Ok, you want to get it together? Fine. Here’s how the political land lays:
- MoveOn, MovingIdeas, Media Matters (the “M”s), the 70 liberal blogs on your right, as well as the Democratic, Progressive, and Labor Parties all compete for your time, effort, and money. [Liability]
- Each and every one of those orgs likely contain a minimum 50% shared membership (conservative estimate). Redundancy of effort on a massive scale. [Liability]
||Balance||
- One blog (not listed) is comprised of over 900 people whose prime purpose is to gather, collate, and report information in-depth on a wide variety of subject matter. I call it the “library”, everyone else calls it ePluribus Media. [Asset]
- PTV is a new online only network attempting to gather information through a variety of media – video, audio, blogs – which provides an alternative to the dread “MSM”. [Questionable]
- ActBlue has built an incredible fund-raising mechanism for virtually anyone who has the bux to set up an account (liberally). [Asset]
- People. The most important element in generating a fully functioning network – on and offline – who are sympathetic to what we are calling “progressive” solutions. [Asset & Liability]
Tying all that together requires a great deal of time, but not that much in overall costs if the construct is flat. You’ll need an interactive map of the Country down to the County/Urban level, or in the alternative, precinct level. Data layers will include every blog, org, contact, and elected office + candidate in those precincts, interconnected in a manner that allows information to flow horizontally. [the Database]
So. You are in a rural precinct in say, North Dakota. You build your own affliliate shell site w/blog, and begin to survey and gather “assets” in your area. “X” precincts in a region, “X” regions in a State, all States on the map. You’re having a bake sale in downtown Minot in two weeks to support your local sheriff. That is a “localcast” with limited distribution. OTOH, you’re locally-supported candidate for the State leg needs help. That’s a “Region-Alert”. [the HomeGrown Media]
Carry the concept to the ’06 elections for Congress, and you move to PTV “webcasts”. ActBlue is your fundraising mechanism, the rest of the programming is up to some smart-ass 26-year-old programmer with way too much time on their hands. Easy money: 1) survey assets; 2) map assets; 3) build network. [National Exposure]
Four: get real. As simple as that outline is in concept, execution is a b*tch, because one of the biggest liabilities is the fight to put it together – to weave that cloth out of whole people. Yes, it can be done, and the last time I wrote that above outline a whole bunch of folk agreed.
That was then, this is now, and the result will likely be the same: don’t just do something, stand there.
