>Dough
TYB
Who is Seth Rich- and was his death really connected to Hillary …
The 27-year-old computer voting specialist was last seen alive July 10, 2017 by the manager of a bar he frequentedin the Columbia Heights neighbourhoodin Washington DC
> https://archive.is/oBkVe#selection-365.276-365.317
‘Do it for Obama’: 2008 campaign alumni make an impassioned plea for Clinton
November 3, 2016 More than
8 years ago
Obama alumni produce election hype video for Clinton (Video: Facebook/Elizabeth Jaff)
By Juliet Eilperin
A month ago, a few veterans of President Obama's first White House bid were sharing a couple of bottles of wine at a bar in Washington's Columbia Heights neighborhood, wondering why Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton was not handily winning the election. So they decided they needed to make a direct pitch to all the people who had worked in the trenches for the past two elections: “Do it for Obama.”
Wednesday night, they posted the culmination of their efforts: a nearly four-minute exhortation for the Obama faithful to mobilize in the final days of this campaign. It features plenty of higher-profile Obama alumni — including former presidential body man Reggie Love,2012 national field director Jeremy Bird,2012 national director of Operation Vote Buffy Wicks and former Organizing for Action director Jon Carson — talking about why electing Clinton is critical to cementing the president's legacy.
Anne Filipic, who met her husband Carlos Monje Jr. while canvassing caucusgoers on Obama's behalf in Davenport, Iowa, in June 2007, holds her son and declares: “I know Hillary will not only continue on the legacy for all the things we fought for, all the things we have fought so hard for, but also the legacy she has built in her own right.”
“Do it for Obama. Do it for Hillary,” says Betsy Hoover, who served as director of digital organizing for Obama's 2012 campaign,as she holds her infant son with Bird, her husband, sitting beside her.
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The president himself is trying to urge many of his most devoted supporters — including African Americans, who are voting early in lower numbers than they did four years ago — to head to the polls. On Thursday, Obama held rallies in Miami and Jacksonville, Fla., telling crowds they should be just as enthusiastic about the prospect of Clinton in the White House as they were about his own candidacy.
In many ways the video — snippets of political operatives in their living rooms or offices, interspersed with campaign footage from 2008 and 2012, as well as Obama's speech from this summer's Democratic national convention — capture the passage of time. Multiple staffers offer their testimonials beside campaign co-workers they've married; one shot shows Alex Okrent, who died suddenly at the age of 29 in July 2012 when he was working on Obama's reelection. New York state Assemblyman Michael Blake, who worked on both of the president's campaigns and in the White House before winning office, also appears in the video.
[ How Obama's young loyalists will shape his legacy ]
Liz Jaff, who ran regional field operations in several states during Obama's first White House bid and led get-out-the-vote efforts on Election Day in Ohio in 2012, said in an interview that when she and other campaign veterans became “teary-eyed” discussing the election in late September, they decided, “Oh, my God, we need to get really emotional so anyone who’s not doing everything possible for Hillary will go out and do something.”
Josh Burstein, a digital staffer on the 2012 campaign who now works at the site Tribute, offered to host the video submissions. Tara McGowan, another Obama alumna who is digital director for the Democratic super PAC Priorities USA, drafted three questions to which individuals could reply on tape. Jaff spent “a couple bucks on a soundtrack,” and Frank Chi, who worked on Obama's 2008 ads as well as on Sen. Elizabeth Warren's (D-Mass.) race, edited the video along with McGowan and made the website.
“We will just spread it as far as it can,” Jaff said.
Whether the video translates into extra votes for Clinton is unclear. Jaff left for Ohio a week ago, where she is knocking on doors and making the case for Obama's aspiring successor.
“We were crazy for him,” she said. “So we should be crazy for her.”
>“Do it for Obama. Do it for Hillary,” says Betsy Hoover, who served as director of digital organizing for Obama's 2012 campaign
ALL PB
>>23785159 Killary drops Indivisible link
>>23785241 tossed in the van like aside of beef.
>>23785219 Paid for in part by Indivisible Action. MARTINAZZI, PETER. MobilizeAmerica, Inc
>>23785227 He Helped Build Facebook Messenger. Now He’s Building an Army of Voters
>>23785233 Mobilize didn’t even exist in November 2016. Launched in early 2017 withseed money from the progressive incubator Higher Ground Labs
>>23785235 Higher Ground Labs has received funding from technology investors and venture capitalists including left-of-center political activist and LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffmanand Conway Family Trust trustee Ron Conway
>>23785492 full name: Elizabeth "Betsy" Hoover. Founder and Managing Partner of Higher Ground Labs LLC. voter turnout tools, AI for organizing. Former National Digital Organizing Director for Obama for America (2012 campaign). HGL's Progressive AI Lab, focusing on ethical AI in elections
>>23785501 Premature Birth Tragedy Inspires Obama Camp Vets To Seek Funds for Obamacare Outreach
>>23785507 Jeremy Bird. Former National Field Director at Barack Obama. Worked at Organizing for America. 270strategies.com
>>23785518 Jeremy Bird. Executive Vice President, Driver Experience at Lyft. Meanwhile…Uber and Lyft unintentionally sent gig workers’ Social Security numbers to social media companies, Northeastern research uncovers
>>23785534 Shomik Dutta. Co-Founder @highergroundlab. Obama ‘08 & White House. Emily and Jon Favreaus Wedding
>>23785563 overture.eco Meet the Team. Ben Rhodes
>>“Do it for Obama. Do it for Hillary,” says Betsy Hoover, who served as director of digital organizing for Obama's 2012 campaign
WEDDINGS TODAY:
Jeremy Bird and Betsy Hoover, both of Organizing for America, are tying the knot in Milwaukee. They met in the early days of the Obama campaign, during the South Carolina primary (he was field director and she was an organizer). There’s a heavy turnout of Democratic field organizers and administration staffers, including Mitch Stewart, Max Blachman, Robby Mook, Karen Hicks, Buffy Wicks, Jon Carson, Marlon Marshall, Chris Wyant, Natalie Foster, Nancy Hogan, Beth Bafford, Jennifer Austin, Addisu Demissie and Ginny Hunt. Given the couple’s profession, it’s Most Organized Wedding of the Year. Hard count: 268.
https://www.politico.com/tipsheets/playbook/2010/09/a-few-women-take-on-craigslist-and-win-no-house-or-senate-candidate-has-run-an-ad-in-favor-of-health-reform-since-april-kaine-a-happy-warrior-party-frank-rich-obama-has-grown-tone-deaf-002848
Higher Ground Labs backs 13 startups to help Democrats win in 2018 and beyond
Taylor Hatmaker
12:24 PM PDT · April 3, 2018
With 2018 midterms around the corner, the Democrats are looking for their answer to Cambridge Analytica, the Robert Mercer-backed political data firm that either won the 2016 election or tricked everyone into believing that it did, depending on who’s talking.
To that end, a prominent left-leaning accelerator is out with a new graduating class, just in time to gear up for November. Higher Ground Labs seeks to “supercharge” political startups with progressive causes at heart. The incubator and accelerator’s main cause is notching Democratic wins, from local to federal elections.
The group just announced a class of 13 politics-minded companies offering “innovative solutions” to get Democrats elected. The 13 new companies join 10 companies from Higher Ground’s 2017 class. The chosen startups will each receive around $100,000 each in seed funding, an invitation to Higher Ground’s accelerator bootcamp and proximity to the group’s star-studded advisory board, which boasts a former COO of the Obama Foundation, a former Clinton campaign CTO and current Strava chief product officer, a former FCC chairman, the guys at Crooked Media and the chief technology officer of the DNC, among many other high-profile names. The political accelerator’s investor list features notable names like LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and Silicon Valley super angel investor Ron Conway.
“Last year, Higher Ground Labs invested in companies and entrepreneurs that provided game-changing technologies in Virginia’s state elections and the Alabama Senate race,” said Ron Klain, chair of the Higher Ground board and former White House aide. “Now, we are more than doubling the size of our portfolio, and will be backing two dozen companies that aim to have a major impact on the 2018 election, up and down the ballot.”
The 2018 class startups include:
5 Calls, an affordable phone-banking platform for everything from school board elections to federal campaigns.
Avalanche, a cognitive science-driven communications company.
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CallTime, which aggregates data into comprehensive donor profiles using AI to optimize donor outreach.
Change Research, quick, accurate public opinion polling that cuts costs by as much as 90 percent.
Civic Eagle, a SaaS platform for policy advocacy campaigns.
Factba.se, a “transparency engine” that collects “every word spoken” by a political opponent to allow for discrepancies and shifts to be identified quickly.
GiveMini, a micro-donation tool that lets donors round up to the nearest dollar.
GrowProgress, a tool that predicts audience personality for message targeting.
Humanize, “a platform that democratizes the tools of advertising” to give regular people access to ad strategies that would normally be price prohibitive.
New Mode, engagement tools that highlight supporters’ stories.
Same Side, a platform to activate supporters who are “already doing cool things” in music, art and culture.
Swayable, a data science platform that enables rapid-response digital campaigns and examines “which kinds of people respond to which content.”
Voter Protection Partners, a group that works with campaigns to “manage voter protection teams and track, analyze, and respond to voting incidents and election administration problems.”
Projects like Higher Ground are fueling the kind of political technology operations that Democrats hope can translate into wins in 2018 and beyond. While national post-mortems on the 2016 election remain obsessed with the right’s deep pocketed big data mythos, plenty of folks in tech’s left-leaning epicenters believe that Democrats can do better with the right tools.
https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/03/higher-ground-labs-2018-dnc-startups/
>Higher Ground Labs backs 13 startups to help Democrats win in 2018 and beyond
Announcing our 2019 cohort
HGL Team
/ June 20, 2019
Higher Ground Labs started as an experiment. Progressive politics was not innovating quickly enough to keep pace with broader technological change and shifts in American attention. Presidential campaigns historically served as the only hubs for innovation, and their episodic reality prevented new technologies from having lasting impacts. If progressives were to realize an enduring electoral majority, it had to be built on the backs of campaigns and causes armed with world-class modern technology tools.
In 2017 and 2018, we raised $5.0 million and seeded 27 start-ups against this theory. We wedded private-capital to talented founders and provided programming, mentorship, business introductions, and other support as they tackled large, unsolved challenges. If our startups succeeded, progressive campaigns and causes could benefit enormously while remaining largely inoculated from their failures.
Our model was strongly validated by the midterm elections. Every federal campaign used at least one of our start-ups, as did over 3,000 down-ballot campaigns. Our early, quiet investments into companies like Mobilize America, Change Research, BallotReady, Swayable, Tuesday Company, and Avalanche began to pay off with campaigns, causes, and even other investors.
Unlike technologies born and buried on individual campaigns, our start-ups are now learning from this past cycle to strengthen and prepare for the defining election of our lifetime. We will rise to meet the moment with them. Higher Ground Labs will soon close a $10.0 million fund for the next two years and will assume lead-investment roles for our strongest existing companies. Our follow-on investments will range from $500,000 to $2,000,000 and will run in parallel to ongoing programming support we provide. We intend to deploy over $6.0 million in follow-on funding in 2019 and 2020.
HGL will also continue to accelerate promising earlier-stage start-ups that solve challenges identified in our 2019 investment thesis. Our latest accelerator class will receive over $1.4 million in funding and will feature 11 startups and 2 fellows that collectively address misinformation and false-media, strengthen data analytics, integrate and measure performance, proliferate creative content, and much more. In addition, we are assuming a lead-investment role for our strongest existing companies.
What started as an experiment is here to stay. Higher Ground Labs wants to be an enduring engine in driving new technology to the political market. Because innovation is a process, not a destination.
Higher Ground Labs’ third investment cohort includes:
Countable
Countable is a web-action platform that helps users engage with the campaigns, causes, and media platforms they follow. The platform activates any audience by leveraging industry-leading products, generating custom content, and building programmatic re-engagement into a movement. Countable enables campaigns, advocacy movements, news outlets, and corporates brands to better understand the sentiments of their followers.
Main Street One
Main Street One, a fake-news and misinformation fighting technology that tracks narratives as they emerge and provides campaigns and causes with a distributed creative army to respond with force, helps progressive candidates and causes win the information war online. Its intelligence system allows it to play offense by identifying and advancing opportunities to shift public opinion at scale and speed. Its detection and disclosing mechanisms allow it to play defense through understanding the impact of digital manipulation and misinformation.
OpenField
OpenField is a canvassing application for more complex conversations that can push richer qualitative context back into a central repository of voter-insights. Its software, which supports the practice of deep canvassing, is systematizing how field organizers and canvassers make meaning from their data. Through empowering canvassers to knock doors without a list and have more natural conversations, OpenField promises to change the ways that progressives strategize for campaigns and advocacy movements.
Outfox AI
Outfox AI is an intuitive, low-cost Facebook ad-buying platform for down-ballot progressive campaigns and causes. With tools ranging from fundraising optimization, to outreach analytics for automation of online advertising, to a design suite that enables the creation of unique content, Outfox AI promises political organizations that smarter use of their data will power substantive engagement in their causes.
>Announcing our 2019 cohort
Outvote
Outvote is a P2P engagement platform that empowers voters to leverage their personal networks into supporter networks. The mobile app facilitates donations, texts, media sharing, and list building. Whether it’s amplifying the national discussion on important issues, mobilizing for policy fights, or getting qualified candidates elected, Outvote empowers progressives to create change both on and offline.
PredictWise
Predictwise is a powerful data, analytics, research, and survey platform that can generate customized, granularized insights on any voter in any district in the country. It is built on bleeding-edge research into market design, survey design, online and social media, administrative data, and other fundamental or behavioral data-sets related to measuring public opinion and political outcomes.
SpeakEasy Political
SpeakEasy Political is a self-serve Democratic ad platform (with a managed service component) built to template professionally designed campaign creative, and integrate voter targeting, in order to make top of the ticket political ads more affordable to Democratic campaigns and progressive organizations.
Survey 160
Survey 160 is a software product designed specifically to conduct surveys via text message (SMS) conversation. The technology bridges a gap emerging between telephone interview methods — which are increasing expensive on a cost-per-interview because of declining response rates — and online panel interview methods, which often struggle to reach particular audiences of interest. Such audiences may include small geographies, customer lists, or defined segments of the electorate.”
Torch
Torch is the leading real-time intelligence platform for politics and advocacy. It is a social-listening dashboard with customizable feeds and reporting tools to digest content from 1.6 million political organizations and over 50,000 US elected officials.
Warchest
Warchest is the first software that helps campaigns artfully spend-down to zero by providing innovative forecasting and analytical tools campaigns need to optimize every single dollar and successfully cross the finish line on Election Day. In the 2018 cycle, Warchest helped over 500 staffers manage over half a billion dollars including the DCCC, which relied on Warchest for their red-to-blue races and frontline members.
Wethos
Wethos curates and manages diverse teams of freelance specialists for leading mission-driven and nonprofit organizations nationwide. With up to 12 different flexible roles, their teams dynamically come together to tackle work ranging from awareness campaigns to website building to strategic branding, with an aim to support organizations fighting to solve some of the world’s toughest problems.
2019 Fellowships Recipients: Horace Williams, Rebecca Blais
https://highergroundlabs.com/announcing-our-2019-cohort/