Cross posted at Happening-Here

This week many in the blogosphere were lamenting our inability to instill passion or install spines in Senate Democrats opposing the elevation of Justice Alito. More than once I dropped something like this on a comment thread:

Folks are going to have to get really used to understanding that we are outsiders. That isn't the end of the world. When the country was founded, a majority were outsiders -- not white, male property owners. The outsiders have progressively forced their way inside. The current Right wants to shove a lot of us back out. So we have to organize like outsiders, expecting very little from the Democrats except when we make them behave.

Sure, it is awful. But there really is no choice.

Guy Kawasaki was one of the "evangelists" who sold the creative, antic appeal of the original Macintosh to a world that had believed computers were for geeks or bean counters. He is now a venture capitalist whose blog Let the Good Times Roll serves as an amusing marketing experiment for his current ventures. Recently he put up a post aimed at start-up entrepreneurs about what he calls The Art of Bootstrapping. I find it interesting to think about what Kawasaki's advice to fledgling businesses might mean to outsider advocacy or candidate campaigns. In the following material, Kawasaki's advice is in italics.