PUMAs, Get Granny Online, Now!

Barack Obama’s successful exploitation of the internet is a thing of beauty to be celebrated for some, and a frightening opportunity for unprecedented government privacy intrusion and information manipulation for others.  Some even see a threat to journalism as we know it inherent in Obama’s White House internet plans.  According to AP:

Transition officials call it Obama 2.0 — an ambitious effort to transform the president-elect’s vast Web operation and database of supporters into a modern new tool to accomplish his goals in the White House. If it works, the new president could have an unprecedented ability to appeal for help from millions of Americans who already favor his ideas, bypassing the news media to pressure Congress.

In sort of the political version of “MTV cops, Miami Vice” spinoff, Joe Trippi says “fireside chats” might give way to You Tube videos:

“He can do a half-hour YouTube address every Saturday, addressing millions,” Trippi said. “The networks would never give the president that much television time each week, but the press is still going to have to cover what he says on YouTube.”

In another wrinkle to the new internet government, Obama’s ties to Google and the Netroots (a contentious relationship, but one the netroots seem curiously reluctant to give up) are also rather worrisome.  Politico reports that given that Google was one of Obama’ s biggest contributors, and that Google CEO Eric Schmidt is one of Obama’s financial advisors, competitors like Microsoft (another, even larger donor) are shaking in their boots:

Google CEO Eric Schmidt didn’t say anything as he flanked President-elect Barack Obama during his first post-election press conference. He didn’t have to.

The image alone of Schmidt standing elbow-to-elbow with Obama’s top economic thinkers was enough to send shivers up the spine of Google’s competitors.

“This terrifies Microsoft,” said a Democratic lobbyist familiar with the industry. “There’s a reason why people are scared to death of Google.”

Schmidt also donated $5,000 to Google NetPAC, Google’s very own political action committee.  This site shows how Google’s PAC spread it around.  Wonder what impact all this will have on Obama’s and the Democratic legislature’s stance on net neutrality?  Matt Stoller of Open Left is getting worried about that, too; not about Google, per se, but about Obama’s tech transition team.

The potential marginalization of journalists by Obama due to his plans for a “straight to video” presidency, is not the only thing his media cheerleaders have to worry about, either.  A bigger, more pressing threat is Obama’s spokesman, soon to be White House Press Secretary, Robert Gibbs, a man quick to anger, and known to hold a grudge.  Said to be so close to Obama he’s called “Barack Whisperer,” like Obie’s a wild horse, or something, Gibbs is the guy kicking reporters off of planes and limiting their access when they write articles he doesn’t like, according to the Washington Post.  Gibbs is also the guy who yelled at Sean Hannity for booking Andy Martin for a segment about Obama’s relationship with Bill Ayers, since Martin has been accused of being a rabid anti-Semite.

With all this cowboy-like exploration of the Wild, Wild West of the World Wide Web, opportunities exist for not only Obama, the Democrats and other politicians to get their message out efficiently at the speed of light, but for those opposed to his more thug-like tactics and methods, too.  While the blogger bullies have intimidated net surfers on Obama’s behalf with great success, PUMAs stand ready to pounce back and give as good as we get.  They must no longer be allowed to spin WORMs (what Obama really meant) to their advantage, especially since nobody ever really knows what Obama really meant, since everything he says is deliberately ambiguous.

Though PUMAs were late to the party, we’re good at playing catch-up, and while we experience inevitable growing pains as we feel our way through our next baby steps, internet watchdog is a role we’re already set up to play.  In a way, the fact that we weren’t already in place during the primaries cost Hillary Clinton the nomination.  That’s not our fault, we were born out of the injustice of the caucus and primary process and the need to push back against the Obots and blogger bullies.  Let’s face it, Obama won because of a better p.r. campaign, using “astroturfing+ratfucking=astrofucking” Axelrodian techniques combined with Howard Dean’s inspirational use of the Netroots.  In the AP article, Peter Daou, Hillary Clinton’s internet operations manger, indirectly spoke to the reality of PUMA’a potential influence:

Peter Daou, who ran Internet operations for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, said her campaign’s Web outreach was limited by the fact that older and lower-income people — demographic groups most supportive of the former first lady — weren’t using the Internet for communication. Obama will need to find ways to reach those people, Daou said.

“We spent a year trying to bring these people to the Web, and President Obama and his team will have to do the same thing,” Daou said. “It requires a huge public relations effort, using more traditional communications efforts to invite then to participate this way.”

So, PUMA’s it’s up to us.  We need all those friends, neighbors, and grannies and granpas who were inspired to vote for John McCain or a third party candidate rather than reward Obama and the DeaNC’s unDemocratic behavior, to get online, now.  Teach them the bascis, how to use Microsoft to Google PUMA sites.  Let’s beat the bastards at their own game, or at the very least, make ‘em play fair.

We might never have another chance this good to get in on the ground floor of making a real difference.