this was the 329th comment on KO's thread & so I don't think anyone will ever see it. Thing is,I got more and more enthusiastic about this idea/observation as I wrote it; so I am cross-posting it here. Ask for your indulgence this one time.
Another benefit of Gov. Dean's emphasis on shifting attention and resources to grass roots is that local action flies under the radar.
We must never underestimate the lock the GOP has on corporate media. The minute an event, person or idea surfaces, the echo chamber turns on it in unison, like a herd of stampeding elephants, using uniform, highly organized (as if legislated) talking points. Effectively trampling opposition before any argument has a chance to take hold.
The best way to counter this, imo, is to employ in the arena of news=o=tainment the strategies of guerrilla warfare.
What do I mean? Read on, Macduff.
Random events have showed us the way.
Example: one well-timed question at a centcom game of Rummy and he's ginned. The armor question flies around the channels, uncontrollably, and there is nothing for Bushco to do but give in. (now if only someone had bothered to pose one simple question: why in the world didn't they handle the armor shortage, since everyone's known about it for ages? The answer to that would've won us thousands and thousands of votes)
Example: one article in a local paper in upstate NY (a maimed soldier harrassed for trumped-up debts by the army) flies around the channels. Once again, BushCo has to go belly=up as quickly as possible.
The minute we take this into account, it starts working for us. Local work is still able fly below the GOPer radar. We can gather forces, momentum, choose issues and run raids on primetime and cable with stories we have already clearly defined, thus-- outfoxing the echo chamber by proactively setting the terms of the argument ourselves.
You might call this a felicitous side-effect of the Doctor's medicine.
Remember: when Delay wanted to stack the Senate, he patiently conquered his home state. First, gerrymander, then harvest a majority at home, then --> dominate the field at the national level.
We've got to do the same thing, not just in terms of legislative power but in terms of the airwaves. That means, stop merely responding to issues that have already been defined by Theo-Neo think tanks and generate our own issues.
The material's out there. Like the Book of Revelations, all we have to do is read. Call it the reform Democrat's version of home-schooling. ("Lord, I can press the grass apart/ and lay my finger on your heart.") Then all we have to do is employ the tried and true strategy of the apparently overpowered: hit and run.