An Outsider's Campaign Diary

The successful 2008 presidential campaign by Barack Obama used the internet as a campaign tool on a scale previously unseen. Thanks to the campaign's savvy use of the internet, hundreds of thousands of ordinary Americans made financial contributions to the campaign. In addition, the campaign blog facilitated a lively public conversation. Thousands of Obama supporters joined one or more blogging groups engaged in discussions regarding public policy, personal feelings regarding Obama and other candidates, and related subjects.

One blogger, George Martin, has compiled his observations, often with feedback from other bloggers. The majority of his essays were written during the campaign, but the blog posts continued at a less prolific pace through the first two years of the Obama presidency. An Outsider's Campaign Diary, like other diaries, reflects the author's observations and attitudes on a given day. It is significantly different from a narrative of the campaign written after the fact, because those books are written with the full knowledge of the outcome. Unlike books written by professional journalists or academics, who usually must at least pretend to be objective, the Diary is written by a declared Obama supporter, but not a completely uncritical one.