descent into the Vague
I've been compulsively checking Change for America's blog since launch, desperate for any hint of something concrete ever since my Open Letter to the group two months ago. The blog has been mostly links roundups and general topics since, but I always felt that there was something brewing back there, something worth waiting for.
Oh, frail notions disabused! Yesterday, Joe Drymala posted to the CFA blog, an entry vapidly titled "Unite for Change."
Is it just me, or does this sound like a car commercial? I'm giving up on hoping CFA can bring anything meaningful to the table. I've been giving them the benefit of the doubt, but it's become soberingly clear that CFA has no ideas - and probably never did.
I think they hoped to channel the netroots and hope that we came up with something amazing for them to harness, and thus replicate the Deanalanche. But what's missing here, unlike with the Dean campaign, is an active leader who can take charge, and actively inspire the grassroots. (memo: repeating the words "change", "unite", and "progessive" in an endless random pattern is not inspiring).
What suggestions do I have, you ask? At the very least, a Scoop-driven site would be a better start. Active posts from Trippi educating people about GOTV and caucus tactics based on his experience drawn from the Carter and Dean campaigns. A book review of the month. An internship program every summer for research using Lexis into building a database of who said what and when (for example: what was Paul Bremer saying about the Bush Administration's approach to terrorism in February 2001?). An archive of political ads and public discussions about what makes them tick. And that's just for starters.
There's a vast pool of skills out there that is untapped. There's a small pool of experience out there - much of it concentrated in places like CFA - that can provide an outlet for those skills by giving gthem direction. There's a lot of hard work and slogging that needs to be done, far more than just telling people "go run for office" or to "unite for change". CFA and Trippi have a frare opportunity to leverage their know-how into something concrete, but it never materialized. And now the window of opportunity is likely gone for good. The worst thing is, that they don't even realize what potential they had to waste.
Oh, frail notions disabused! Yesterday, Joe Drymala posted to the CFA blog, an entry vapidly titled "Unite for Change."
Here at Change for America, we're building an organization designed to enact progressive change through grassroots organizing and fundraising -- to fight for those issues that made us all believe in in the progressive movement in the first place.
Is it just me, or does this sound like a car commercial? I'm giving up on hoping CFA can bring anything meaningful to the table. I've been giving them the benefit of the doubt, but it's become soberingly clear that CFA has no ideas - and probably never did.
I think they hoped to channel the netroots and hope that we came up with something amazing for them to harness, and thus replicate the Deanalanche. But what's missing here, unlike with the Dean campaign, is an active leader who can take charge, and actively inspire the grassroots. (memo: repeating the words "change", "unite", and "progessive" in an endless random pattern is not inspiring).
What suggestions do I have, you ask? At the very least, a Scoop-driven site would be a better start. Active posts from Trippi educating people about GOTV and caucus tactics based on his experience drawn from the Carter and Dean campaigns. A book review of the month. An internship program every summer for research using Lexis into building a database of who said what and when (for example: what was Paul Bremer saying about the Bush Administration's approach to terrorism in February 2001?). An archive of political ads and public discussions about what makes them tick. And that's just for starters.
There's a vast pool of skills out there that is untapped. There's a small pool of experience out there - much of it concentrated in places like CFA - that can provide an outlet for those skills by giving gthem direction. There's a lot of hard work and slogging that needs to be done, far more than just telling people "go run for office" or to "unite for change". CFA and Trippi have a frare opportunity to leverage their know-how into something concrete, but it never materialized. And now the window of opportunity is likely gone for good. The worst thing is, that they don't even realize what potential they had to waste.
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