Monday, November 22, 2004
A Plan for a Democratic Future
I posted this on Daily Kos earlier this morning. I thought I'd place it here as well.0 comments
I've watched the Repub resurgence since they were a few lost voices in the desert after Goldwater.
What we've done in roughly 11/2 - 2 years is astonishing when compared to their 40-yr. trek.
However, we need to learn from their decades-long hard work and to steal what elements would work best for us.
The greatest fruit of all our labors this cycle is this new series of institutions and mechanisms that allow and encourage a newly awakened progressive electorate -- hundreds of thousands of average "just folks" -- to now play an active and aggresive physical, emotional and financial role in our political process. We're building an army, here. That is the key seed that has to be nurtured and grown over the next cycles.
The key wil be to organize, then to specialize. Then, cross-link EVERYTHING!
1. Create an organized umbrella alliance of ALL the 527s and the non-527 groups, hopefully under the direction of a revamped DNC.
Scrutinize what the key strengths of each group are (and its limitations!) and then divide the labor. 527s will do what they're designed for and are best at. Non-527 groups can handle all the direct, advocacy duties. (This will all adjust as the campaign laws morph, of course.)
While the DNC should be best at going after sustained money from the big $$ set, one of these groups should focus solely on being the main donation conduit for Internet and direct-mail fund-raising for all aspects of this larger organization.
Another would create the national precinct-based bottom-up base Susan talked of, IN ALL 50 states (nothing is ceded ever again) in order to create a nationwide web of progressives who can influence every election in every district, all the way down to dog-catcher.
A group will take the auto-petition role on a daily, weekly, monthly basis -- to give Americans a way to maintain their high level of activism and interest. One will take the True Majority path to e-mail / fax Congress on any issue of note. Another would maintain the newspaper database and could direct massive letter-to-the-Editor campaigns on a local, state or national basis.
One would focus on local elections. One would focus squarely on state elections.
One would handle advertising: focusing on attracting the best film makers, talent and best ad buys. Etc., etc.
One could be laison with blogs (right and left) -- to learn what info they find and to supply them with info they can utilize.
All would report to (hopefully) a non-dysfunctional, creative DNC.
2. Begin now to create a national Farm Team: a series of atttractive candidates who can be groomed for local, state and national office -- especially those of limited means. We need the best candidates at all levels -- not the best candidates who can afford to want to run.
Plus, the strength of the Repub revolution is the sheer numbers of their people that they could place in every gov't agency -- where their policies can be implemented on a daily basis by Regulation. We need to have in place a similar number of people to take over for them when we retake the White House.
3. Create a National Scour Team -- whose sole duty it is to comb EVERY phrase in bills proposed by this incoming Republican Congress. Never again can we allow Democratic Reps. and Sens. to be forced to read all 600 pages of a bill overnight, before a critical vote. But if 100 people can parse 60 pages of it each, we can create clean abstracts of every important point and issue contained in them for those having to vote on them.
There's the added advantage in this of spotting key future campaign issues buried in any given bill before a vote is even taken. If we strongly want to kill the bill, we can also warn Repubs. that we've spotted the XXX provision, and THAT IT WILL BE a campaign issue, and then watch them scurry. This weekend's tax provision debacle is a perfect case in point.
4. Lobby all of the major, big-money Democratic and 527 contributors to invest heavily in media companies of all types -- TV Broadcast and Cable, Radio and Newspapers -- whether they buy them outright, or just infuence their approach to the news. There are great profits to be made from catering to this newly awakened progressive population, starving for trustworthy news reports as they are.
This is an outline for how we can proceed.
And prosper.
posted by Gotham 4:36 AM
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