Now, I don't know whether or not they are confused, and have mistaken the Dkos / MyDD / SSP page for all of Act Blue. It wouldn't be the first time that an outsider to the netroots scene has considered the entire progressive netroots to be the same thing as Dailykos / MyDD. That was, for example, one of the huge mistakes TNR made during their anti-netroots process screed back in June. Had they been paying attention and actually trying to counter Act Blue, they would have noticed that contains all of the features I mentioned above. In fact, the ability for any individual to start his or her own Act Blue page has been one of the reasons the site is so successful. While the Dkos / MyDD / SSP page has helped direct around $388K toward Democratic candidates in this election cycle, Act Blue as a whole has directed $6.2M to Democratic candidates this cycle. The netroots page is only about 6% of Act Blue's total contribution. The vast majority comes from a decentralized network of smaller pages controlled, promoted and maintained by thousands of self-starting progressive activists around the country.

But let's cut them some slack and assume, for a moment, that they were only trying to counter the Dkos / MyDD / SSP page and not Act Blue itself. Even this comparison makes them look pretty poor. There are no links to official blogs, no promotion of local blogs, no event lists, and no volunteer signup links. The community was not involved in the endorsement discussions. Further, these are some pretty high-ranking conservative blogs when it comes to traffic. The six blogs that use Blogads currently measure out at around 1.4 million page views per week. Human Events Online, which does not use Blogads, has traffic comparable to Powerline's, giving the seven sites half of the roughly 4 million page view per week that Dailykos, MyDD, and Swing State Project have combined. Despite this, they are not exactly fundraising at a torrid pace, with only $6K so far for 18 candidates. During our five-day end of quarter push in late June, you guys chipped in a remarkable $120K for the thirteen active candidates on our list.

Now, that conservatives are trying to imitate progressives online in terms of House Parties, official party blogs, and small donor, conduit-earmarked contributions is both a form of flattery and a sign that they are envious of our netroots infrastructure. After suffering through three years of meta-discussions on political infrastructure that are often dominated with progressive envy toward sophisticated conservative political machinery, I like watching conservatives scramble to match us in terms on online activism and failing. It is nice to see the envy on the other foot for a change. Also, I probably shouldn't gloat too much, since resting on your laurels is never a good thing (see Democrats, natural governing party of the United States, 1932-1994), and since it is entirely possible that while the new venture is starting slow, it could pick up later on and become a real success. I also don't mind seeing more small donors enter the political fray. Then again, we have no idea how small these donations actually are, since they are not listing the total number of contributors at Rightroots. For what it is worth, the combined netroots page has 5,258 distinct donors who have given an average of $73.75 as of this writing.

Still, it makes me feel very good to se conservatives claim the progressive netroots are crazy and ineffective out of one side of their mouths, and then try to figure out ways to copy us out of the other side of their mouths. It makes me feel even better to see them fail in their attempts to do so. At the Yearly Kos Blogosphere Theory panel that I moderated (the official title was "Blogosphere Experts"), I asked the six panelists if they thought the progressive netroots had left the conservative netroots in the dust over the past year and a half. Looking over the events of the past three months, I once again must conclude "yes." As one of the panelists, Rep. Brad Miller said (and I am paraphrasing), it seems that conservatives are unable to allow for the level of diffuse, decentralized participation that has led to the great success of the progressive netroots to ever occur on their side. If conservatives ever do develop a real counter to Act Blue, then we should be worried that we haven't developed Act Blue 2.0 to stay one step ahead. However, since the success of Act Blue requires ceding control over Act Blue to thousands on individual participants, I have to seriously wonder if conservatives will ever be willing to take the steps needed to develop a more effective netroots operation in many areas.

Update: Demostrating a bit more both how conservatives are afraid of the progressive netroots and how much of a top down effort this is, it is important to note that many of hte websites involved int eh project are riding the conservative pundit welfare gravy train. At the very least, as I was told over email, "Patrick Hynes of Ankle Biting Pundits is a senior account executive at Marsh, Copsey & Scott, a Republican consulting firm. Townhall is an 'independent' subsidiary of the Heritage Foundation. Human Events Online is Mellon-Scaife. Right Wing News is written by a Human Events contributor." These people are not grassroots--they are officially part of the Republican / conservative machinery.

Also, it would appear that the organization is trying to emulate all of the various functions of Act Blue, but can't pull it off yet. See this post from last July, see the volunteer page on their website (at what point did Republicans become 80% Asian?), and see this article on MSNBC.

Update 2: It appears that ABC Pac, which is behind this thing, has $36 cash on hand and $1,032 in debts after raising all of $50 last month. Check out the gory details.