As Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama’s get-out-the-vote operation kicks in today, his campaign will be using a communication technique increasingly popular with young people in the 21st century: text messaging.
Barack Obama’s campaign is counting on a potent new weapon for Election Day: the humble cell-phone text message.
Texting — an obsession of the young and a necessity for lower-income voters — may do for the Democratic presidential candidate what arm-twisting precinct captains did in years past: prod millions to get out and vote. The Obama campaign plans to use the millions of cell-phone numbers it has amassed over the past 22 months to blast its supporters with that message today.
“Barack Obama is reaching a generation that is trying to change the world in 160 characters or less,” said David All, a political consultant who advises Republicans on Internet strategy.
That is the aspiration. The biggest concern for the Obama campaign is getting young people — who have registered in record numbers and shown unprecedented interest in surveys — to turn out.
And if Republican candidate Sen. John McCain loses, you can just hear some comedian say that while Obama used text messaging, McCain’s campaign used pay phones.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.