Despite the nearly three-fold increase on money spent in the 2004 Presidential election cycle versus the 2000 Presidential election cycle, voter participation only increased from 55.3% of the voting eligible population to 60.7% of the voting eligible population. Further, despite the increase in applied resources, fewer people than ever changed their minds during the course of the campaign. What went wrong? Why did both parties receive such small returns on such enormous investments?

As intense and massive as our voter contact drives were during 2004, and as often as we have discussed their successes and failures of such operations, I am slowly coming to believe that the main reason for the diminishing returns of large political investments is the inability of political campaigns to properly adjust to the way civic engagement itself has changed. Specifically, individual engagement in the public sphere is now driven primarily by small, self-starting, disparate collectives rather than by participation within large, centralized, mass membership, civic organizations. Despite this shift, more often than not we simply apply the new resources we have toward replicating older models of political influence through voter contact structures that no longer match the way individuals connect to the public sphere. The wave of new activists who became interested and engaged in the political process through small, self-starting collectives were turned into old-school representatives of large, centralized organizations contacting voters on behalf of those organizations and delivering a centralized plan and message developed by those organizations. The wave of new money collected form small donors was used to make even larger television ad buys than ever before, even though everyone knows such ad buys are becoming less effective by the day. In other words, we took people we became interested in the political process through the new public sphere and directed them to engage in the very activities that had been so ineffective in reaching them for the past few decades because they were created to meet the realities of a public sphere that no longer exists.

Why were we encouraging people who never swallowed a single political TV ad to donate money to run political TV ads? Why were we encouraging people who never trusted canvassers to become canvassers themselves? The failure of the Perfect Storm in Iowa attests to how ineffective this was. Instead of having the activists new to the process replicate the models of voter contact that did not bring them into the process and even turned them off to the process, shouldn't we have them replicate the models of voter contact that actually brought them into the process?

Any new organizing model for the Democratic Party has to take into account the realities of the changing public sphere in order to be effective. This will require new models of voter contact, and it will require being open source. A very recent paper by Marty Kearnes, who has been working on progressive techno-politics since I was in elementary school, echoes this sentiment:

Option 3 accepts that in future elections people do not organize around membership organizations, wards, churches, political bosses or institutions. Modern day organizing or political advocacy is activated through more loosely connected community listserves, technology wired affinity groups, activity coordinating groups, fan clubs, etc. The challenge to the party is not to bring folks back into outdated civic institutions. The goal is to spread organizing via people into the self-forming associations enabled and sustained by technology.

The party needs to aggressively experiment with alternative channels to reach the public including music, arts, poetry, story telling, cultural events, video games and service work. The party needs to invest in new technologies to pipe messages out including email, innovative blog networks, websites, online broadcasting, podcast, cell phones, rdif applications for organizing and voice over Internet technologies. The Democrats should develop networks to the communities of innovation to keep the party strategists and trainers knowledgeable of emerging technology and the ways to experiment with new technology in campaign context. The party becomes a vehicle for spreading advantage quickly rather than simply purchasing services from a vendor and leaving it to the vendor to spread innovation.

Our solutions to improving voter contact cannot repeatedly be to replicate what we have done in the past on a larger and more coordinated scale (basically, what we did in 2004). Our current methods of voter contact are not influencing many voters, are not helping us in partisan self-identification, and are not helping us in ideological self-identification. As time goes on, these methods will only become even less effective. As a result of the changes in the public sphere, we need to find new means of voter contact that address our new reality. The only way that is going to happen if the party moves away from mass-membership, institutional based campaigns which do not reflect how people live and participate in political discourse, and toward a much greater focus on campaigns that are driven by individuals who hold influential positions within small social groups. This is neither strategic, choosing one plan over another, nor moral, choosing one value over another. Instead, this is ontological, recognizing that one reality has replaced another. For a detailed proposal on how to proceed in the new reality, I have reproduced Karnes's entire paper in the extended entry.

This paper has no online link that I know of.Situational Appraisal

The shift to a minority power status for the Democratic party will continue to have huge side effects that will further accelerate power imbalance in elections. In the short-term, the public interest movement and the Democrats can not expect parity in fundraising, media exposure, infrastructure development or access to voters. We must acknowledge the trouncing received on election days 2002 & 2004. The reality needs to set in and force us to organize a different strategy as a minority opposition.

While some leaders take comfort in the small margins that the Democrats continue to lose elections by, the faithful need to only be reminded of the John Fitzgerald Kennedy joke at the Gridiron Dinner "Don't buy a single vote more than necessary. I'll be damned if I'm going to pay for a landslide." Republicans are winning by exactly one or two percent. This is not a sign of Democratic strength but as Republican efficiency. Elections are winner take all systems.

The current position of the party is not merely a reflection of a particular candidate but the continued slide along a losing trajectory. In 1992, Democrats controlled a majority of state level and local offices, a majority of the Governorships, the House, the Senate and White House.1 Since 1992, the Democrats have cumulatively lost power across every level of government. Republicans have fractionalized the progressive base and made in roads with populations that traditionally supported progressive agendas.

The GOP is different than the party operation Democrats have struggled with for the last 40 years. The Republicans strategy and infrastructure development was built out before 1992 and their strategy has been in motion for decades.2 The 2004 election is the first example of a new Republican dominance at every level of political struggle.

The Democratic party needs a new strategy to fight this reconstituted conservative base and Republican machine. Much of the current leadership in the party, nonprofit, consulting and foundation circles lack the vision and perspective needed to retake the reigns of government. Traditional leaders have mentally, operationally and financially entrenched to defend a strategy that does not work. They are drawing from an experience that is only marginally relevant to the current situation.

The sole reliance on paid TV spots and media events to spread core messages coupled with a policy agenda of election cycle perks and plans has failed. A field operation based on stale voter engagement models, political machine era views of volunteers and haphazardly assembled alliances of nonprofits and other entities (527s, PACs) has failed. Our grassroots infrastructure is outdated. The party does not have a winning outreach and engagement strategy.

The party needs a strategy which leverages past investments while looking ahead to compete in society shaped by new industries, cheap travel, new media and a dense set of communications technologies. The new strategy must better position the Democrats to organize a majority into the future while helping defend past accomplishments. The strategy must break down walls dividing people and resources that should be working together. The strategy must remove the barriers that deter self-organization.

Objectives
A new strategy for the party should:

• Help Democratic ideas, policy and platforms get adapted and implemented.
• Defeat efforts by Republicans to implement a conservative and misguided agenda.
• Help the party win elected offices at every level.
• Improve the speed of responses to political opportunities and threats.
• Improve cross group collaboration to enhance the effectiveness of Democratic campaigns and issue politicking.
• Expand Democratic influence on the cultural landscape.
• Reduce the costs of defending past political gains.
• Expand the set of resources and political capital that are available for implementing the party platform into the future

.Measures of Success
Progress toward the objectives must be meticulously measured to monitor progress and identify areas for additional work. Measures for implementing the strategy will be:

• The improvement in the numbers of activists responses generated to pressure targets of a campaign.
• An increase of attendance at events organized, expanded numbers of events completed and funds raised
• An increase in the diversity of groups engaged in organizing and implementing pressure campaigns tied to Democratic agenda.
• An increase in the number of interactions across organizations and subgroups of the Democratic movement.
• Observing deep and sustained shift in polling results toward determined Democratic values.
• Change in polling numbers of those who see it as their personal responsibility to expand freedoms and opportunities for others.
• Expanding the number of people that see the government as an appropriate mechanism to implement solutions to the country's problems including addressing lack of health care, establishing fair labor practices and preservation of our natural and historic inheritance.
• Increase in the number of people that self-identify as Democrats and liberal.
• Measurable increase in the key net resources (people, financial capital, political capital, hardware, software and organizing and communications infrastructure) available for future campaigns to support candidates at local, state and national levels.
• Lower barriers to the rapid movement of campaign resources on demand.
• Higher quality and increase diversity of candidates running for office.
• Increased number of elected office served by Democrats

.Return on Investment
The value that the party and party leadership will derive from the successful implementation of this strategy will include but not be limited to:

• Increased success on Election Day.
• Reduced overhead costs for organizing campaigns.
• Increased use of resources invested in communications, training and leadership development.
• Accelerated capacity to deploy resources according to threats and opportunities.
• Reduced costs to allied issue groups (lots of nonprofits get a bit smaller) by shrinking the capacity each needs to "carry" in periods of low demand.
• A diverse leadership and actively engaged public generating more high quality candidates thereby helping the party be more effective in more races while simultaneously making the races cheaper to compete.
• Reduction in attrition rates and staff turnover across the party and allied public interest sector.
• Increased volunteer contributions and an increased capacity to identify "engagers" sooner.
• Increased interest in the Democratic Party by candidates and potential candidates.

Methodology and Options
The heart of the new strategy comes from applying the lessons learned from cutting edge logistics management, computer networking and network-centric warfare concepts to the field of political organizing and advocacy (so called network-centric advocacy).

Today's attention spans and political cycles are tighter than ever. Public interest in a story spikes and fades in a day or weeks not months and years. It is essential to build a powerful rapid defense network and identify a diverse and distributed collection of people and tools that are prepared to engage on any issue at a moment's notice. The issues will be picked based on debates and events which provide communications and framing "beachheads" into the national policy agenda (discovery of cancer clusters, treatment of veterans, health care failure, treatment of military families).

The goal of a rapid response network is to decentralize the exertion of political will enabling Democrats to come at the Republican opposition from many different angles while also blinding the Republicans to the weaknesses and strengths of organizing resources dedicated to various issue areas.

A comprehensive rapid-response defense network should encompass a flexible and redundant list of hundreds of names with expertise in field operations, communications strategy, fundraising, advance work, legal credentials & expertise, campaign management, leadership skills, debriefing and evaluation training, computer and technical skills. The rapid defense network should have staff monitoring availability of the potential participants including costs and reputations. The rapid response network could enlist teams of more seasoned political operatives to work with the participants to debrief, evaluate, document, train and coach the core wave of participants.

Examples of past rapid response networks on a smaller scale include: the 1992 Clinton war room3 team focused on responding in the same newscycle to all the steps in Bush 1 took during the campaign or the National Cattleman Association's management of the Mad Cow disease discovery in late 2003.

Option 1 consists of building the rapid response network including the logistical support to deploy campaign resources staff, hardware, peoplepower and expertise into an "on demand" management plan. The initial steps include setting up a communication channel, building new flexible lend lease arrangements across organizations and staff, encouraging donors to give to more flexible groups, designing legal agreements, investing in new management of all the intellectual property (software and data) so that they can be used and controlled by multiple interest groups, campaigns and allied efforts.

The new network style of campaigning may also give rise to the need to develop intelligent hibernate and wake strategies. Staff and others will need to design entire campaigns around the concept that next week 500 professional volunteers maybe working on a campaign and in a month after the issue fades the network may be moved on to a new campaign and as well as intelligent "retreat" specialists and close out plans for campaigns. Planning campaigns and managing operations in this new environment will also take new skills training.

Four more years of the Bush administrations control over the budgets and agencies are going to reshape much of the federal government. Increasingly campaigns are going to be pitted by both parties aimed at the government itself. It is essential to recognize that there are many employees that joined agencies when the mission was quite different from the current directions advocated by Republicans. EPA, OSHA, NIH, FDA to name a few have all been recently begun to twist from serving the public to protecting the industries.

Option 2 consists of Option 1 plus investing in a protection from within strategy to shore up the those people working on behalf of the public interests from within the current branches of government (agency staff, civil servants, Judges, whistleblowers, etc.) A plan is developed to protect our friends embedded in the government from being painted as the enemy even as we fight the new directions of the agencies. The protection from within work includes establishing networks of identified allies, providing them with mentoring, ethics and moral support in the face of directions that are counter productive to the original agency goals. We must protect good staff from the pressure that will be exerted by radical right political appointees.

While a Rapid Response Network and an organized network of supporters within the agencies will increase the ability to head off the Republican shenanigans and mobilize the current assets more effectively, neither step fundamentally readjusts Democratic organizing strategy for the new age of connectivity. The methods that people use to connect and organize are changing. The culture and very nature of civic relationships are changing. The Democratic party must decide to leap out ahead of the Republican strategies to reach out and politick within the new culture.

Option 3 consist of implementing Option 1 & 2 and adding an aggressive set of programs out that focus on reshaping the discourse and modes of engaging of the public. Option 3 accepts that in future elections people do not organize around membership organizations, wards, churches, political bosses or institutions. Modern day organizing or political advocacy is activated through more loosely connected community listserves, technology wired affinity groups, activity coordinating groups, fan clubs, etc. The challenge to the party is not to bring folks back into outdated civic institutions. The goal is to spread organizing via people into the self-forming associations enabled and sustained by technology.

The party needs to aggressively experiment with alternative channels to reach the public including music, arts, poetry, story telling, cultural events, video games and service work. The party needs to invest in new technologies to pipe messages out including email, innovative blog networks, websites, online broadcasting, podcast, cell phones, rdif applications for organizing and voice over Internet technologies. The Democrats should develop networks to the communities of innovation to keep the party strategists and trainers knowledgeable of emerging technology and the ways to experiment with new technology in campaign context. The party becomes a vehicle for spreading advantage quickly rather than simply purchasing services from a vendor and leaving it to the vendor to spread innovation.

Timetable
As with any project, the proposed network-centric advocacy strategy for the party is confined by the time, money and scope restraints. It is generally only possible to pick 2 elements. However, given the grassroots capacity to inject funding into the Democratic party and support Governor Dean exerts it is fair to focus on time and scope. A rough timeline based on implementing all three options would look like:

Months 1- 5 2005

• Establish network-centric advisory council and provide staff support in each of the departments and key Democratic institutions.
• Expand the design specifications for the Rapid Response Network communications channel. Issue the RFP and begin the deployment.
• Engage logistics and supply chain management experts into strategy design for campaign tool management.
• Identify legal and financial constraints and develop a draft counter strategy to be vetted by legal and accounting teams.
• Inventory all key intellectual property, data and vendor contracts. Engage Creative Commons team in proposing new management regime.
• Design promotion and collateral materials to sell network concepts to broader party and allied issue groups.
• Identify new network style of campaign leaders.
• Convene federal and ex-federal agency staff, state staff and local staff with key labor organizers and strategists to design all elements of the protection form within strategy.
• Begin building key databases and social network maps.
• Establish innovation feedback program
• Hold national "book club" recommendations competition include movies, DVDs. Music and poetry.
• Recruit organizers to debrief on the 2004 cycle form all aspects of the campaign including volunteer analysis.

Months 5-12, 2005

• Seed the Rapid Response Network communications channel in initial campaigns.
• Begin to test the "lend-lease" program.
• Begin to offer key tools and intellectual property to campaigns at all scales.
• Begin training staff and volunteers to "train the trainers" around the country.
• Begin to expand the participation in the shared capacity programs across party organizations and a handful of nonprofit organizations.
• Launch the Protection from Within Network.
• Examine first round of social network maps and begin to find ways to build network strength and efficiency.
• Expand access and training on key databases and tools.
• Begin monthly culture engagement with movie houses, house parties, book clubs, concerts, etc.

2006

• Use the network infrastructure to engage Democratic skills and base resources in a dynamic "live" basis in key election efforts.
• Begin to deploy campaign strategies designed to fully use the Democratic Network.
• Launch the campaign alumni association.
• Accelerate the self-learning loops enabled by the network infrastructure.

Conclusion
The future of the Democratic party rests in the power of the vision and ideas pushed by candidates and implemented by our public servants. The ability to distribute and implement the vision rests in the capacity of the infrastructure the party builds to win elections. There are many questions about the future of the party: Who is in charge? What legislation and messages might sell in the short term? This plan does not address those questions but instead starts to present options to build the participatory infrastructure to support new leadership. The plan also presents some options for immediate action given the current climate.

Families and friends of local candidates, farmers, firemen, business groups, the AFL-CIO, AARP, bloggers, Sierra Club, the sick, the poor, the elderly, the students, hunters, social workers and anyone who is looking for a way to help our cause are all a part of the Democratic movement. The Democratic agenda is tied to the coalition that participates in shaping society. Democratic Party success is tied directly to capacity of these citizens to stay informed, speak out, organize and connect their efforts to each other and back into the elected officials that can help engage government in working with them to solve problems.

This plan seeks to strategically build that network capacity over organizational interest. The plan leverages the decentralized and broad coalition of people that make up the country and in the process unite a new Democratic majority.

There is a healthy and strong network of people and groups working together to protect the Democratic agenda. Unfortunately, current campaigns and the party management have not had a network-centric strategy. Such a strategy would leverage the network's strengths and serve as a catalyst for the Democratic movement.

It is time to start focusing on the connectivity (ability to transfer workload) across our allied movement and begin to strategically build the legal, communications, technical, financial and political pipelines that are needed to moving Democrats from minority to majority power status.