In this winter of Democratic discontent, here are some good reads that have been percolating through my brainpan:
## George Lakoff’s name is well-known in the blogosphere, and his theories about framing and context are not exactly news, but his piece on “How to Respond to Conservatives” deserves even more attention than it has already received. Here’s a taste:
You should be able to recognize the basic frames that conservatives use, and you should prepare frames to shift to… Example: Your opponent says, We should get rid of taxes. People know how to spend their money better than the government. Reframe: “The government has made very wise investments with taxpayer money. Our interstate highway system, for example. You couldn’t build a highway with your tax refund. The government built them. Or the Internet, paid for by taxpayer investment. You could not make your own Internet. Most of our scientific advances have been made through funding from the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Health — great government investments of taxpayer money. No matter how wisely you spent your own money, you’d never get those scientific and medical breakthroughs. And how far would you get hiring your own army with your tax refund?” |
## Over at Personal Democracy, Dean campaign veteran Zephyr Teachout outlines how little of the Internet’s potential the Kerry campaign really harnessed and lays out the still-unfulfilled but still-huge potential for Net-based collective action.
For all the money-raising, perhaps the most powerful use of the Internet was by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which framed much of the debate for a third of the last critical months. Of all the speedy, turn-on-a-dime fundraising efforts, this one was the most potent, if also the most pungent. But basically, in the political evolution of the Internet, we have barely touched the surface of its potential to shift the locus of real political power. Never before in history have we had a tool that enables–with so little work–local groups to act in coordination with other local groups elsewhere. Never before in history have we had a tool that at its core holds the solution to the most difficult collective action problems in democracy. And almost no one used it. |
##These November 3rd Theses, suggesting that Democrats need to figure out how to “communicate with the core needs of the American people,” make for bracing and provocative reading. Memo to organizers (who seem to include Adam Werbach and others): Tell us who you are, and publish your manifesto in text form (what’s there is a big old graphic file and PDF) so people can actually quote from it.
## Micah Sifry surveys The Rise of Open-Source Politics in The Nation. Most interesting to me here is the perspective on the political pros’ fear that they, like so many other middlemen, will be squeezed out by the rise of new Net-based approaches to political organizing:
“Anybody who does politics the old way will fight doing things the new way because it’s harder to get paid for it,” says Mark Walsh, CEO of Progress Media, the parent of Air America and a veteran of such companies as VerticalNet and America Online. “Look at every other industry and how the Internet has altered it. Take E-Trade and the selling of stocks. Or Orbitz and the travel industry. In every case, the Internet enables getting rid of the middlemen.” For about a year, starting in late 2001, Walsh was McAuliffe’s chief technology officer, earning $1 a year to help the Democratic Party upgrade its tech systems. “Terry did want to do the right thing,” Walsh says, “but I found the same buzz saw — legacy behavior and consultants who are compensated highly for non-cyber-centric behavior. TV, telemarketing, direct mail — that’s where the margins are.” |
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