The latest blog entry at Change for America spills a few more beans:
http://changeforamerica.com/blog/archives/000074.html
By reading the tea leaves, here is what I think CFA will become: a grassroots campaign management consulting team for progressive candidates.
I think CFA will provide online organizing tools (ways to get a set of supporters, ways to announce your policies on a blog or website, ways to have supporters work together, ways to raise money in small amounts from lots of people, etc.) to progressive candidates.
In addition, the main posting says that CFA will provide language to reframe the debate and promote progressive policies.
I imagine that all of these tools and the reframed language will result from lots of interactive conversations on the CFA blog, so that the best ideas bubble up.
Very intriguing and definitely promising, though it raises a lot of questions for me. Is the goal to get professionals out of campaign management and replace them with grassroots folks, so that candidates are beholden to the people once elected? Or is the goal to change the way that candidates run, and CFA figures that professional staff will learn about these new tools and this newly-framed language and supplement their existing tools?
If so, in addition to the tools being available at CFA, will there be in-person trainings for candidates or campaign staff? Will there be phone consultations, email groups and cyber mentors?
How will this organization be funded? By the folks on the blog who enjoy giving feedback and seeing our ideas help change the way politics works? Will candidates pay for CFA's services? If it's a nonprofit, will foundations that seek progressive change fund this?
This makes a lot of sense as an offshoot of the Dean campaign. One of the great things the campaign accomplished was to demonstrate how effective these new tools can be (yes, I know Dean didn't win any primary, but he did raise a ton of money, go from asterisk to front-runner, gain key endorsements, etc.). It seems smart to continue to develop the tools and to expand the base of candidates who can use them (why just a presidential candidate, when there are so many progressive candidates at all levels that it would be great to help?).
On the other hand, if all this is developed publicly, won't Right Wing candidates use these tools too? And, maybe that's good. We believe in democracy for all points of view.
But, what about discussing and announcing how we'll reframe the language for key issues; is that something that should be public? Or, does that tip our hand too much to opponents who want to reframe the debate their way?