Netroots

Yesterday I had a bit of fun at the expense of the Republican noise machines and their efforts to paint themselves already as a loud and marginalized minority in Capitol Hill. I was so caught up on the moment that I didn't blog about it until this morning but Kenneth Quinnell described it as a "Twitter Bomb" and has happy to spread the word :

Twitter Bomb

This wasn't my idea (although I came up with the cool name), I think Liza Sabater was the one who started it, but it's too brilliant to pass up.

Those of you who are on Twitter, send as many tweets as you can over the next few days with #dontgo in them. The conservatives are using this hash mark (like a tag) to spread misinformation about offshore drilling and their latest publicity stunt. What Liza and a few others started doing was to flood that hash with counter-commentary or irrelevant posts. Sort of like a google bomb, this can either disrupt what they're doing or, at the very least, annoy the crap out of them. We can all do this.

Whatever you're posting on twitter, try to fit #dontgo into it. And make sure you include the # sign, which is key.

If you aren't on Twitter, this might be the type of thing to get you into it.

And before I even start to explain, let me break down the lingo for you.

I got our letter late last night saying that we finally got credentialed for the 2008 DNCC in Denver. It's a convention that promises to be historic and I want to be there front and center.

You can read the press release and check out the whole list of bloggers at the DNCC's blog.

UNFORTUNATELY the DNCC messed up when they went ahead and decided to pick a blog in New York that not only is not only NOT from the grassroots, but that is owned by people working in corporate media.

It's the reason why I got interviewed by Wired.com on the matter :

"What's amazing is that we've raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for local candidates along with the other state blogs," says Liza Sabater, publisher of The Daily Gotham, one of the New York state blogs that got the cold shoulder from the DNC officials. "Why would you give (the credentials) to a blog ... owned by a journalist? You're supposed to be supporting independent bootstrapped bloggers, not people who are coming in with influence and access. You're supposed to be giving it to people who are helping you to get candidates elected."

Hillary Clinton is quite likeable and a really good speaker and she obviously has very committed people work her; but blogdamn, what the hell is thinking when they take up seats so they can look like there are cheerleaders in the crowd, in a room where there is only standing room. NO! It just looks bad.

THAT SAID, I really, really like listening to Hillary Clinton speak. Eons ago, when I used to work as a translator, I had to translate transcript of her speeches and interviews with friends and family members. She is listenable. She definitely knows how to turn on the charm; YET just comes out as extremely measured. After the "town hall" meeting, a couple of "on the fencers" gave her a B.

Here's some notes of the whole thing. More introspection coming later.

UPDATE BY LIZA SABATER :
For my eulogies, please go to Steve you are one of the reasons why I am still blogging and Just so you understand how important Steve Gilliard is to my work in the blogosphere

****

I didn't know Steve Gilliard, but he was a big name in blogging when I was just barely poking around wondering what Daily Kos was all about. Two diaries on Daily Kos cover his death better than I can:

Steve Gilliard has died, by Rosebuddear

and

Steve Gilliard - R.I.P. by Meteor Blades

This photo from Campus Progress:

Once heard someone say of Gilliard an utmost complement: There are those who bullshit and those who don't and Steve was one of those who don't. To me, that is a great compliment in this world.

Howard Dean in many ways brought the Democratic Party back to life. Although others share in the 2005 and 2006 success stories, Howard Dean in 2004 recreated the Democratic grassroots and since then has forged an alliance between progressives and moderates that has been winning big. He did this not by creating a rival force to the Democratic Party the way Nader did. He created a force WITHIN the party that led him to the head of the DNC. And under him the Democratic Party, with help from Rahm, Pelosi and Schumer, among others, has prospered.

Democracy for America was one piece of Howard Dean's revitalization of the Democratic Party. It brought back into the party thousands of activists who had lost faith with the system. It has focused people not only on national issues, but on LOCAl issues, events and campaigns, revitalizing the grassroots from bottom to top. DFA, along with groups like Progressive Majority and MoveOn.org, has given progressives ways of becoming a part of the political process without having to compromise their independence and ideals.

Three Presidential candidates have recognized the importance of Democracy for America and the new direction it represents. These three candidates are John Edwards, Barack Obama, and Bill Richardson. These three candidates recognize the importance of the grassroots and of more independent, more progressive movements within the Democratic Party. Even Bill Richardson, a moderate on many issues, recognizes the importance of the progressive, more independent grassroots.

Tomorrow is Personal Democracy Forum's 2007 Conference. The theme this year is "The Flattening of Politics", a hat tip to one of the most important 'manifestos' of this millenium --The Cluetrain Manifesto.

The cluetrain was put together by a group of entrepreneurs, corporate communications experts, software engineers and new media scholars who saw 'the writing on the wall' with the new marketplace that was emerging with the rapid adoption of the internet. Yes, there was a time when many CEO looked at the web with suspicion and with a "but how are we going to make money out of this".

Notwithstanding the 1999/2000 bubble and crash, the naysayers got it all wrong.

The internet is not just changing the way we buy products or ideas. It is changing the basic dynamics of human engagement from how we meet, how we learn from each other, even how we mate.

Of course, the internet has proved to be powerful as a tool for political resource building, but in my book, it has not been used powerfully enough.

Applied to politics, the Manifesto reads as a primer on how the internet squashes any pretences of republic-like politics. Gone are the days in which engagement is only mediated by an elite 'entrusted' by the masses with every single policy and political decision making that will end up affecting their lives.

People Powered Politics is just starting in this country, but we are not there yet. Still, I believe 2008 will go down in history as the last Plato-centric, republic-like elections. Yet, after 2008, I cannot imagine the US Electoral college system surviving because people will demand more and more direct engagement in every single aspect of the political process.

Democracy literally means people (demos) power (cracy). And no self appointed leader of anthing ending with -roots will be able to rationalize a republic-like electoral system as people engage more and more with "social-technology" mediated "people power politics".

The 2008 hint at what is possible, but we are not there yet. If not, we would have had a candidate by now publish their own own 95 Theses for a new politics.

So let me take this opportunity to do it, if not for the candidates then for us, the people who are powering the movement that is flattening politics --even with this here blog. And to keep it in the spirit of the original, it would be cool if you "signed it" in the comments or with a link back to your blog.

So I give you,

The Cluetrain Manifesto for People Powered Politics

Online Constituencies...
Networked political constituencies are beginning to self-organize faster than the governments and political organizations that have traditionally served them. Thanks to the web, constituencies are becoming better informed, smarter, and more demanding of qualities missing from most political organizations.

...People of Earth
The sky is open to the stars. Clouds roll over us night and day. Oceans rise and fall. Whatever you may have heard, this is our world, our place to be. Whatever you've been told, our flags fly free. Our heart goes on forever. People of Earth, remember.

So let me get this straight : Edwards is so-so among the netroots for months on end. He hires two feminist bloggers to help run his online campaign but after they become the targets of mysogynists-are-us The Catholic League, he fires them --and badly, may I add.

So two months after the women were dragged through the mud, somehow the crowds at DailyKos and MyDD find John Edwards to be good enough to be their president?

Matthew Yglesias / Clinton Doomed!:
Jerome Armstrong rounds up online preference polls, revealing the big three going 42/25/13 on dKos, and 43/34/8 on MYDD. In third place, of course, is Bill RIchardson. Barack Obama's in second. And that's John Edwards with the commanding lead. Hillary Clinton's a distant fourth, pulling in three and four percent respectively. She does better in a MoveOn poll -- 11 percent -- that actually places her in fifth behind Dennis Kucinich's surprisingly strong 17 percent. Jerome makes a valiant effort to spin this as demonstrating something other than the netroots being out of touch with general Democratic sentiment, but is good enough to concede that he doesn't "expect Clinton to get blown away with single-digits." And good for him.

Given the brou-ha-ha over Markos' comments about online violence against women, what does it say about the people who have made these two sites the most important online money-makers for the DNC? Or is John Edwards doomed to the same fate that befell his 'netroots' predecessor, Howard Dean?

Senator John Kerry (D, MA) posted this over on dKos this morning:

A quick note this morning -– I'm chairing a Senate Small Business committee business meeting this morning and running around between votes -- but I'll check back in the afternoon to read and respond.

But before I go -- netroots, we need you to meet the ‘new environmentalists.’

Over the last two years, I thought a lot about the political process – about how to make issues voting issues. It’s been a ‘back to basics’ approach for me. I came into politics as an activist –- Earth Day 1970 and then full time in the movement to end the Vietnam War.

And when I thought of the environment, it hit me that even more dangerous about this administration’s assault on the environment is the assumption on which that assault relies: they think people don’t care. They’ve gotten away with dismissing the environmental movement as “elitist” ... or do-gooder ... “tree-hugging.”

[snip]

No doubt, we in politics must work to solve the problems at 30,000 feet -— with bold new ideas for energy independence—but this movement will only succeed if it’s more about you than us -– if Americans get out there to protect the ground beneath their own two feet.

No doubt the right wing is going to pile on. We’ve seen what they‘ve done to our friend Al Gore, and as an old friend of mine used to say “it is what it is.” But I hope you’ll step in and fight their cynicism. This book isn’t about us.

[snip]

Okay, fair enough. The man says he wants to hear what we say, and he's offering to read & respond to what we post in that thread. (Well, better make that "those threads" instead -- the piece he penned for dKos is also cross-posted on his own blog here as well.)

Sounds like a reasonable offer to me. Senator gives us a shoutout, asks us for a talkback, promises he'll respond. Okay, that works. Let's run with it.

Goddess knows that the more pols who would be willing to do that sort of thing, the better off this country would be in the long run...