Ok, so Kos added Dan Seals to the Actblue netroots page. The end of the quarter is tomorrow, and we're doing a last minute drive to get these candidates cash for the reporting period. If you can give, it's really a good time. Money you give now doesn't just enable candidates to reach more voters, it unlocks other pools of money - unions, donors, and PACs - who use the ephemeral quality of 'viability' to vector their donations. Blog money is smart money that is willing to take risks, and willing to do it publicly, and willing to do it early, and for this reason it has vastly disproportionate influence to the absolute amount involved.
Ok, so on to the netroots page. A lot of people are wondering how candidates are selected. I'd like to spend some time talking about the principles behind what we're doing. The netroots page is our way of supporting candidates and creating infrastructure at the same time. I am not pretending to be an expert at targeting (though DavidNYC is very good), and even if I were, the blogs don't have the millions that party committees have to spend on polling. But we do believe in people-powered politics.
For a long time, pundits have bandied about the expression 'all politicsl is local', but Democratic politics has been run by a top down group of consultants in DC who poll, forecast, fundraise, media buy, and dominate. While there is a huge amount of interest from this group in having the blogs channel money to candidates that they approve of, we think that people on the ground know best, and how we channel and give money should reflect that principle.
That means that those who survey the national political scene from a top-down poll-driven perspective are going to have less intelligence on politics than the millions of Democrats out there, on the ground, working to elect Democrats in their local communities. A lot less intelligence. The netroots page is an attempt to deal with this problem. You'll notice that on the netroots page almost every candidate has a local blog or set of blogs that are covering the race. That's because it's the local bloggers that are going to keep tabs on the races and the campaigns, and create the buzz and the excitement necessary to win. Local blogs and netroots communities don't just channel money, they channel volunteers, energy, intelligence, and news coverage. And sometimes, lightning strikes. A really effective local blog can shape a race the way the Ohio 2nd blog shaped the Hackett special election.
DavidNYC, Kos, Chris Bowers, and I are the ones who manage the process of choosing netroots candidates. Periodically, we open threads on our blogs and ask for nominations from local bloggers on races they are covering and candidates they like. The last thread was here. We do due diligence, but mostly we defer to good local blogs and netroots communities, who advocate in those threads. And then we try to pick the candidates that have real support among bloggers and netroots progressives (like DFA).
Aside from winning the House and Senate, growing local blogospheres and netroots communities is the single most important task we have to get done this cycle. By attaching money through the netroots endorsement process to the candidates local bloggers and netroots communities have followed and promoted, we're hoping to get candidates to pay attention to blogs and get local bloggers to wield more power.
In other words, this isn't just a way to funnel money to candidates, this is infrastructure that's being created. I'm not sure how useful the blogging world was to Jon Corzine's election in 2005, but the blogosphere that was left behind in the wake of that election has been helpful to New Jersey progressives and Democrats. The Virginia blogs created in the wake of Tim Kaine recruited James Webb, and won him the primary victory. The Montana blogs that grew in 2004 helped Tester immensely in his primary victory. The Connecticut blogs are becoming a permanent part of the Connecticut establistment and beating up on Lieberman, the Texas blogs are remaking the Texas Democratic party, and the Pennsylvania blogs are part of the 'silent revolution' that is attacking the very structure of the Philly machine. All over the place, an entirely new progressive and open source political intelligence network is snapping into place, supporting candidates, learning, and growing. Next cycle, they will recruit candidates and one day soon, we will have an entirely different party. It will have its own problems and its own structural weaknesses, but it will be more transparent and it will be people-powered.
Are we going to make mistakes in this process? Yes. Will there be complaints? Yes, and many of them will be legitimate. The netroots selection process is still too top-down for instance, and I don't know how to get around that problem. But someone else might, and that's what criticism and open source processes are for. All of this is part of the process of learning, and I'm no longer interested in a world in which covering up mistakes and imperfections is the norm. That's the old politics of PR, and that's not who we are, and that's not how the internet works.
So anyway, this is a rather long way of saying that we think there's a better way to pick candidates, and that's by relying on everyday Democrats. By supporting netroots candidates, you are helping Democrats win, and you are supporting the growth of local netroots communities, reshaping the party and the country in a fundamental way.
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