You've probably read dozens of diaries inspiring us to take action, to volunteer for a candidate. Many of us have said, "It alls comes down to get out the vote," or "We need to build up a grass-roots field organization." Well, we are in major trouble. The Republicans have many advantages: more money, more cohesive strategy, more investment in the media and in companies that count the votes. But the also have an critical advantage on the ground. More over the flap...
About twelve months ago, I signed up to volunteer for Moveon.org's program to "create change." I've never heard back. Since I live in California, I signed up to help volunteer for Steve Westly. I never heard back. I signed up to volunteer for ActBlue and the DCCC. I've never heard back. When I heard Harry Reid was making a special site dedicated to helping retake the Senate, I checked under "get involved," and they didn't even have anything listed to actually help, aside from handing them some cash.
I live in CA-04. That means I have the opportunity to help unseat John Doolittle and elect a great candidate, Charlie Brown. It took four separate attempts at contacting that campaign for me to finally be able to volunteer a single time. Since then, I've never heard back.
I remember once that Kos had a similar story, and that he had signed up for a Republican campaign just as a test, and he received a phone call within 24 hours. I believe it. The Republicans don't mess around. They are serious about elections.
Somehow, the Republicans have managed to obtain our churches. In the progressive era, Democrats had those churches, under the guise of "Social Gospel," that is, helping the poor through religious charities. That was back in the era when Republicans described themselves as "Social Darwinists." Yes, there was a time when Republicans described themselves by pointing to Darwin. But I'm getting off the track. It isn't so bad that we now have science and they have the churches, it's that we haven't created any organization to distribute our ideas, smart as they may be. It's not so bad that our ground game is weak, it's that the entire rest of our campaign is weak as well. All we have is some general anti-GOP sentiment and united, energized base of liberals versus a disillusioned, fractured conservative opposition.
Well, how much will our energy count for if we don't have the opportunity to use it? How much will our unity matter if the GOP is able successfully unite itself behind God? They've done it before.
We need a change. And I don't mean D.C. consultants who give bad advice. I mean all the way down to the low level staff people who are, apparently, incredibly disorganized with their information. We need more computer people to make tracking databases like the Republicans do. We need to utilize, or create, a specific social venue to churn out massive amounts of liberal voters.
When I was out actually helping a campaign for the single time this entire year, I was given minimal instruction and a handful of addresses and flyers. I was told, when talking about my candidate, not to use the word, "Democrat." I was told I was targeting Republican and undecided voters, and literally every single voter I talked to was white. By far the most common response wasn't that they refused to support my candidate, it was that they weren't interested in politics at all. When I made phone calls, I was told almost universally that people didn't care or that it was too early to call.
I had a sense that there was something very wrong. The Kerry campaign, disorganized as it was, at least put together an impressive database of volunteers to coordinate efforts. But beyond that, we need to make people interested in politics by getting them motivated by important issues. When Republicans motivate fundies with God, Gays and Guns, we need to counter it with something like Jobs, Gas Prices and Healthcare. Or something else, I'm not sure. But we have to find issues that motivate otherwise politically illiterate people, and find a way to put them on a loudspeaker.
The fact is that we are already somewhat organized, in that so many of us come to this site, and yet we are not getting any clear message out to the politically uninvolved masses. The two recent biggest moments for us have been Lieberman's Kiss and Allen's Slur, both of which existed because a candidate we opposed happened to make a major gaffe and we happened to have the record button on. We can't count on that.
In addition, the average voter does not keep up with politics nearly as regularly as we do. Leave them to their mega churches and Fox News and a Republican computer database that tells how you vote based on what magnets you've bought on your car, and we've not only lost them, we've lost the election.
What should our message be? How should we communicate it? To whom? Should a message be tailored to a state, to a district, to a precinct, or should we have a single, national message? How best to organize how the message is distributed?
How much do we really want to win?
These are the questions our community needs to discuss if we are to get serious about 2006 and beyond.