42 Time August 17/August 24, 2020
Politics
someone who seems interested in doing more, they invite them to the of
ficial Democratic Party Facebook group for their region of the state, like
Polk Democrats Grassroots Action. It’s the digital equivalent of seeing
a homemade sign in someone’s window and inviting them to an official
campaign event. The team calls these official Democratic Facebook groups
“virtual field offices,” and that’s where the real work happens.
These offices are run by paid organizers, who ensure members show up
to digital events and spread Biden’s message on their respective networks.
The goal is to replicate the same level of “relational organizing that you’d
get in a field office,” Daley says, invoking Obama’s 2008 strategy, which
relied on people recruiting their friends and family.
Organizers call this process bringing people “up the ladder of engage
ment.” Posting on their own social feeds is the first rung. That leads to
joining the digital field offices, which in turn leads to attending events,
which leads to recruiting friends and family. Using this formula, the Flor
ida Democratic Party says it has recruited more than 119,000 active vol
unteers. They’ve made 5.6 million calls and sent 4.3 million texts. Florida
Democrats now have at least 500,000 more mailin ballot enrollments
than Republicans, and recent polls show Biden opening up a solid lead in
Florida—a state Trump can’t afford to lose.
Biden is hardly the first Democratic presidential contender to try to
harness the power of the Internet. Howard Dean pioneered online fund
raising during the 2004 campaign. Obama used YouTube in 2008 and
built an analytics team in 2012 that conducted massive data mining ex
periments to boost fundraising. Bernie Sanders leveraged viral content
and online donations in both of his primary bids. Biden himself has some
digital instincts: a former aide recalls that when the White House digital
team was posting its first Snapchat video, the Vice President came up with
his now iconic flourish of donning aviator sunglasses.
But at 77, Biden is an oldfashioned politician who’s more comfortable
working a rope line than posting on Instagram. During the Democratic pri
mary, competitors like Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg built
sophisticated digital outreach efforts; Biden emerged as the nominee de
spite having just a skeletal digital operation. Quarantined at home in the
early days of the pandemic, he struggled at first to adjust to the Internet
campaign, releasing a series of tepid videos to muted response.
In the months since, Biden has upped his game. He quadrupled his
digital staff to roughly 100, bringing in hires from rival primary cam
paigns and media organizations like BuzzFeed.
The Biden campaign, says digital director Rob
Flaherty, now “actually looks a little more like
a media publisher than a traditional campaign.”
It promotes Biden’s message through feelgood
videos designed to highlight the candidate’s
warmth. They tend to be positive, wholesome
and practical, sharing graphics on his economic
plans and videos from his fundraisers. Flaherty
often talks about running a campaign to “restore
the soul of the Internet” the way Biden aims to
“restore the soul of the nation,” leaving attacks to
outside groups or the Democratic Party. Democratic National Committee
chief mobilization officer Patrick Stevenson describes the division of labor
this way: “We do the negative messaging; they do the positive messaging.”
Biden’s digital team knows the former VP’s online following doesn’t begin
to compete with Trump’s. So its strategy has revolved partly around leverag
ing the popularity of others. “Where are people already talking about this?
Where are the people who are already fired up about
this?” says Biden senior adviser Caitlin Mitchell, 34,
who is leading much of the digital strategy. Biden’s
team has organized Instagram Live sessions with in
fluencers including TV personality Keke Palmer and
Jerry Harris from the Netflix series Cheer. (The idea
of working with Harris earned the support of Biden’s
collegeage granddaughter Finnegan, who has the
candidate’s ear on digital matters.)
“They don’t have the benefit of having these
massive accounts,” says Andrew Bleeker, founder
of Democratic digital consulting group Bully Pulpit
Interactive. “What they do have is an ecosystem of
progressives that are as fired up as I’ve ever seen.”
To grow the campaign’s digital reach, the first step
is making contact with potential volunteers, often
through an automated text when they sign up for
an event, says Nunez, the campaign’s new digital
organizing director. Once volunteers are inside what
he calls the “front door,” they’ll be directed in one of
two directions. If they live in a battleground state,
they’ll get linked with a local office. If they’re volun
teering in a nonbattleground state where the Biden
team hasn’t hired fulltime staff, like California or‘TRUMP’S
CAMPAIGN
WAS LITERALLY
BUILT AROUND
FACEBOOK.’
Tara McGowan,
ACRONYM