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technoratiI certainly hope that the State Democratic Parties will ultimately do more than add a blog and add ways "for people to feel connected". I would like to BE connected - blogs don't do that for me. It will take more than websites and technology to connect the party to it's base.
Chris Bowers of MyDD and Bob Brigham of Swing State Project have combined their intellectual forces to make a very cogent point about the state of state Democratic parties and their failure to understand the potential of the "netroots." In the wake of this weekend's meeting of the Association of State Democratic Parties, Brigham discovered that 3/4 of those state parties do not have blogs. Calling this a "sign of incompetence," (after all, you can set up a rudimentary site on blogger in a matter of minutes), he writes,
While almost all of these states have a mechanism for accepting online donations, none of them decided to catapult their online campaigns by having a blog. Likewise, almost all of these websites ask people to volunteer without offering daily reasons why their time is needed.
Bowers adds:
This has to stop. Of course Democrats love the small, online donors--they brought in something like $300M for Democrats this cycle. However, the netroots and its donor base needs to be treated like much more than ATM machines. The best way to kill the new wave of small donations is to keep asking for money without offering other ways for people to feel connected to the campaign. In fact, typically, people need to feel connected to a campaign before you can even ask them to donate. This is a lesson many in the Democratic leadership do not seem to have learned yet. It is a lesson they better learn soon. [Emphasis added.]
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New blood
Here's a piece on the ambitions of young Democrats and the generational differences that split the party. It talks about issues more than strategy, but I'm guessing a look at strategic thinking would reveal a very similar split, with technology assisted grassroots activism a la the Dean camapign championed by the young (who according to the article count "the flowering of the internet" among their formative politcal experiences). Getting younger activists in place at every level to implement these strategies may be just as important to the party's health as changing the issue base -- certainly it will help avoid this kind of embarassment. Now is just the right moment for political and strategic risk taking, and a new, younger leadership is the place to start. [via Political Wire]...