From a WaPo article on campaign web operatives, which features video of GSO's adopted son Matt Gross:
Yet if it's understood that the Internet has a role to play in the 2008 presidential campaign -- voters are increasingly going online to find out more about the candidates, donate money and join networking sites, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project -- it's not yet clear how large the role of the OPOs will be. And the struggle between them and more traditional campaign operatives for influence over their candidates is likely to be a subtext at every headquarters, Republican and Democratic, in the next year and a half.
For the people who run campaigns, most of whom grew up in the analog world, the Internet is another tool, a new piece of technology. "Don't get me wrong," said David Plouffe, Obama's campaign manager and Rospars's boss, "the Internet is a powerful organizing and fundraising tool, and it's getting more and more important every day, but it's still not the persuasion and message tool that TV is."
It is a formulation familiar to Andrew Rasiej, a Democratic online strategist and co-founder of TechPresident, a bipartisan group blog that tracks online campaigning. "Every campaign will tell you that they get the Web, that they understand its power," he said. "But you have to look at where the power lies. How much influence do their online people have? Not much right now. Fact is, most campaigns, on both sides of the political aisle, think that the Internet is just a slice of the pie. They don't realize it's actually the pan."


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