One of the most inspiring and powerful aspects of the Obama Campaign has been its grass-roots nature. Not only through small donation funding that in practice exceeds public financing as a method of rooting out corruption, but the overwhelming number and quality of volunteers - both "official" and "informal". (In the latter, no one should underestimate the impact of "volunteers" advocating for Obama around dinner tables and water coolers throughout America. This is where real leverage was applied throughout the campaign.)
The Obama For America Website provided a substrate for this culture to proliferate and organize itself. It provided energetic volunteers with a sense of community and direction, and served as a platform for communicating in full duplex (to borrow from the Tech World). As a result, Obama supporters rightly developed a sense of "ownership" in the campaign.
We should not allow this to end tomorrow.
MeteorBlades' excellent argument for a Democratic Secretary of Defense yesterday inspired in me a desire to communicate that argument to Obama directly. Of course, a single letter would have no impact, and would probably not be read by or even revealed to anyone of consequence on a decision-making level.
But if that diary had been introduced into the Obama website, and was able to gain "momentum" the way opposition to retroactive immunity for Telcos in FISA did, it could have an impact. (Maybe a bad example, since we didn't get the outcome we wanted, but we made ourselves heard, and that message may still carry weight later on.)
So what I'm advocating is that after Obama is elected, Obama for America should remain at least through the inauguration, as a means of continued bilateral communication, and after that, the White House website should have a large section modeled after Obama for America, with some serious dedication to maintaining it as a forum for discussion of important decisions, direction, and prioritizing of the work ahead for all SERIOUS Americans to be heard. This could be the legacy of Obama's groundbreaking "bottom-up" campaign, and help bring the change we want to government going forward.
I suspect there could be some difficulty implementing this, and keeping it in working order, since it would have to be open to all Americans, and several would be there, dedicated to lowering the level of discussion. However, the right kind of commitment could find a way past those hurdles.
What say you?
