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Comment by Muli22 | Hacker News Reader

Obama was the poster child for overnight political success using more or less the same mechanics that social media is built on today. They just didn't think the other side can play the same game. Which goes - Tell people what they want to hear and whoever gets the most attention wins.

Every politician whether they were tech literate or not got on Facebook and Twitter after Obama won. Facebook has enabled the propping up of unqualified to govern but qualified to be "like"d candidates all around the world.

They have done serious damage to society in the last 10 years and we are just getting started as people realize the damage.

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> Obama was the poster child for overnight political success using more or less the same mechanics that social media is built on today.

Barack Obama had been in electoral politics, as first a state and then US senator, for just over a decade before being elected President, and had been widely hailed as an up and coming star in the party and likely future Presidential candidate after his national convention speech when running for the US Senate.

He was not at all an “overnight political success”.

I believe the commenter refers to “overnight” as representative of his transformation into a wide national figure, amplified by the explosion of technology during his tenure.

so - he was a state senator for less than 4 years (Less than one full term) before being elected president. I would say that's "overnight" as far as politics go - considering the others who make it their entire careers and never reach the pinnacle.

He was a state senator for a full term, and a US Senator for a partial term (and very active as a political, if not elected, figure before that, which is what being a “community organizer” is.)

> considering the others who make it their entire careers and never reach the pinnacle.

Sure, by that standard anyone who succeeds does so meteorically, since only a handful do per generation, while many spend whole careers in politics. But that just means the standard is nonsense.

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