in a speech.
David Carr: M E D I A C O L U M N I S T, T H E N E W YO R K T I M E S 40 : The
way things like YouTube now interact with the blogs and
the mainstream media—in Spanish, you say los revueltos,
the scrambled.
Joe Garofoli: It’s sacrilegious to say this when you work at
a newspaper, but the left-wing blogosphere started to have
a tremendous influence. In previous elections, there had
been a mutual loathing. The blogosphere would say, “Oh,
you’re old media. You’re a bunch of hacks. You’re timid
and lame.” And the mainstream press would say, “You
guys don’t do any reporting. You publish stuff that isn’t
verified.”
Joan Walsh: But now, many bloggers pull together analysis
that’s credible, and they’ve earned respect from some
mainstream journalists. There’s this new river of influence.
David Carr: There’s now a networked reflex of testing every-
thing being said against what that person said before. Every-
thing can be fact-checked because this database now exists.
Joe Trippi: The day the Dean campaign ended in 2004,
there were 1.4 million blogs in the world. By 2008, there
were 80 million. We’re not talking about something that
grew by three times. We’re talking 57 times.
Matt Buchanan: The thing about blogs is that they give
you intensely granular, really niche things—scattered,
very detailed, immediate, like Sarah Palin’s wardrobe—
but they sort of add up to a complete picture, because all
of that information spreads.
Marc Cooper: And part of this is that the people formerly
known as the audience can react in immediate ways and
generate their own content. This citizen journalism has
made the media much more transparent and accountable.
Arianna Huffington: Let me make something very clear: I
do not send anybody out to report. Citizens in general send
themselves out and report back. We now have 12,000 of
them working on a project we call OffTheBus, to differen-
tiate them from the reporters who are on the bus.
Mayhill Fowler: I had been trying to be a writer for so long,
but when I started following the campaigns in June 2007,
I had no interest in politics and I never read blogs. I didn’t
know where Obama fit on the spectrum, whether he was
a Blue Dog Democrat or a progressive or whatever. All I
knew was that here was a great story I could follow, and the
Huffington Post was a great platform.
Tom Rosenstiel: The Bittergate incident during the prima-
ries, when Mayhill Fowler taped Obama talking at a private
fundraiser in San Francisco about small-town Americans
clinging to their guns—a mainstream journalist would not
have done that.
Mayhill Fowler: I think the “bitter” story ultimately forced
Obama to run a better campaign. It forced him to seek out
small-town, working-class people and learn to connect with
them, like Hillary Clinton was able to do.
Tom Rosenstiel: Polling is another huge thing that has
grown along with the Internet and has really come to
dominate the narrative. Technology and automated dial-
ing have made polls easier to do, and citizen websites and
blogs that aggregate polling data are magnifying their
effects. Instead of just CNN or the New York Times, there
are now 15 polls you can look at at any given moment on
those sites.
Craig Newmark: I became a big fan of Nate Silver’s polling
blog, FiveThirtyEight.com.
Tom Rosenstiel: You saw significance of the polling sites
after the first debate. Most mainstream media said it was
very close, or McCain may actually have been the more
effective aggressor. That pundit judgment used to be more
important than polling, because the flash polls took a while,
the morning papers wouldn’t necessarily catch them, and
within three days, the polls would show a more decisive
victory for the candidate whom the pundits had liked in
the first place. This year, though, the public polls came
out instantly and showed that Obama was a clear winner,
by about 15 points. And that, not the media judgments,
was what was magnified.
Peter Leyden: What the blogosphere really did best was
attack Sarah Palin.
Nick Thompson: I think a main reason McCain lost was
because of his vice-presidential pick, and that happened
because of online media. Nobody really cared what the
New York Times wrote about Palin, but everyone cared what
Andrew Sullivan wrote on his blog [The Daily Dish, on the
Atlantic’s website].
Tom Rosenstiel: Palin was named on the day after the Dem-
ocratic Convention, and the entire political press corps was
in transit from Denver, so the moment was very well suited
to bloggers.
David Talbot: To go from Reagan to Dan Quayle to George
W. to Sarah Palin would have been the ultimate deevolu-
tion of American politics—the ultimate “fuck you” from the
Republican Party to the whole notion of good government.
Markos Moulitsas: The mainstream reaction was “Look, isn’t
she hot (wink, wink)?” Palin’s initial numbers were sky-high.
We had to get in there and squash that narrative.
Tom Rosenstiel: The blogs combed documents on the Inter-
net, particularly Alaska newspapers’ archives. They culled a
bunch of stuff, like the fact that she was for the Bridge to
FEBRUARY 2009 SAN FRANCISCO
Nowhere before she was against it; like the proposal to ban
books in Wasilla.
Peter Leyden: There’s an internal list—I won’t say what
for—of 700 progressive bloggers and netroots people. The
minute Palin was named, the people on the list just went
nuts: “What the fuck? Who is this woman?” We entered
total-coordination mode, aggregating anything we could
find on her and putting it out into the blogosphere really
quickly. Once again, Obama didn’t have to do it.
Raven Brooks: There were three or four days when some
93
 new fact about her past broke on Daily Kos and became part of the
narrative in newspapers or asked about in interviews.
Steve Grove: Videos of her took over YouTube. For the first time in
a long time, Obama’s channel went into silent mode.
Markos Moulitsas: The Democratic Party didn’t like it—they were
saying, “There’s gonna be a backlash; we’ve gotta lay off her.” Unlike
the Republicans, who’ve gotten where they are by running straight
at our strengths—look at McCain attacking Obama’s celebrity status,
trying to make the big crowds a bad thing—when Democrats see
something popular, they run in the other direction. That’s some-
thing that’s frustrated me to no end.
Chris Lehane: The online communities went after her for being from
a small town, for being a PTA mom, and I do think the attacks rein-
forced the undecided voters’ perceptions that progressives were elit-
ist and looked down on them. Within a two-week period, the Wal-
Mart voters migrated by enormous numbers to the McCain camp.
Tom Rosenstiel: After those first few days, the next step required
old-fashioned shoe-leather reporting.
David Talbot: I didn’t trust the blogging culture to be able to inves-
tigate her more deeply. Were they going to get their asses up to
Alaska? It costs money and time. I didn’t necessarily trust the main-
stream media, either. If I’d offered to do it for one of those outlets,
they’d have said, “No, we have our own team,” or I’d have been
considered too left. But it was important to adopt the attitude of
the blogs—“Who the hell is this person? She’s kind of wack and
dangerous”—while going after valid information. So I called Joan
Walsh and went up there for Salon. I churned out five or six stories.
David Carr: We would’ve sent reporters up to Wasilla regardless of
whether bloggers were agitated. It was our editors who were pound-
ing on us, not the bloggers.
David Talbot: I think the best reporting on her, frankly, was Salon’s
and the Times’s.
Tom Rosenstiel: Then Palin went on Katie Couric. Those interviews
weren’t that big a story in the mainstream press, but people were
emailing the clips to each other. Groups of them were watching
Palin stumble all over the place on YouTube.
David Talbot: Ultimately, Tina Fey had the biggest single impact.
It was this perfect storm: the best of American culture and media
coming together to damage a person who looked like she could be
a stealth candidate who’d drag McCain into the White House. Fey’s
whole Palin act fed on the online churn and the solid reporting that
had been done.
Peter Leyden: The economy falling was really like a nail in the cof-
fin. Basically, people knew that this country was going in the wrong
direction. I mean, Americans aren’t stupid. And McCain was doing
politics the old way, using the old broadcast coverage. And he’s old!
Obama was the new thing.
Joan Walsh: You know, I was personally wrong about many things.
I wanted a fighter. But I think the nation really wanted someone
who’ll be fair and judicious and not necessarily rail against George
SAN FRANCISCO FEBRUARY 2009

Bush and corporations and the awful people who brought us to the
brink of ruin.
David Talbot: The country is traumatized by the Bush administration
that created this America we don’t quite recognize anymore. We’re
freaked out by the economy and the loss of livelihoods. Just to be
angry and screaming doesn’t really capture the zeitgeist right now.
No-Drama Obama—that’s what people want.
Christine Pelosi: An important thing about Obama is, he got stron-
ger, and the Internet—YouTube, citizen journalism, blogs—shows
94
you that. If you look at the record, the way he talked in February
’07, you can see the improvement. At the same time, he remained
consistent in his core ideas and values, and again, the Internet
proves that. If he had changed, it would have been very easy to
see, and my inbox would have been flooded with the evidence.
Ross Mirkarimi, SAN FRANCISCO SUPERVISOR 41 : There was something rev-
olutionary about the technological artistry of how Obama grabbed
people, particularly young people, with his imagery, his silhouette,
the energy of his campaign, and the way it was all promoted online.
It was iconic, like the picture of Che Guevara in the beret—but
instead of just being plastered on a vacant building, these images
were all over the web. People everywhere were wearing their Obama
T-shirts and hats.
Joan Blades: T-shirts! People really like T-shirts. MoveOn did some
great ones.
Ross Mirkarimi: They’d been seduced—in a good way. And you could
just see it grow and proliferate.
Sean Quinn, WRITER, FIVETHIRTYEIGHT.COM 42 : Traveling around the coun-
try, doing our site—I lived in my car for eight weeks—I saw the
discrepancy in energy every day. Toward the end, we went to one
Obama office in southern Nevada, and the energy was going full
blast. Then we went to the McCain office, and there were three
sleepy, middle-aged to older guys, watching a game on TV and
making a few calls. We walked out of that office and said, “We’re
gonna win.”
Marc Cooper: This wasn’t really about new media, about information
moving from dead trees to cyberspace. It was about rewriting the
rules of journalism, political organizing, and community building.
Now, for the first time, we’re going to see how it’ll impact the way
the country is governed.

2009
KEEPING THE
MOVE M E NT ALIVE
COULD IT BE THAT OUR DEMOCRACY SUDDENLY HAS NEW POTENTIAL?
THAT WE THE PEOPLE COULD CONNECT ONLINE AND OFFLINE TO
GOVERN BETTER, SMARTER, FASTER? YES, IT COULD.

Peter Leyden: This is going to open up a 20- or 25-year-plus run of

a different kind of politics that’s going to have historical implications.
If Hillary Clinton won, we would not have the same transformation.
She doesn’t really understand technology in her bones.
Craig Newmark: 2008 was the new 1776, so I’d say that 2009 is the
new 1787. In 1776, we broke free of an oppressive system and began
to create something new. This year, we’ve broken from an admin- FEBRUARY 2009 SAN FRANCISCO

istration that had broken with American values—and I feel we’re

going to use the Internet to give a much stronger voice and real
power to the grassroots.
Peter Leyden: How do you use these next-generation tools not just
for winning in politics or inspiring volunteerism, but also for gov-
ernment policymaking? As an example, Al Gore has put out this
challenge to get the entire electrical grid off of oil and on to renew-
able resources within 10 years. We haven’t figured it out yet, but
there’s a kind of understanding about how to use collaborative
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95
 tools, wikis, and video to open up the policymaking process. I see
a huge opportunity here.
Tim Dickinson: So, you’re going to see governance brought into a
Web 2.0 world by people who know what they’re doing. Obama
already has several policy listservs, with guys like Eric Schmidt and
Craig Newmark—they’re invitation-only—where people can float
ideas and other people join in. Before, you’d have to have some
kind of commission structure and invite people to Washington for
five days, so they would have to leave their lives and their families
and everything else. But this is a social network of brilliant people
that’s operating continuously.
Lawrence Lessig: There’s enormous potential if he can hold on to
his transformational vision of creating a government people can
trust, and of changing the way Congress and the administration
function. It’s geeky, but it would be so significant if he makes all
government data accessible in an open-source, nonproprietary, and
consistent format, so anyone could download it and do whatever
they want with it.
Thomas Gensemer: You could get people offline in community
forums and having meetings, advocating for items on the agenda
in Congress in real ways, not just sending emails.
David Carr: A digitally actualized, younger demographic is going to
become part of a permanent political class. They expect to be not
only informed but involved. The web has lowered the barrier to
entry to participation that much. You know, passing along a link
to what you believe to be a persuasive blog or video is really no
sweat off your ass.
Joan Walsh: Obama has a 13-million-person email list, plus all the
independent groups that grew up around him. You want to see if
his social-networking team can think of ways to use that network
well. It could be an incredible fundraising tool, lobbying tool, and
a polling-people-to-figure-out-what-they-really-want tool.
Tim Dickinson: Neighbor-to-neighbor outreach, brick by brick and
block by block—I think he really believes in that stuff. He will go
online and try to get people to do good in their communities, rather
than just do good for Obama.
Jim Klar: If a Katrina happens again during Barack’s presidency,
people will open up their wallets. There’s still a trust factor.
Marshall Ganz: You don’t just put that genie back in the bottle.
There are millions of people across the country who were part of
this campaign, and they aren’t just going to disappear.
Molly Kawahata: There was a sentiment that naïve younger people
like me were being brainwashed to support him. But I wasn’t
naïve—I just believed the message. I saw someone who had a very
clear vision of how to get past what’s been poisoning politics. Now
I can’t wait to get involved in my next campaign. I’m 18. I will find
ways to not disappear. ■

INTERVIEWS BY MATT BLOOM, BRUCE KELLEY, NINA MARTIN, NATASHA SARKISIAN,

JUSTINE SHARROCK, CHRIS SMITH, NAN WIENER, AND JAIMAL YOGIS
SAN FRANCISCO FEBRUARY 2009
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