Barack Obama Wants Your Republican Friend’s Email

Nah, this isn’t creepy at all:

The Obama presidential campaign is launching an effort to collect Republican email addresses by inviting its supporters to submit information about their Republican associates to the Obama 2012 website.

The effort could help the Obama campaign build a database that would enable it to target Republican voters during the general election campaign. But, more perniciously, it could also become part of an Democratic effort to influence Republican primary voters to select a candidate Democrats think Obama could most easily defeat. [...]

The Obama information collection effort is cast under the mischievous guise of asking Obama supporters to “have a little fun at the expense of a Republican in your life” by signing them up to get an email from the Obama campaign ribbing them for having “inspired” the Obama supporter to donate.

The result, however, is that the Obama campaign gets a new trove of Republican email addresses that it could never have collected through voluntary submissions.

I don’t get it. For one, this is a strange way to get donations: “tell your Republican friend just how much you disagree with them and hope they lose by giving us money!” Secondly, it’s assuming that Obama’s supporters are just that spiteful and petty and willing to give up their so-called friends’ emails to an email list they probably don’t want because they’re, y’know, Republicans.

Does the Obama campaign really think the donations and emails they get from this will amount to much? I highly doubt they’ll penetrate into the hearts and minds of Republican voters with the relatively small number of addresses they get. Maybe it’s just good fun, or maybe it’s creepy. I’m going with the latter.