This point is so simple that it's easy to miss.
Don't.
2008 is not about attacking Republicans, though that will doubtless happen (in particular, I hope, to Karl Rove and Rush Limbaugh!)
2008 is not about defining Conservatism, though that will happen, too.
The election of 2008 is about organizing Democrats, and friends who would like to join us, as we make a fundamental change in the direction of our nation.
If you read or have a userid on DailyKos you are already a part that organizational effort. (But there's so very much more than that on our plate right now.) In fact, I am confident that when you get your head around this concept, you will see what a hopeful moment this is and want to join in taking the next step.
Let me explain...
Organizational Capacity
Let's say it's 1995 and you had a strong opinion about a piece of legislation.
You picked up your phone and you called your Congressperson. You wrote a letter to your local paper. Perhaps you wrote an email to ten friends...or to a listserv you participated in. Or, if you were one of those rare people with influence over the mailing list of a national organization, maybe your opinion about that legislation got mentioned in their next bulk mail piece.
In 1995, those options by and large defined the limits of our organizational capacity.
As citizens, however, no matter how much any of us may separately agree on an issue before our nation, we are only as strong as the organizational infrastructure that brings us together and allows us to take collective action. In 1995 that meant:
the calls we made
the letters we wrote
the group members we inspired to take similar, limited action
In 2008, that has changed significantly.
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Networked Communication
You are reading this diary on DailyKos.com.
Like many of you, I was an avid internet user and political activist in the Fall of 2000. After doing GOTV I would read Orvetti.com and the Political Insider (links courtesy of the WayBack Machine.) If I got particularly inspired by something I read, I sent an email, I made a phone call, I told some friends. The internet was largely a one-way communication tool. To make it two-way, for the most part, you had to go off-line.
What's changed?
Since 2000, social entrepreneurs and political activists like Markos Moulitsas of Dailykos.com and Jerome Armstrong of MyDD.com founded two-way political websites. Markos and Jerome were guys who "got" the principles behind 1999's the Cluetrain Manifesto. They understood the significance of the ideas inherent in the first 10 of the Cluetrain theses and how they would impact communication on the internet:
- Markets are conversations.
- Markets consist of human beings, not demographic sectors.
- Conversations among human beings sound human. They are conducted in a human voice.
- Whether delivering information, opinions, perspectives, dissenting arguments or humorous asides, the human voice is typically open, natural, uncontrived.
- People recognize each other as such from the sound of this voice.
- The Internet is enabling conversations among human beings that were simply not possible in the era of mass media.
- Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy.
- In both internetworked markets and among intranetworked employees, people are speaking to each other in a powerful new way.
- These networked conversations are enabling powerful new forms of social organization and knowledge exchange to emerge.
- As a result, markets are getting smarter, more informed, more organized. Participation in a networked market changes people fundamentally.
That may sound somewhat vague and theoretical, but if you've ever left a comment on Dailykos.com, or posted a link, or written a diary, or put up a call to action eliciting others to join, you have participated in this revolution in authentic, networked communication. Here on Dailykos there are people you know who don't live anywhere near you. You can follow what they write and respond with your own thoughts. Thousands who agree on a topic can come together and build community and share their views and hone their thoughts. That is a big deal.
In fact, you are a part of something huge and maybe you didn't even know it.
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the rise of Local Blogging and Social Networking
There's a step beyond that, however.
In 2004 sites like MyDD and Dailykos.com were largely all we had in terms of two-way online communication. We might have been inspired by a piece on Dailykos to do something with other like-minded bloggers. But to make that happen we ended up coordinating online. We sent emails together. We google-bombed together. And, yes, because of the somewhat general and defocused nature of the possible actions...largely, we ranted and raved together.
2004 defined the political limits of the effectiveness of ranting and raving, of a politics based on the one thing we all shared, opposition to George Bush. In 2004, to do our most powerful political activism we still had to find our way to collaborate with brick and mortar (that's a suddenly old term, eh!) organizations that worked offline.
In 2006 that began to change. People founded local blogs. Organizations began to allow their members to network and build local groups online. The DFA meet-up movement matured and became a sustained organization bridging on and off line activism. The two-way communication inherent in blogging had in two short years become directly relevant to ever smaller, ever-more-elevantly networked local communities.
In 2006 we Democrats kicked ass in part because activists in Montana and Virginia and New Hampshire and New Jersey and Colorado and California had tools at their disposal that allowed them both to link up and take action with those nearest to them on and offline but also to tell the world when they had a YouTube link they thought was relevant.
And, yes, in 2006, we made history.
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2008 is not about attacking or ranting or raving.
That's so 2004.
2008 is about building in ever more focused and relevant ways the networking and organizational capacity of Democrats. That is what will win us the election.
When, for instance, you sign up at MyBarackObama.com (when you join, feel free to friend me, search for Paul Delehanty...I'm the bald guy.) or Democracy for America or PartyBuilder, you will have a chance to use an array of always developing social networking tools that will allow you to, at one and the same time, get organized locally and nationally with people who agree with you about the kind of change we want to see in this nation.
That development has made for an incredibly powerful moment for the Democratic Party.
Yesterday I attended an organizer training session for Barack Obama and met three other people who live in my neighborhood, Jan, Robert and Susan. Together, we formed a new group on MyBarackObama.com called "North Oakland for Obama" which will allow us to coordinate with each other (when it is approved and propogates...sorry, technology may be powerful but it isn't magic) and post events and actions that our neighbors can join.
We didn't have this tool in 2000 or 2004 or 2006. I can guarantee you that by the end of the summer the organizational capacity built using the social networking capacity of MyBarackObama.com will be a thing to behold.
To join, all you have to do is sign up, create an identity tied to your Zip Code and begin to connect with folks near you. (You should join at least one local group and be sure to join us at Kossacks for Obama.)
That simple gesture may seem too mundane to be as politically effective as I'm claiming. Certainly it won't have the same "zing" as participating on a national conversational website like DailyKos.com.
However, I guarantee you that if you sign up at MyBarackObama.com and do one action or event per month between now and election day, the impact will be huge.
That is the kind of organizing that will not only allow Democrats to win in November, that's the kind of organizing that will allow us govern and make real change in 2009.