NM Pop Politics

On Sunday afternoon , Stephen Fox, contributing editor for the New Mexico Sun News, sent out a mass e-mail linking to an op-ed he wrote attacking the Republican presidential ticket for running ads connecting Barack Obama to Bill Ayers, one of the original members of the domestic terrorist group Weather Underground.

BOOM! CHAOS BOMB.

Fox sent it out through groups.barackobama.com to a listserv — “NMNeighborhoodteam42″  contains the e-mail addresses  of some 400 Santa Feans who claim to have never asked to be on this list.

The reply address is also the listserv, so each time someone responds to say “Please remove my name from this list” or “How did you get my address” or “Fuck off, O-bozo” it is sent to the 400 other people on the list, who, in turn, hit “reply” to voice their outrage, which is also sent to everyone else and so on and so and so on… and now, my e-mail box has already close to 100 ridiculously angry messages from people who, like Sen. Ted Stevens, don’t know how the series of tubes works.

(For the record: This is the unsubcribe link).

When the Obama Campaign’s press contact called me up this morning to alert me to some pro-O event with Bill Richardson, I mentioned the anarchy going down on the interwebs. They had no clue because the groups function is set up by volunteers. To the local Obama camp’s credit, I received a call back from a Web coordinator within minutes and he is all, all over it.

Nevertheless, Obama’s New Mexico campaign should note that they are nearing the point of over-saturation in Santa Fe. This e-mail mess is just the most recent of many complaints I’ve been receiving over the last week about how obnoxious the Campaign for Change has become. One woman complained she had been asked to register to vote no less than 12 times over the weekend. Another complained he received three calls from Obama supporters within 10 minute–on his work phone.

Sitting in Aztec on Sunday, I happened to overhear an out-of-state organizer for Obama describing the overarching plan. They’re pushing an almost scientific “persuasion campaign,” a method often used in business to turn corporations around. Here’s the graphic representation from the Harvard Business Journal of what a “persuasion campaign” generally looks like:

Talk about treating the citizens as shareholders - Obama’s almost treating us like employees, which isn’t altogether a bad thing if we’re talking about reforming the country on all levels, in all sectors.

That said, with this e-mail chaos bomb, I think there are several hundred local liberals who have been persuaded that Obama is the electronic agent of chagrin.

But like I said, the campaign is trying to disable the listserv. I’ll post an update as soon as I hear back.