40 Time August 17/August 24, 2020
Politics
J
‘YOU’RE
TAKING 80 TO
100 YEARS
OF POLITICAL
ORGANIZING
AND THROWING
IT OUT THE
WINDOW.’
Tim Lim,
Democratic strategistvolunteers to cross- reference their phone contacts
with the voter file so they can target infrequent vot-
ers. Sign-ups on Mobilize, an events and volunteer-
recruitment platform used by many Democratic cam-
paigns, have increased 87% from April to July, and
the vast majority of those sign-ups are now for digi-
tal events. State parties are training field organizers
in online canvassing, grassroots groups are designing
Instagram graphics, and teens are posting the hashtag
#SettleForBiden to warn disaffected young voters
against voting third party. TikTok videos with this
hashtag have been viewed more than 50 million times.
But the Democrats have a lot of catching up to
do. In recent years, the party has lagged behind the
GOP’s investment in digital infrastructure and ad-
vertising. Republicans have mastered the Facebook
algorithm and become experts at making right-wing
grievance go viral. Unlike Biden, who spent decades
practicing the politics of handshakes and huddles,
Donald Trump rose rapidly in 2016 thanks in part
to a digital strategy that weaponized targeted Face-
book ads. (Trump’s digital strategist, Brad Parscale,
a political novice in 2016, was tapped two years later
to run the 2020 campaign, but was replaced in July
amid sinking poll numbers and poor turnout at the
President’s first in-person rally in months.)
Trump, in other words, has been focusing on digi-
tal for four years; Biden has been at it for about four
months. The investment shows: Trump has 11 times
as many Twitter followers as Biden and eight times
as many interactions on Facebook, and he outspentJoyce GreenberG brown firsT learned abouT poliTical orGaniz-
ing from Martin Luther King Jr. in 1957, when he visited her youth group at
a Philadelphia YWCA. She worked for George McGovern in Pennsylvania
in 1972 and managed field offices in Florida for Barack Obama’s 2008 and
2012 campaigns. She was so dedicated to Hillary Clinton that after Clinton
lost, she dyed purple and green streaks into her white hair—the colors of
the original suffragist movement—to protest Donald Trump.
If it weren’t for COVID-19, Brown would be working at a field office for
Joe Biden in Florida, where she lives. But the pandemic has prevented the
kind of campaigning she’s done for decades. There are no rallies in packed
stadiums, no handshakes at parades, no photo lines or kaffee klatsches.
Instead, Brown, 76, is at home, spending hours using Google Voice to text
Floridians about voting by mail, sending them a link where they can regis-
ter for a mail-in ballot. She estimates she’s sent roughly a thousand so far.
“Digital is kind of a foreign word to me because I’m not a digital person,”
she says. “I would much rather be out on the streets.”
For more than half a century, Democrats have put their faith in field or-
ganizing as the key to campaign success. But this year, instead of marching
through neighborhoods with clipboards, Democratic staffers, Biden campaign
volunteers and activists across the party are texting, messaging and com-
menting at their neighbors’ virtual doorsteps. Instead of sharing beer in field
offices, they’re trading memes on Slack channels.
Instead of finding volunteers at farmers’ markets or
school-board meetings, they’re scouring Facebook
groups and Twitter threads for potential recruits.
Campaign events that were once held in high school
gyms are now held on Zoom and promoted on Insta-
gram and TikTok. Because in order to win Florida,
or Arizona, or the White House, Democrats know
that they first have to win the Internet.
You could think of the Internet as a battle-
ground state in its own right. It has its own re-
gions and cultures, its own communities and
constituents, its own gatekeepers and power
players. Just as operatives like to talk about the
“five Ohios,” or deploy different political messages in disparate parts of
Pennsylvania, cutting- edge campaigns in 2020 are varying their pitches to
voters by platform, storming different corners of the Internet with differ-
ent tactics. They recruit volunteers in Facebook groups, blast factoids on
Twitter and host Instagram Lives with celebrities. “Digital is the new field,”
says Democratic strategist Tim Lim. “You’re basically taking 80 to 100
years of political organizing and throwing it out the window.”
Across the party, operatives and volunteers alike are adjusting to their new
roles. In late July, the Biden campaign unveiled an app, Vote Joe, that allows