Team Obama trotted out its secret weapon for the fall campaign the other day. To quote an email message sent to supporters by deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter, that weapon is “you.” Put another way, Obama is depending again – as he did in 2008 – on a vast army of volunteers bound by online social networks.

Cutter was encouraging recruits to join a “Truth Team” that would promote Obama’s record and rebut the charges already being launched by his Republican rivals. As she wrote: “We’ll provide resources for you to learn everything you need to know and tools to help you share it with undecided voters in your life.” That’s three “you’s” and one “your” in one sentence.

In explaining Team Obama’s strategy, spokesman Ben LaBolt told The Washington Post: “We believe that our grass-roots supporters persuading their networks to support the president will provide us with the decisive edge in November.”

Obama won for many reasons in 2008, but one of the biggest was his mastery of social media and the new ways that voters – particularly younger voters – were receiving information about politics. He and his advisers understood that the whole media environment was rapidly shifting from a vertical, top-down model to a horizontal, peer-to-peer model. The public relations company Edelman created a “trust barometer” and asked people which sources of information they would find most “credible.” No. 1 was “a person like yourself.”