Recently Walter Cronkite, that distinguished figure from another, more glamorous age of news and politics, suggested that the Democratic Party create its mid term platform by a mid term convention. The idea of an open politics openly arrived at is a sound one - however, the form is out of that other time, when the Democratic Party was a host of smaller parties, and it needed to gather in an ad hoc legislature to set a consensus of direction.
The modern reality is that the public does not see a convention as a body of representative agents, empowered to act on their behalf, but representative consumers. They want to see rubber stamp unity, because that implies a party that is ready to provide government - the consumerate wants to see both producers of politics, and an affirmation that what is presented is acceptable to the people.
The they see a convention as a tribunate - ready to listen at the keyhole and jump into shout "I forbid" at the sign of what is not to the public's liking.
Hence conventions must be scripted - and therefore not useful to the function of writing an agenda, but as the culmination of a process that I call "The Open Convention."
What is the Open Convention? There are three spheres of political action - the paleo politics of local organization, a unity of place and the bonds that tenure in that place bring, there is old politics - media and micro-political issue groups as well as the old line "inside the beltway" apparatus, this focuses on demographic reality - and there is the new politics which manifests itself on the internet, but which should be seen as "psychographic". In otherwords, there is the geographic democratic party, the demographic democratic party, and the psychographic democratic party. Each is different and does not entirely understand or trust the others.
The Republican Party overcomes this with massive amounts of money and corruption - it simply buys unity by the top down mechanism of funding people. Bribes in, bribes out.
The Democratic Party does not have access to the vast pool of corruption that the Republicans have, and the slashing away of funding for the technocratic state has turned the liberal and progressive world into a constant scrounging act for funding and jobs. This has produced an animosity within the Democratic party that the other side has used to great advantage. The Miers fight is one of limited career slots - the food fight going on over her is the normal state of affairs in the Democratic and progressive universe.
The solution is to create bonds of community and communication. The Open Convention would be a means to campaign by building a message, not in a top down or mythical bottom up way - but using the Democratic Party apparatus as the center of a sphere. For every open source project there is a core of people who represent the judgement of what works and what doesn't - who have the advantage of having all the feed back and data about what has worked and what hasn't. However, the driving force of the creation is the vast network of people who need the project - who need the open source Operating System, Encyclopedia or other end product.
The open convention would be a series of events, including meetings in state and local party gatherings to push ideas upward, and explain ideas that are important - forums and media events to capture the old politics democratic party's attention - for example, conduct a poll a week on some issue, and then package it with the Democratic solution to the Republican problem - and electronic and internet events, such as online wikis, online voting, sending out a paragraph for discussion and getting major liberal blogs to post threads on it to secure input. The result of each step would be repackaged - and often explicit questions would be asked.
For example - we all know that energy is an issue - however, the public is not aware of how energy connects with other issues. We can explain that, then we can ask "how would you phrase it?" Advertising agencies have asked for slogans from the public for an age and a half.
Instead of the dreaded "focus group", the process would have myriad forms of discussion - from the VFW hall, to the event, to the blog - that would create a stream and profusion of ideas, activity and energy. Then the drafts of the agenda could be put out, polled on, blogged on, and commented on - with each step the party elders promoting how "The Democratic Party, isn't based on K Street but Main Street - and Americans are gathering to lead us forward, in every neighborhood, town, village and county in America."
Create a bandwagon, draw people into the conversation - convince people that they can find a home in.
If there is to be a drafting of the agenda by open means - something I strongly support - it should be by a process that takes into account paleo politics - town committees, activist groups, party organs, associated organizations - old politics of media - open town meetings, surveys and other "events" - and the new politics of rapid communication and commentary. This way there will be real ownership at every level, and there will be the possibility of getting each of these forms of political organization to be introduced to each other.
Mr. Cronkite's suggestion has, at its core, an important idea, and it is vital that someone with his stature propose it. But the form is out of another era - one which he worked in with distinction - and a good follow up would be to outline what a "rolling convention" would look like, culminating with a "mid term convention" that would affirm the result, and give the Democratic Party a chance to launch it to the public in a form that will demand notice, as well as highlighting candidates.
The disease of insiders is to prove that we are "the brightest kid in class". That is what not creates victory in 2006 - instead, the public needs to feel they have come home to the Democratic Party, and that we, in our guts, hearts and spine are with their dreams and aspirations.