Obama's Text

While many were disappointed that they got their text message announcing Barack's choice of Joe Biden to be his runningmate at 3:04 AM (and in a third-person, non-Barack voice), I'm still waiting for my text after having signed up late.

The reason I signed up late was that I thought it was kind of lame. It was certainly smart as an organizing tool. And it continues the Obama campaign's appeal to Millennials, even if it was apparent the text came from a machine instead of Barack himself.

But I remembered 2004, when Kerry attempted to announce his runningmate. While good in theory, as the Kerry campaign was probably able to gain several thousand email addresses, the press scooped his selection of John Edwards before his supporters could be fed the secret information. By the time they got the email, it served as one more echo of the news the mainstream media had already trumpeted.

All along I was hesitant to sign up because I figured that, in the end, this text message would become just as irrelevant. Today's news media would simply not allow a text message or an email to notify the world about the choice made. I figured I'd end up reading about it on the internet somewhere anyway, and the Obama campaign already has every piece of information it would need about me anyway. I ended up signing up just to be a part of it all, but again, to me, the text message was lame.

What did you think? (Below is a photo on techPresident of David All's text received from the Obama campaign.)

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Text Strategy

I found the whole thing disappointing as well, but I think on the whole there is no way the campaign can regard it as anything but success.

Sure, the text itself was lame, it came in the dead of night (though, to be fair, on a Friday. Kids out partying might have gotten the message and started a conversation at the club . . . ok, maybe I'm stretching), but the main purpose was never to make sure that young people were the first to know. It was always to build a database of cell phone numbers for GOTV purposes in the fall.

As we've written many times, text message reminders bump voter turnout by 4%. That number jumps to 7 - 9% among Latinos. So while some people might be disgruntled, I think the vast majority of non-political junkies probably didn't think too much about the late timing of the message, and all those people will be GOTV'd over their phone in November.