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Obama Campaign Seeks Republican E-mail Addresses, Eyes Roll

I think it's safe to say that the Obama re-election campaign is just a tad unconventional.

If the White House Dossier is to be believed, the Obama campaign is hoping to collect the e-mail addresses of Republican voters. The actual message reads like this:

Who inspires you to give?

This holiday season, we’re giving you a chance to have a little fun at the expense of a Republican in your life by letting them know they inspired you to make a donation to the Obama campaign.

Simply enter their name and email address below. Then, we’ll send them a message letting them know they inspired you to donate.

Thank you for supporting this campaign, and happy holidays.

Important: By making a donation today, you’ll be automatically entered for a chance to have dinner with Barack and Michelle Obama. By clicking on the “Submit” button below or otherwise participating in the promotion, you agree to be bound by these Official Rules and represent that you satisfy all of the eligibility requirements.

Oh Obama, you card! E-mail pranks? I must have woken up in 1996!

While one would hope that those in charge of the campaign would spend a little less effort on e-mail dickery and a little more on, you know, getting him re-elected, the e-mail, if genuine, is incredibly disappointing for his voters. However, it seems it has had an even bigger impact on the opposition. Going back to above linked article, the author seems to think that the White House is collecting the e-mail addys to build some kind of database of Republican voters. There's literally zero evidence given to support this idea, though to the author's credit they did manage to write the piece without throwing out the word “Orwellian,” so kudos on that.

In what sounds like a really lazy conspiracy theory, the article goes on to explain that with this alleged database the campaign could directly target Republican voters to better influence who gets elected in the primary, hopefully manipulating the things just enough to bring out an opponent who will be easily defeated.

Let's stop and think about this scenario for a moment. You're Johhny McConservavote and you've just gotten an e-mail from someone you don't know telling you how to vote. Do you actually do it? If so, congrats! You're a goddamned idiot!

For this grand scheme to work it would imply that the targeted voters are easily swayed, and if that's the case then there's a bigger issue here than Obama registering for a bunch of fake Rocket Mail accounts and flooding your inbox. If you're the sort of person who is so dead-set on dethroning Obama that it doesn't matter who you vote for, I suppose it's less of an issue, but people who actually put some level of thought into their politics wouldn't fall for something like this in the first place.

There are, of course, greater conspiracies being thrown about; e-mail monitoring and hacking, but if that's the case then the White House has earned a D- in Subtlety. While it's not exactly a happy thought, if the government were looking to spy on you it could do so with greater ease than asking people to forward their address books.

As poorly as this reflects on the Obama campaign the reaction so far is just as embarrassing. Shame on you, everyone else.