I'd like to make a comparison, briefly, between the
Democrats.org team site and the
GOP.com team site.
The most obvious difference, the one that stands right out, is that the GOP site makes it abundantly clear that being a GOP team leader actually has some real benefits.
First, you can, like,
win stuff by being a GOP leader. This modern spoils system replaces patronage with, umm, coozies and gym bags. But still, it creates a material incentive to actually go out and do stuff.
On the Democratic side, you get... what? Spam from the DNC and fundraising letters. Just what every boy always wanted.
Second, the GOP offers the most potent reward - recognition - to its "outstanding leaders."
Whereas Democratic e-captains get recognized... by being an anonymous record in some database somewhere.
Third, the GOP page has got pictures of El Lider all over it. To remind the dear reader that the end goal is electing Dear Leader.
On the Democratic site... what was the point again?
Fourth, the GOP page allows users to do useful things, like organize voter registration or share intelligence.
On the Dem site, you can register to vote and "alert the media", as well as make contributions, but the scale of the operation is a lot less ambitious. It could offer a lot more... imagine being able to generate walk lists, produce localized literature or create team blogs!
Fifth, the RNC has set up a whole domain just to make it easy for people to get there (GOPteamleader.com).
Meanwhile, the Democratic team leader page is hidden away on the left margin of the DNC page. I'd note, however, that the RNC page makes their leadership page hard to find, largely because their site is so visually "busy" that it's hard to find anything.
Sadly, the Democratic eCaptains site, as near as I can tell, is ignored and pretty damn useless. Meanwhile, the GOP has developed a tightly-integrated top-down marketing operation that creates real incentives for participation (even if they're a bit, pardon the pun, base).
Hopefully, Chairman Dean will take a page (no pun!) from the Republicans and consider improving the eCaptains program.
The RNC, both on its home page and with GOPteamleader.com, is running circles around the DNC, using the Internet as effectively or even more so than the Dean campaign did last year.
And the last thing I want to hear is recrimination over "who lost the Internet."
Here are my bare-minimum suggestions for improving our program. Much more ambitious reforms should also be considered:
First, promote it.
Secondly, hold monthly drawings or raffles for something cool (but otherwise relatively cheap for the party). Say, give away 100 T-shirts or 10 books signed by Bill Clinton. That wouldn't be more than a few hundred dollars investment, but it'd increase the incentive to work.
Thirdly, explain to us what it is we're supposed to be doing, and how to do it, and offer recognition to people who exceed expectations.
Fourth, expand its functionality so that it can actually be a useful tool for building a grassroots operation.
Some may ask, "why should we focus on the Internet and on top-down organizing, instead of focusing on bottom-up initiatives?" And there's a natural tendency for us Democrats to think that way. The answer is, that politics has become an abstraction, with national politics holding the interest of many Americans in a way which local and state politics do not. And if we are to get people active, we've got to form a direct bond between the DNC and the common person. This was particularly important, it appears, to the GOP, since party loyalty is strongly tied to personal loyalty to President Bush. They have played this card brilliantly.
Our ultimate goal, clearly, needs to be in motivating people to act not just on the national level, with the DNC, but with state and local organizations. Using the Internet to integrate our party's hierarchy is going to be the "next big thing."
But before we can make the Internet useful for everybody (the county parties, the state parties, and the DNC), we have to make it useful for somebody. And the only somebody with the means to git 'er done is the DNC.