It seems more likely that this was an Obama campaign advantage, rather than a Democratic party advantage.
The translation over isn't obvious. From what I've heard their internal organization was pretty fluid. That kind of thing depends on the quality of people involved, their commonality of purpose, and the organizational culture. You can't box that and roll it over to party HQ.
That said, Democrats do seem more likely to attract and motivate the kind of people you'd need for this. That's a pretty important head start.
It seems more likely that this was an Obama campaign advantage, rather than a Democratic party advantage.
Judging from the emails I'm getting, Obama would like to turn it from a campaign advantage to a governing advantage (here are all of my current policy issues, please put pressure on Congress to do X, Y and Z), and if he succeeds in that he will undoubtably try to turn it into a party advantage in the future.
So yes, the organization is fluid and can evaporate. The database of possibly politically active people is much less fluid, and may prove to be a more durable advantage.
This sounds insightful but really isn't. It's the Republicans who want the most change right now. It's change in a direction most of us disagree with, but it's far more radical than the Democratic agenda.
The reality is that if there's a tech advantage held by the Dems, it's the product of much simpler demographics; youth, urban, educated.
I do think the democrats have a technological advantage in this case, but it is far less solid than it may appear at first.
For simple demographic reasons the republicans cannot continue to focus on the old white anti homosexual segment of the population, since there aren't enough of them left to form a majority (projections suggest that Texas may turn blue by 2020, perhaps even 2016, if Texas turns blue then the Republicans will never again win the White House) and the other obvious alternative for the republicans is the young, well educated people who want and end to marihuana prohibition and less government interference in the lives in general.
Should the republican pivot to take these voters in, then they may very well attract a much larger share of tech people.
The Republicans are caught in their own gerrymander here.
As a party they absolutely need to find new issues, stop alienating Latinos, etc. However the national political lights in the party are mostly in Congress, and the vast majority of them are only going to face political challenges from their own right wing, and so have every reason to double down on current Republican policies even though it is not where the party as a whole needs to go.
I don't expect this dynamic to shift until after the Republican brand has so damaged itself that it stops being nationally viable. This will create soul searching, and cause them to pivot. What happens next will depend on how they pivot.
However I do not expect to see a serious discussion within the Republican party about their dilemma until they have pushed themselves to crisis. Which they have not done yet.
It's funny because the UK Labour party had a similar change/pivot in the early 1990s to become what is nicknamed "New Labour". They got rid of their previous party consitution which was quite socialist and replaced it with a watered down version. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clause_IV
The interesting problem of the republicans is, that they have to focus on the far right. If they focus on anyone else, then they will loose the current core voters and will loose more votes than they actually can get from anywhere else in the short term.
I'm not entirely sure that's the case. The DNC voterfile is compiled primarily from public record requests, and is as complete this cycle as it was in any other.
Narwhal and other OFA DBs may have supplemental information -- as do the "blue" vendors -- but that's separate from the voterfile, and I'm not sure its life-cycle is certain at this point.
If, as the theory goes, the product structure mimics the organizational structure of the group that created the product - you could extend to situations like this. In which case, you would argue that until the GOP changes its (hierarchical and paternalistic) structure the tech advantage will continue.
The argument can go the other way as well, if your organization is not so hierarchical that it can't learn anything. Point at this episode as proof that when in direct competition, the organization that's open to multiple approaches and tests to discover what works, has a distinct advantage.
I forget exactly which postmortem article I read it in, but this was actually a problem solved between the 2008 and 2012 Obama campaigns. The 2008 technology, while still successful, was still too diffuse for top managers at the 2012 campaign and had no overarching hierarchy, so they worked quickly to fix that.
In the sense of "the democratic party is using technology to their advantage" or "the democratic party is moving the tech industry into their political machine"?
Based on this article and those about the failure
the Romney campaign's get-out-the-vote tool, "Orca" [0]
my reaction is that one campaign built usable tech over time,
and the other tried to purchase it on deadline.
One system was diverse and cooperative;
the other isolated, secretive, and ultimately a failure.
I'll agree that a GOTV tool is only one part of campaign IT,
but I think there's a lesson waiting here.
The Romney campaign did not really have much choice, because of their need to secure the GOP nomination first. As the incumbent, Obama had a much longer lead time, which allowed his campaign to invest early and bring more of the development process internal.
And they needed it--they've been pretty upfront that for an uncomfortably long time it was not clear the decision to centralize the technology was going to work at all. The field and other outreach teams did not like or use the products that the tech built for them for months.
