Low information voters

Last week I heard Teddy Goff, the former digital director of the 2012 Obama campaign, talk about the success of the campaign's digital outreach.

In a presentation (and nod to Google) titled "Don't Be Lame," Goff made a cogent case for how "social and transparent" platforms like Twitter and Facebook were leveraged to target, attract, recruit and empower Obama volunteers and voters, influence the mainstream media, and raise money. The results were impressive:

"His 250-strong team raised $690 million, registered a million voters online, built Facebook and Twitter followings of 45 million and 33 million respectively, and generated 133 million video views.

"What surprised Goff most was how rapidly technology had changed from the previous campaign, where he cut his teeth and oversaw all state-level digital programs. 'The '08 campaign was incredibly effective in how it used digital tools,' he says. 'But Facebook was a tenth the size it is now; Twitter was in its relative infancy; and smartphones had only just been invented.'

"Since then, technology has empowered everyone to take part in political debate and influence conversation on social networks. 'Exploring what this meant for politics was the biggest challenge and very surprising,' he says."

Goff said one of the most effective Twitter graphics used during the campaign was this bar graph that illustrated the changes in jobs lost and created before and during Obama's presidency, which the campaign designed to blunt criticism that its $1 trillion stimulus and focus on health care reform had failed its promise to improve the economy and employment.

Selective data like this proves the maxim cited by a former CFO I worked with: "Numbers don't lie, they just don't tell the whole truth." Worse, "low information voters" increasingly limit their knowledge and understanding of critical issues and policies affecting jobs, spending, defense, health care, immigration, and many others, to simplistic "red - blue" infographics and superficial tweets. Sure enough, an updated version of this graphic was tweeted on Obama's Twitter account after yesterday's jobs report, with the rosy message: "Share the news: Our economy has added nearly 6.5 million private-sector jobs over 37 straight months."

Whether one blames Bush or not, the harsh reality is that Obama's policies over the past five years have resulted in the most anemic post-recession GDP track record and job creation in history.  As reported in a recent and aptly titled op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, The Great Recession has been Followed by The Grand Illusion, author Mort Zuckerman says:

"Since World War II, it has typically taken 24 months to reach a new peak in employment after the onset of a recession. Yet the country is more than 60 months (five years) away from its previous high in 2007, and the economy is still down 3.2 million jobs from that year.

"What the administration gives us is politics. What the country needs are constructive strategies free of ideology. But the risks of future economic shocks will multiply so long as we remain locked in a rancorous political culture with a leadership more inclined to public relations than hardheaded pragmatic recognition of what must be done to restore America's vitality."

Yesterday, the Labor Department announced that just 88,000 jobs were created in March, far below February's 288,000 jobs. Worse, the labor participation rate, which reflects the number of people working or looking for work, fell to its lowest level since the "malaise" days of Jimmy Carter's presidency in 1979. That means nearly 10 million Americans have given up looking for work since Obama was elected. One would think younger voters, especially minority voters, would be more critical thinkers given their personal stake in the country's unemployment disaster. What you won't find among Obama's tweeted graphics are the facts about the exponential increase in the number of Americans living below the poverty line, and on food stamps.

Bob Johnson, CEO of the Black Entertainment Network and the RLJ Companies, put it this way:

"The national unemployment average is 7.7 percent, and African-American unemployment is 13.8 percent. To be honest, it’s probably greater than that when you count the number of African-Americans who have simply given up on finding employment."