Remember MoveOn.org? 26 June, 2006
Posted by Zack in Online organizing.add a comment
As if on queue, Newsweek proves the point of my post-Yearly Kos article from a couple weeks ago:
The best test of [Kos's] new power: Sen. Joe Lieberman, an old Moulitsas nemesis who stands a good chance of losing his August primary thanks to heavy blogger backing of his opponent, Ned Lamont. Moulitsas’s success in that race, and a handful of other contests that may well turn on the politics of the war, will help determine if he’s just the latest in a series of faddish Internet phenomena (remember MoveOn.org?) or the future of the Democratic Party he so longs to be.
According to ActBlue, Kos and several other bloggers combined have raised about $65,000 for Lamont. And his CT readership is probably somewhere in the range of 3,000-12,000. Those are big achievements, but fairly small potatoes compared to what a three million person email list can do.
Nevertheless, journos aren’t interested in actual results. Just the hype please!
A rare, good use of campaign video 23 June, 2006
Posted by Zack in Online organizing.add a comment
Oh my God, I can’t believe it. A politician finally did online video right. Of course it was John Edwards.I got an email from Edwards’ One America Committee, signed by John himself. With the subject line “End Poverty” (ok, obviously a last minute subject line that could have been better).
I open the email and there’s a really long, pretty boring email. To be expected. But theres’s a big picture of Edwards with a large-type quote that catches my eye: “We can end poverty in 30 years.” There’s a link: “Listen now,” with an attractive arrow.
30 YEARS! And I just posted yesterday about how no Dems will touch the long-term. Shame on me!
I click on “Listen Now.” It takes me to this awesome graphic of an old TV set. I think it is the exact model I grew up with — so maybe that means Edwards is alienating the youth constituency.
Anyways, the whole thing is perfect: Edwards is a little off center, the video is a little too crisp, he’s in front of a cheesy flag that’s obviously been chosen to be the exactly right amount cheesy — just perfect.
And he’s actually talking like a human being! Thank God almighty, a Democratic politician has figured out how to talk like a real, regular human being.
Not once — not even once! — does he raise his hand and do the Bill Clinton / Politician gesture. (Bill was its only legitimate user, because he invented it. But now whoever uses it: they’re just screaming “kick me I’m a politician!”).
It’s just as though, in the middle of his busy day, he stopped to tape this little podcast, and did it in one, casual take. Nothing to vet by the comms director here, this is coming from the man himself.
Better still, he speaks explicitly to the members of his “online community” as though he knows them — as though he genuinely appreciates them.
I could be cynical and wonder how hard Edwards, the most talented politician in America, has to try not to sound like a politician. But I know from the Kerry campaign that both he and Elizabeth Edwards take this online stuff seriously. I’m convinced that this is a simple case of John Edwards understanding that there is an enthusiastic base out there who supports him and his anti-poverty fight. He seems to genuinely want to reach out, thank them, and let them in on what he’s up to.
It’s the perfect approach and one that his online base will very much appreciate.
My only criticism of this outreach is that perhaps the email should have simply been a transcript of this video. The fact of video in emails is that only a tiny fraction click to watch. Maybe they’d want to take out some of the aaaaaaah’s (which are what made the video perfect, by the way), but that’s it. They should have just sent it out as is.
Edwards is kicking ass online. His success isn’t coming from new technology. Or from courting bloggers. Or from buying email addresses.
Rather, he is succeeding because he is using this new medium to reach out and make a real personal connection with his supporters. After several years in this business, I still don’t know why it is so hard for these politicians, who rely on the votes of real people for their jobs, to simply reach out an connect with real people. But it is the most difficult thing in the world for them.
So there’s one an example of how to podcast well. Bravo.
And, just for balance, here’s an example of how to do it absolutely terribly:
http://www.forwardtogetherpac.com/…
(It’s a confusing page, but notice you can click on “Direct Download” to skip the podcasting subscription process. That’s another big difference to notice: Edwards’ video is so much more accessible, where Warner’s is blocked by cumbersome Podcast orthodoxy.)
To all the ’08 hopefuls, take your lesson.
And don’t forget, you can vote for your favorite next-president at RootsPrimary.org.
(Cross posted at HuffPo.)
Fluorescent bulbs and the Revolution 22 June, 2006
Posted by Zack in progressive strategy, The Big Stuff.add a comment
Thanks to Al Gore, now everyone knows the planet is doomed if we don’t take IMMEDIATE ACTION. What kind of action? Start using fluorescent light bulbs. Drive a Prius. Encourage your mayor to put solar panels on city hall. Yeah, right.
Al’s a hero for what he’s accomplished over the last several weeks. And it’s not his fault that there are no credible solutions to global warming on the table. I blame academia. Rare leaders like Gore, who are willing to address the biggest problems, have been left solutionless by a two-generation moratorium on big-picture, long-term thinking among our greatest economists and social thinkers.
I saw Barack Obama hit the same brick wall a few weeks ago speaking on global warming. He started out saying, “We need a mobilization of resources on the scale of WWII.” I was ready to enlist in the Obama army. But when it came to specifics, he too had to default to fluorescent bulbs, Priuses, etc….
This problem spans virtually all big issues: in John Edwards’ search for real solutions to poverty, academia offers him little more than higher education subsidies and mixed income housing. On health care, it’s just as bad. I once witnessed a room full of U.S. Senators alternately beg and berate a panel of top health care policy experts for solutions they could tell their constituents about. After 45 minutes the experts had said nothing convincing, or even intelligible.
This affliction is not limited to mainstream Democratic politicians. On global warming, the Left’s biggest, boldest idea is the Apollo Alliance. It calls for $30 billion in new investment each year for ten years for renewable energy and industrial retooling. Can $30 billion per year fundamentally transform our society? No. Thirty billion dollars is 0.0024% of U.S. GDP — or, to put it another way, about 70 seconds of the national workday. Think about that on a personal level: you can’t keep your house clean in 70 seconds a day, let alone transform your life.
But let’s go back to Obama’s WWII reference. World War II truly was transformational for our society. From 1942 to 1945 the U.S. devoted a full third of GDP to the war. Domestic car production ground to a halt as the auto industry was retooled to produce jeeps and tanks. Hundreds of thousands volunteered to give their lives. People at home sacrificed by conserving materials and fuel. The wealthy paid far higher taxes. And millions of women joined the workforce for the first time in their lives. In other words, America did whatever it took. We certainly didn’t win World War II by taking a few minutes out of the day — in one way or another the war was the primary economic activity of virtually every American.
The economics of the war effort looked a lot like central planning at times, but private capital was rewarded lavishly for its cooperation, and big business emerged healthy, free and more profitable than ever on the other side of the war. Furthermore, the massive infusion of capital modernized the American economy as a whole and laid the foundation for 50 years of exceptional growth.
So why aren’t we talking about a mobilization of that scale to save the planet? Or to end extreme poverty? Or to carry out a Marshal Plan for the 4/5ths of the Earth that needs one? I can guess the primary response: “Americans will pay for war, but not for all that good stuff.” But go back and look at the history: Americans didn’t want to join World War II either. There was fierce grassroots opposition by right-wingers who didn’t see fascism as entirely negative, and broad and deep hesitance among Americans who felt Europe should sort out its own messes. (Put Arthur Miller’s “Focus” on your Netflix list to see a graphic depiction.)
It took extraordinary leadership to convince America to accept that extraordinary mission. But once we did, there was no stopping us. It could be the same with global warming and the other potentially show-stopping threats of this new century. But FDR had something on his side that our current leaders do not. There was an intellectual and institutional consensus about what it meant to fight a world war — about the scale and scope of it. It was accepted that economic rules could be changed, industries rearranged, and people asked to make huge sacrifices.
Today, however, we are bound by an “Inaction Consensus” that is shared by virtually every political, business and academic leader — a consensus that would see the oceans boil before allowing society to intervene structurally in private economic affairs. This consensus is shared by conservative and liberal thinkers alike — at least all the “respectable” ones.
It should come as no surprise that conservative thinkers oppose any kind of rearranging of economic interests by society. But this is just as true of the liberal members of the global Inaction Consensus. Liberals believe it’s OK for society to create the conditions for economic change, but even progressive heroes such as Krugman and Riech agree with their conservative colleagues that society should not try to intentionally direct change. The difference between liberals and conservatives in economic thinking is a matter of emphasis, not fundamental principles. The term “liberal” began as a label for free market economic thinking and has never shifted from that foundation. Go back and read one of Conservatism’s canonical texts, F.A. Hayek’s Road to Serfdom. You’ll find that Milton Friedman’s favorite author favored a strong welfare state, socialized medicine, universal public education and heavy regulation of industry. The only thing he disallowed was tampering with private economic activity on a structural level.
But as the polar ice caps plop off like ice cubes into a drink on a summer day, shouldn’t we reexamine that economic orthodoxy?
We need a real plan to save the planet: one that will replace all oil burning engines; one that will retool the world’s entire industrial infrastructure; one that will achieve all that in ten years; and one that is impossible within the confines of the Inaction Consensus.
Is there anyone, anywhere working on that kind of plan? An economics professor of mine, who comes from a tradition of economic thought (fringe in the U.S.) that thinks big picture, says even his grad students have shied away from the big-picture and long-term for decades. Why? Because they can’t get funding to work on those kinds of topics, and even worry that working on such topics will make it hard for them to find teaching positions.
What’s the solution? Well, I hear that a bunch of big donors are pouring millions into liberal think tanks. They are trying to catch up to their conservative counterparts who decades ago set up paradigm-shifting engines such as the Cato, Manhattan and American Enterprise Institutes. These donors are currently putting their dollars into fairly middle-of-the-road liberal institutions. And they should absolutely continue to fund those. But they need to fund some radical efforts as well. The donors need to notice that the conservative think tanks they so admire changed the terms of the national debate by rejecting the terms as they found them.
What we need are high-paying, resource-rich homes for talented, serious economists and other thinkers who want to work outside the Inaction Consensus — who want to work on truly Big Plans to save humanity. If the oceans really do start to rise — or some other global catastrophe comes true — then those plans will turn out be a lot less politically unacceptable than they appear today. And Obama 2016 will have something better to talk about than fluorescent bulbs.
(PS: Any of you donors out there who want to work on something like this, here’s where to find me: zackexley@gmail.com.)
(Cross posted from HuffPo.)
Exit fake blog hype. Enter real blog power. 14 June, 2006
Posted by Zack in Online organizing.add a comment
The influence and impact of the political Blogosphere has only begun to take off. The Mainstream Media, however, is about to stop paying attention. From now on, bloggers will read less and less about themselves in the pages of Newsweek or the New York Times. CNN’s “Internet Reporter” will start reporting on something else (maybe podcasting!). It’s on to the next big fake thing. What will it be? Joe Trippi, the originator of the Mainstream Media-fed blogger bubble, says ’08 will be the year of the political SMS text message — so maybe that’s it.
Yes, all this buzz about the power of the Blogosphere has been fake. Fake, because it’s premature. The Blogosphere isn’t very powerful at all yet. The current buzz is about where the medium will be in five years or so, not where it is now. Kos, for example, reaches about as many people as the Atlanta Journal Constitution’s website (not even counting its print readership). Throw together a handful of smallish city papers and you’ve got a medium reaching as many people as the 100 top political blogs.
I’m not putting down the Blogosphere. Just wait a few years. Then Kos will be reaching as many people as the New York Times. Blogs, and other insurgent media, will have lapped the combined readership of all newspapers and magazines several times by then. But none of that’s happened yet.
You see, fellow bloggers, the Mainstream Media is the immune system of the status quo. The media frenzy over the Blogosphere that we just went through was actually a process of inoculation. Kos and Jerome “crashed the gate” alright — but they were immediately absorbed by two white blood cells of the establishment: Tim Russert and Mark Warner. They have been released back into the Blogosphere. But have they been handicapped by responsibility to a real live (compromising) politician, the desire to keep appearing on major news shows, and the inevitable brain damage that happens when one’s 15 minutes of fame runs a little over?
The truth is, the Establishment has been laughing at the Blogosphere this whole time. Now, in horrific disappointment, bloggers will see that the Mainstream Media was only teasing when it reported its own demise at the hands of the Blogosphere. Kos’s “now anyone can have your job” to Dowd, and her honest response, was the symbolic moment of reversal, where the patronizer lets the patronized know he’s been made a fool of. Actually, it was the first time the Mainstream Media has ever been honest to the Blogosphere. That signals two things: a new respect and the beginning of the permanent silent treatment.
The establishment has tasted the Blogosphere. Chewed it a little. And will now spit it out.
If the Blogosphere really has come into its own, then all will be well, and the breadth and depth of this new medium and new community will continue to increase — without needing to be fed by Mainstream Media frenzy. But if the Mainstream Media has timed its inoculation exactly right, then the Blogosphere could be left broken, with stars like Kos, Jerome and Stoller leaving the community behind (as others already have) for the mainstream before the greater Blogosphere has grown its own full set of teeth.
This happens with all innovations in politics. There was once a sexy new development called Direct Mail. It was going to let the grassroots “conservative majority” take back politics. The beltway press reported the rise of the medium with enormous hype…until it got bored and moved on to the next thing. Years after it was forgotten, direct mail did indeed raise enormous critical funds that made the conservative takeover possible. But that didn’t make headlines. That didn’t bother an early direct mail pioneer named Karl Rove — he was interested in building real power, not seeing his name in print.
Around 1990-92, a tiny start-up organization called EMILY’s List was getting so much buzz in the Mainstream Media that even I heard about it while in college and paying no attention at all to electoral politics. In 1992 EMILY’s List was widely acknowledged to help make possible the “Year of the Woman” and the buzz reached a deafening level. But right after that, EMILY’s List dropped from regular headlines. Nevertheless, they continued to build greater and greater power. Today, the group supports its largest crop of candidates ever, at every level of government. And it supports them not only in fundraising, but also training for staff and candidates and many other services. But when was the last time you saw a major piece about EMILY’s List in the Mainstream Media?
Working for MoveOn.org in 2003-04, I witnessed this phenomenon firsthand. Almost every week, one of us was on TV being asked what it was like to be “revolutionizing politics.” National political journalists were constantly writing major puff pieces (as though each were the first). Interviews were like feeding candy to babies. At the time, I thought they were doing something for us. But actually we were doing something for them: providing them with a simple, appealing storyline. Journalists — even really serious, respected, national journalists — only wanted to hear how cool we were: how a bunch of 20 somethings were turning politics on its head. Never mind that most of us were 30-, 40- or 50-somethings, and that we were mostly just getting people to sign petitions and call Congress. I remember snapping at our press guy (who was amazing) for setting up a 30-minute CNN mini-documentary on MoveOn because I was having trouble getting any real work done in between talking to journalists. At the peak of the absurdity, the three youngest of us were deemed the 14th “Most Powerful Man Under 38″ by Details Magazine — right above P-Diddy and right below Justin Timberlake. The Mainstream Media was laughing at us, having fun with us.
Today, MoveOn is many, many times larger and more powerful than it was at the height of its media coverage: it has a substantial staff (not the five people it had when I was there) running many programs simultaneously. Its ad campaigns are much larger, more effective and much better targeted now. It raises far more money. It mobilizes members in many more ways now. And today it has a real field program, which it didn’t have at all in 2003 and for most of 2004. MoveOn will have a much greater impact on this year’s elections than any in the past. But their coverage in the Mainstream Media has slowed to a crawl compared to what it was before. And, alas, no MoveOn staffers are on the Details Magazine power list this year.
So hang on to your hats, bloggers! If you thought the ride up the Mainstream Media roller coaster was fun, then just wait for that queasy feeling of the plunge down. Now is when the best bloggers — the most sincere, the most determined, the most strategic — will really shine, because now all glory will come from real work and real quality, and not from Mainstream Media headlines. Say goodbye to the fake blog bubble, and say hello to the real one. And remember, the revolution will not be televised.
STATS!The Atlanta Journal Constititution newspaper’s website alone get almost as many readers as Kos – perhaps Warner should invite them to a party? The conservative online community FreeRepublic.org is just as active as DailyKos – so why don’t most Repubican hopefuls even know it exists? |
The Blogosphere of today in perspective. (But just wait five years.) |
(Cross posted from HuffPo.)
