I made a comment to National Journal’s Elahe Izadi about how Republican campaigns are run …
GOP political strategist Soren Dayton uses a war analogy to illustrate the conundrum: “Part of the reason World War I was so bloody was that they had the basic tools of modern warfare, but they didn’t know how to use them in smart ways. So they just sat in trenches and shot at each other,” he said. “We need technology, but we need to use it more effectively.”
I would add that upgrading the technology isn’t enough. If Republicans use technology to make top-down voter contact more efficient, that is only a linear improvement in campaign effectiveness. In 2008 and again in 2012, Obama made the organizer more efficient, making her exponentially more effective. It is not enough for Republicans to use the same old campaigns with better technology. We need to reinvent the campaign in the context of the technology revolution that is changing organizations across our society.