Geodog

The organizing needs to start now

My favorite quote from Camp Wellstone was Pam Costain's refrain, "Win or Lose on Nov 2, the organizing needs to start again on November 3." Zack Exley, former Internet guru on the Kerry campaign, has written what is destined to be an influential blog post arguing that the Democrats need to create an effective field operation now:

The cheap shot argument for building a permanent field operation is: "Because the Republican's have one." It's not clear whether the GOP's long-term field push had a huge effect on turnout. But it is clear that the Republicans are building a powerful, permanent field operation -- and that, at the very least, it's a powerful growing threat. We know that they started building years ago. We've seen their volunteer training materials, and have sat in on some of the trainings. They give volunteers formal roles, hold them accountable for results and continuously replace the ones who do not perform. What they're doing is very advanced. If it wasn't a major advantage in 2004, just give them another four years and see where they are.

But we shouldn't need a Republican threat to motivate us to do the obvious. What is a political party without a strong, capable grassroots? Just a shell of a party -- and that's what both the Democratic and Republican parties were for a very long time. The 2004 election gives the Democrats a chance to leave that legacy behind. ...

Exley goes on to outline what he call "Ten steps to building a permanent field program with the New Grassroots." I don't know Exley, or much about his work on the Kerry campaign, and I've avoided following the internecine battles that have followed Bush's victory, but the rough outlines make sense to me. We have hundreds of thousands of people who got involved in politics for the first time in 2004, and now, because of the internet and the tools that groups like CivicSpace and CivicActions are building, we have the capability to organize them, and to enable them to communicate with each other and organize themselves. As Exley puts it:

We're talking about a totally new form of organization.

In the same way that railroads, highways, the telegraph and the telephone all changed the maximum size and efficiency of national organizations, so does the Internet -- "the Internet" being web tools and email.

Because of web tools and email, a new kind of massively volunteer-heavy organization is possible.

As Zephyr Teachout points out, and Zack Exley admits and promises to address in a future post, in his first post Exley doesn't address the power or role of self-organizing groups, and the internet's and web tools' catalyzing, facilitating and enabling role, but his program sure sounds like a good start.

Hat tips to David Weinberger and Micah Sifry for pointers to the post.