Over the coming year, we are going to hear all kinds of claims about who will be the best presidential candidate to bring hope back to our country, to bring the change we need, and so on. We will read every tea leave we can find about the coming election; fundraising numbers, poll results, impressions of campaign logos, the number of times campaign videos have been viewed, and the number of people signed up to support different candidates on different social networks.
We will argue fine points of potential public policy. What sort of health care reform will be best for our country? How can we change our energy use to reduce our dependence on foreign oil and stop increasing the amount of carbon dioxide we are spewing into the atmosphere? How can we best deal with Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Darfur, trade gaps and so on? How can we best make sure that people can use the Internet to say what needs to be said, and what sort of voting procedures and machinery will make sure that our elections are fair, and properly counted.
Yet I’m looking for a little bit more. I am looking for our generation’s version of JFK, a person who will urge us to take action beyond adding comments to a thread on DailyKos and troll rating our antagonists.
Recently, everyone has been talking about Sen. Obama’s online social networking software. Obama has some great people working for him and people tell me his software is very good. As an Edwards supporter, I haven’t taken the time to look closely at Obama’s system.
However, I like the Edwards social networking tool, OneCorps. It may not be as sophisticated, but it has the important focus, of getting people to get out and take action, to (paraphrasing from Gandhi), be the change you want to see on the web.
This weekend will be the next day of action for the Edwards campaign. Edwards supporters around the country will gather to take action to help our country. The focus, this month, is on health care. In Connecticut, Edwards supporters are gathering to give blood. In Florida, Edwards supporters are joining in a neighborhood cleanup day.
Beyond this, the other day, I got an email from Sen. Edwards on Change.org. Change.org is the hot new social networking tool that "aims to transform social activism by serving as the central platform that connects likeminded people". It is just getting off the ground and I was impressed that Sen. Edwards has a page up there. There is a small group of Edwards supporters there and a small group of Obama supporters there.
As a final note, I do not want to get into an argument over which presidential candidate has the best tools or is doing the most to encourage their supporters to take action now. If the Obama team uses their social network to empower and encourage their supporters to get out and take action that surpasses the actions that the Edwards team is doing, then that is great. We should be competing to see which group of supporters can do the most to bring about the change we want to see in the country, not in 2009 but starting right now.
If the Richardson, Dodd, Clinton, or other teams come in and raise the stakes, even better. We need to show that Democratic working together caring for our neighbors can restore the empathy which has always been part of what makes America great.