So What Happens Now
Sorry I've been away. I've gone back to my career as a tech analyst. I'll never make a living in politics.
But I wanted to return for a moment and suggest something that the Democracy in America site is ignoring.
Howard Dean is no longer running.
I wish he were. He'd have a much better chance against Bush than John Kerry does. But Kerry beat the bloggers, he beat the grassroots, he's the nominee, and that's it.
So what happens now?
What happens now, according to Howard Dean, is we in the grassroots start running for stuff. What happens now is that we elect councilmembers, mayors, legislators, Congress critters.
What upsets me today is that the "regular Democratic blogs" like Daily Kos Atrios, Hoffmania et al (go to the blogrolls of these find products for names and links) are doing a much better job of this than DFA.
And they're making money at it.
They're doing it with Blogads, linked to the sites of specific candidates. They're doing it with calls, inside the copy, for contributions of time and money to specific candidates.
Exhibit A: Stephanie Herseth. Herseth nearly beat ex-governor Bill Janklow in 2002. Then Janklow killed someone with his car and quit his seat. So there's a special election there in June.
The bloggers have already been so effective that the GOP went directly after her Blogad, calling it a "secret Web page" aimed at getting out-of-state donations.
Only in a GOP imagination can a public clickable contribution page become a "secret." Imagine if such an attack had been launched against Dean. We would have laughed it out of the park.
But in Herseth's case, the Blogads are gone.
This is the kind of stuff DFA can do, now, to help win for the progressive cause, now. Howard Dean says this is bigger than Howard Dean, and it is.
Make it so.
But I wanted to return for a moment and suggest something that the Democracy in America site is ignoring.
Howard Dean is no longer running.
I wish he were. He'd have a much better chance against Bush than John Kerry does. But Kerry beat the bloggers, he beat the grassroots, he's the nominee, and that's it.
So what happens now?
What happens now, according to Howard Dean, is we in the grassroots start running for stuff. What happens now is that we elect councilmembers, mayors, legislators, Congress critters.
What upsets me today is that the "regular Democratic blogs" like Daily Kos Atrios, Hoffmania et al (go to the blogrolls of these find products for names and links) are doing a much better job of this than DFA.
And they're making money at it.
They're doing it with Blogads, linked to the sites of specific candidates. They're doing it with calls, inside the copy, for contributions of time and money to specific candidates.
Exhibit A: Stephanie Herseth. Herseth nearly beat ex-governor Bill Janklow in 2002. Then Janklow killed someone with his car and quit his seat. So there's a special election there in June.
The bloggers have already been so effective that the GOP went directly after her Blogad, calling it a "secret Web page" aimed at getting out-of-state donations.
Only in a GOP imagination can a public clickable contribution page become a "secret." Imagine if such an attack had been launched against Dean. We would have laughed it out of the park.
But in Herseth's case, the Blogads are gone.
This is the kind of stuff DFA can do, now, to help win for the progressive cause, now. Howard Dean says this is bigger than Howard Dean, and it is.
Make it so.
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