For Us, By Us

The viral marketing effort of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) is perhaps the most impressive aspect of his campaign. He has updated the Howard Dean fundraising machine with some MoveOn.org organizational heft, and as a result has garnered spectacular fundraising results and an impressive turn-out operation.

The mantra of viral marketing is “for us, by us.” Viral marketing is basically friends telling friends about a product. That product becomes cool and then becomes incredibly popular. Obama is the cool product, especially for younger voters and those who want to be young.

The “for us, by us” model has its limits, however. Sen. Obama found that out the hard way. It is a model used to entice those in the know. It is for the cool kids, the technically savvy, the elites.

But in the bigger states, with large ethnic voting blocs and older voters, the model has failed.

Senior citizens and ethnic voters, especially blue-collar Catholics, are largely immune to Obama’s newfangled viral marketing campaign.

To get these voters, you can’t rely on the new ways. You have to rely on the old ways. And Obama has to work twice as hard to prove he is for them and with them. This is for two reasons.

First, he is young. His youth and inexperience hurts him with older Americans. Polls show that senior citizens just don’t think Obama is qualified for the job.

Second, Obama has a unique background. It is not just that he is black, which may be a factor with some voters. It is also because he is relatively unknown. Sure, he spent some time on the South Side of Chicago, but he is not from there. It is hard to really pinpoint where Obama is from. Is he from Hawaii? Kansas? Kenya? Indonesia?

Blue-collar Catholics like to know where a guy is from before they make a value judgment on him. Is he one of us?

Obama tried gamely to make the case that he is a regular guy by drinking beers and bowling, only to have the bowling experience become a huge gutter ball. His comments in San Francisco didn’t help. Throw in the video of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and most ethnic voters, as witnessed by the vote yesterday, concluded that Obama was not one of them.

This is a huge burden for Obama going into the general election. The Reagan Democrats are the ultimate prize in winning this election.

Ronald Reagan seemed like he could be a regular guy. John McCain shares that trait. Barack Obama does not. That is what hurt him in Pennsylvania and what may hurt him in November.