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Ron Paul was the first. Obama copied much of what he was doing and brought it off line.
by jdavid 18y ago
Ron Paul was the first. Obama copied much of what he was doing and brought it off line.
- andreyf 18y agoWhat did Ron Paul do that was at all comparable to Obama's my.barackobama.com?
- unalone 18y agoYeah. Ron Paul went viral, but not because of anything he did. Obama beat the two greatest political machines of our age and he did it almost entirely grassroots.
- yummyfajitas 18y agoObama grassroots? I don't think you are using the term correctly. It doesn't just mean "has popular support". Grassroots, as I understand it, is when the movement is not orchestrated, but just springs up around the politician. Ron Paul and Huckabee certainly qualify, but I don't see how Obama does.
- unalone 18y agoI'm sorry. I thought "grassroots" meant something akin to "community organization." My bad! Okay, Obama isn't grassroots. But he has still put together the single most powerful team of volunteers any election has seen. And he's orchestrated a lot of it over the Internet.
- Kaizyn 18y agoCongratulations, go to the head of the class.
- mattmaroon 18y agoNothing at all. Ron Paul was pretty much unknown to everyone who doesn't read Digg.
- timae 18y agoI never understood how the internet crowd moved from Paul to Obama. The two could not be on more opposite ends of the spectrum from an economic theory perspective.
- natrius 18y agoI supported Paul because I'm a big fan of the concept of federalism. States band together for the few things that benefit greatly from collective action, like national defense, but keep the rest of the powers for themselves. It's kind of what the Constitution says in the first place, but even from a purely practical perspective, you have more say over a government that governs fewer people. Government is a compromise between the benefits of collective action and the drawbacks of other people influencing those actions. We're not in the right place on the spectrum. I support Obama because he has a reasonable approach to foreign policy, he cares about open government, he's ridiculously intelligent, his party isn't theocratic, and Sarah Palin isn't his running mate. I could do without the anti-trade sentiment, continuing the coupling of healthcare to employment, etc, but you work with the hand you've been dealt.
- martinflack 18y agoI don't think they did; it was different subsets of the "Internet crowd".
- jdavid 18y agosometimes you just want to feel heard.