Barack Obama, Internet Meme

I think Mickey Kaus is onto something here:

Why has Obama’s public campaign been so ineffective for the past month? Couldn’t someone digitally sophisticated and untanked–e.g. Buzzfeed‘s Ben Smith–make a good argument that the President was led astray by the overhyped reality and promise of Internet Politics.

Now, the Ben Smith part is kind of silly, as BuzzFeedPolitics appears to exist solely to further OFA's stupid Internet meme-pushing, but the rest seems right on time.

His team is so Web-savvy they’ve forgotten how to campaign…. After all, Obama’s aides are probably all on Twitter. Inevitably, if subconsciously, they’ll tend to skew in favor of ideas that get them big instant Twitter love, as opposed to old-fashioned themes that will win over the unconverted.

The past few weeks have given us #BigBird, #Romnesia, #Bayonets and others. It's like his entire campaign is a bumper sticker-covered Prius.

What's also notable about this is a fact Kaus failed to mention: Team Obama tried this meme-pushing exercise all summer on Twitter, and conservatives hijacked and mocked their hashtags mercilessly. Every time a new one popped up, Ace, Iowahawk, Cuffy, the Breitbart crew, Treacher, and a cast of thousands on Twitter used biting humor to rally our troops against Obama while smothering any pretense of efficacy this may have ever had as a serious campaign tactic.

This should come as a shock to no one who pays attention to the disastrous results of the left's policies, but the fact that their strategy never worked didn't prevent them from going full-speed ahead with it.

So here we find ourselves a little over a week away from the election with Obama running on fear, Internet memes and faded glory. And the left can't understand why they're losing?

Obama had a meteoric rise from nothing to become the top worldwide trending topic in 2008. But now, he's #OLD.

posted by Andy at 03:53 PM

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