Update [2004-11-18 23:40:48 by blogswarm]:There is now a set of Reform Democrat Action Items to help bring these ideas into reality. Please add action items there.
The Democratic Party needs reform. Without discussing whether we need to move to the right or the left, what can we do to reform the way we do business?
The following is my "if I were in charge" compilation of some of the best ideas I've read coupled with my experiences as a political hack young enough to have grown up with computers but old enough to have a few cycles of experience in traditional Democratic campaigns (in both red and blue states).
Internet
A modern Democratic Party needs leaders who can format a hyperlink. Not only do we need leaders who understand current e-campaigning, but we need visionaries who can see how vast potential that lies in the future of the internet. We need to fight in real-time across the internet, the blogosphere, and on the search engines. We need an online war room that never stops and interjects our side into every conversation online. Every site with a conversation needs our comments and links.
Email
No more fundraising emails. Period. If the Kerry campaign had asked the Dean campaign, they would have learned that constant cash-appeals turn people off. The Kerry campaign burned their list. As people stopped opening the emails the campaign suffered a huge opportunity cost when they needed to organize supporters in the end. Emails should only be used to initiate interaction, once people are vested in our actions they'll help fund the effort.
End Sentences with Prepositions
We need to campaign like we have an seventh grade education and unlearn the linguistic hindrances that hold us back. The people we target with our ads don't talk like the people who make them. Our candidates need sentences with a subject, a verb, an object and then a period. Look how people write emails, forget what you learned in English class and talk to people. Tell a story. Focus on connecting to the audience instead of winning the hearts of the proofreaders. What do you think you're more likely to hear at a small town diner an hour before sunrise, "Its the economy, stupid" or "A Stronger, Safer America"? We can earn street cred with our writing without pandering.
Lead America
If we only follow polls, we will be reactive to the whims of Americans and will not be able to win in the long run. We need to lead on issues, decide issues by value not polling worth and lead the people. This Gonzalez nomination is a great example, instead of having a debate about whether we should oppose him we should have a debate about whether a torture supporter should lead the Justice Department and then hit him with everything we have. No more conversations about whether it is strategic to follow our gut, instead we need to stand up for what we believe in and fight with everything we have.
Blogosphere
The DNC should invest financially in the blogosphere. The DNC should have an ad with the message of the day on every single liberal blog (new every day, even Sundays and holidays). For a million dollars we could have two thousand points of TV in a major media market or subsidize hundreds of bloggers fighting tooth and nail online, 24/7.
Go Young
People under the age of thirty are the only age group that we won. The young vote was turned out by young people managing organizations with enough resources to succeed. We need more young people in decision-making roles at the DNC and in positions where they have the resources to maintain and expand our domination of young people.
Ask The Right Questions
The question wasn't how the war started; it was whether it should have started. The question wasn't how we were waging the war, but whether we were winning. The question wasn't how the economy was managed; it was whether it was good or bad. The question wasn't how we fought the terrorists; it was whether we were winning or losing. Kerry was too focused on the first questions to realize we needed to win the second questions.
Worldview
We need to learn to distill issues. The right will never say an issue is complicated because every possible situation fits into their worldview in a manner where they know what to do. People learn our values by seeing how issues fit into our worldview, not because we say, "God Bless America" at the end of our speeches. When we turn our backs on our values, people lose respect for us.
Bold Action
Only looking at this calendar year, I think it is easy to conclude Gavin Newsom is the only Democrat with any guts in America. Newsom reframed the issue of gay marriage as equality and personalized a narrative for the issue. His strong offense shifted the country the few points we needed so that we didn't get burned on the issue as badly as the right had planned. For the first time in a generation, a Democrat held the national stage and talked about equality and civil liberties. If Kerry had been as bold on any single issue, we would have won. It could have been Iraq, health care, jobs -- it really didn't matter.
Value work
Kick consultants off percentage, pay a good hourly wage and demand results. Have you ever heard a consultant on percentage recommend not spending more money on TV? Even in the battlegrounds with markets so saturated with political ads that people are 100% tuned out? We need to budget according to results which is impossible when consultants have a financial incentive to spend on distribution instead of creation.
Training
How many trainings on e-campaigning has the Democratic Party hosted? With a couple of cycles experience in online politics, let me be the first to say it would have been nice to have had somebody teach the tactics instead of having to figure things out as I went. I've been to multiple Party and progressive organization trainings on organizing which taught me a great deal. Other than the one training I have given myself, I have yet to hear of any trainings on how to campaign online.
Make News
Dean understood this, but Kerry didn't get it until he brought in the Clinton people and by that time everything that happened was news. We can decide what we want the headlines to be with bold action. The further up the ticket the greater the role the media plays in the outcome. Instead of complaining about the coverage, we need to understand the media's perspective and needs, then create campaign storyboards too good for them to pass by.
Non-political Geography
When we look at maps, we look at color-coded representations based off of political boundaries drawn by city-folk. Looking at everything outside of the suburbs as rural America is simplistic view repeated by people who live in urban environments. Instead of focusing on red or blue squares on maps, we need to focus on geography. We win near large bodies of water, near the Great Lakes, the oceans, and the Mississippi. We can win in the mountains easier than on the plains. We do better where it is cold and where it is sandy. When we talk about campaigning outside of the cities we need to focus on the extremes, big water, big mountains, bad weather.
Rapid Response
We got our asses kicked, yet the DNC posted three posts on the official Party blog in the following 12 days. WTF???
Alternatives
We cannot offer compromises, instead we need to offer coherent alternatives to Republican proposals. These proposals must be crafted with an eye towards framing the next election, not influencing the outcome since we will be fighting to prevent any change from occurring.
Opposition
Any changes advanced by the GOP will regress our country. We need to fight every proposal. Choosing battles is a strategy that is inherently flawed. Compromising is likewise flawed. We need to fight to win and plan to lose strategically. As an opposition party, we must evaluate our leaders by their success at opposing. If they are ineffective, we must immediately replace them.
Operate with Transparency
Who is doing what, with results results and what costs? Much of the disgust directed at the party by the grassroots is due to poor communication. The Party needs to do good things and keep the grassroots informed by involving them in the process. We need a modern party that is beholden to the grassroots. We need to work smarter by questioning and quantifying, then calculating how we can do more.
Lighting
The GOP is better at stage lighting. They learned the lesson of Nixon and spent the eighties bringing Hollywood tricks to political events. Clinton understood, but as recently as this year Howard Dean flopped after a snafu that would never had happened if the campaign had used a mixer before the mult-box for the press pool.
Votes
Elections are about votes. We need to make voting for Democrats easier by making voting as easy as possible. We need same day registration and vote by mail. We need to make sure every vote counts and provide a paper trail for black box voting. We need more machines, less lines. More access to democracy and participation.
Responsiveness
DaveOinSF pointed out in the comments that the above point didn't really belong here as it was not something Democrats could do unilaterally. So I removed it. What a great illustration of how "responsiveness" should have been included.
West Coast Offense
Yes, I saved the sports analogy for last. We had the largest GOTV ever and we still finished 10 points shy from where we needed to be. The Kerry campaign thought they were going to win and tried to run out the clock in the last two weeks. The Democratic Party has been silent since the election. We can never let this happen again. Elections come and go by the battle for America's future never stops. We need to campaign every single day of every year like we are 10 points down, because we are. We need a passing game and a strong blitz, we must never again finish an election like we only needed to make it to field goal range and GOTV will put us over the top. No. We need to be winning beyond the margin of error and let our hustle and determination show that we want to win more than the GOP. We need to contest every down, force turnovers, and inside the pile we need to claw and poke and squeeze and do whatever it takes to make sure we have the ball in the end.
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The issue of DNC Reform is a continuing conversation. Please post your ideas here or email me at bob.brigham [at] gmail.com with more suggestions. Thanks for reading, feel free to recommend.