Earmark the money from the netroots and demand that they will not be used to pay DC consultants (or let us pick consultants). If the candidate refuses to cooperate on this - no money to him/her.

We need to starve the DC consultants. They are a joke, or worse (since they help Republicans win).

A site featuring a performance rating of consultants would be a good start. Only if there's data why someone is a bad consultant pressure can be applied on the candidates to avoid ot et rid og the loosers.

Is there some way to track the consultants each campaign hired and analyze their results?   We could then publish a list of net-roots recommended and not recommended consultants.  Which consultant a candidate hires could then be one factor in evaluating how much support the net-roots provide.

Thank you for posting about Blue Jersey, NJ has elections in 2007, so like Virginians they have to gear up right away.

I don't think it is a good idea for netroots to start attaching strings to it's donations. That is part of what I do not like about the DSCC and DCCC.

This should be a no-brainer.  Let the netroots fund organizing directly.  And let them fund advertising, too, when that's appropriate.

But above all--as has been posted about here several times--let them use their money to go after registering new, progressive voters, which is far more cost-effective, rather than spending buckets of cash trying to persuade swing voters.

If you want value for your money, that's a good place to go.  Twenty bucks is much more significant there.  And they don't hire consultants.  Of course, the campaigns go from A to F in quality, so you can still end up with some stinkers.  If you can, find out if they've gone to Camp Wellstone.  If they have, then at least they should have some idea what they are doing.

If I understand the situation the problem is the culture in DC.  Same well connected people do the same bad job over and over again.

Can you change the culture so there is accountability ?

I think this is where you need to look at reaching out to some of the bigger players to have a discussion about accountability.

Gov Dean, Soros etc would be the right people to convene such a conference, and bank roll it.

You need to have a the DC players in a formal setting defending their practices, only then will any of your research be accepted by the DC culture.

I think a consultant registry would good way to close the feedback loop in a way that improves the resources available to the Democratic Party.

The ratings that MyDD did of candidates campaign commercials this cycle was a great start towards this direction, and should be organized to include candidate post-election feedback, analysis of the consultant's work and recommendations for future candidates.

--morris

Something has to change.  Between now and next time, I think you, Kos, and some of the other bloggers need to meet with Schumer and Rahm to discuss this.  Schumer was at dkos saying, we want to work with you so let see what he does.  They should be evaluating the quality they get for their buck, too.  Ask for a meeting.

Agreed.  If you want big money, then you need to get the big foundations on board.Then you lose your independence though.  I say lets keep brainstorming for innovative funding mechanisms.  BTW, ad revenues will keep going up, as im sure any 3 year chart of what an ad costs at dkos, mydd will show.

$15,000 or even $10,000 a year isn't $2.50 an hour. $15,000 is about $7.20 an hour, $10,000 is $4.80 an hour. Now, that's still not much money at all, but it's definitely better than $2.50.

There are two separate issues here.

The first is how to cover your administrative costs.  It's something that most 501(c)(3)'s encounter.  They can find people to donate/pay for artists fees, exhibits and program consultants, but they can't find money to pay for rent, staff and overhead.  I agree that we need to get the big Democratic Donors behind this.  What about the Rappaport folks?  Or Soros?  Or Bing?  If anyone has any contacts there, they should suggest setting up a fund for bloggers.  Just like the non-profit world, bloggers would apply for grants to continue their work.  Best blogs or most traffic wins.

The second issue is bad consultants.  Obviously you are not going to get rid of the culture of consultants.  However, we can be more transparent about who gets hired.  Lots of times, it's really who you know.  Decisions are all made behind closed doors and the best candidate does not get the job.  If we have this wiki site, then that would at least let the grassroots and insurgents identify better consultants.  If we attach a "Stamp of Approval" then you (MyDD, Kos, SSP) can use this as a criteria in terms of which candidates are endorsed and become netroots candidates.  This will give us more of a say.

What to do?  Persevere.  Your good new product won't knock off the crummy old product overnight.  It takes time, especially in high-risk one-shot ventures like running for office.  "Potentially great" is trumped by "known to be reliably mediocre."  It's human nature.  

The netroots did a fabulous job in this election.  Fabulous in absolute terms, and even better by comparison with 2004.  Everyone knows it.  But one or two elections aren't enough.  Each election cycle will win more adherents.  If nothing else, the old, internet-skeptical generation of politicians will retire.

Election outcomes are the resultant of multiple factors, consulting being one of them. Our primary focus should be the quality of the candidates: do they have good campaigning, communication & organizational skills, how can we make them better.

Here in the Philly area, Pat Murphy just won a pickup seat. The last Democratic candidate - heavily touted by Kos & I thus contributed to - was a lousy campaigner & lost.

Matt,

I come from the Organic world, 20 years ago Big Ag wanted nothing to do us.

But we reached out to them and surprisingly a few and I do mean just a handful, of conventional AG groups stared a dialog with us.

You will find that if you reach out there will be some that listen.

Don't be afraid of big $, everyone wants to get the most bang for their bucks and they want to hear how their dollars can be better spent.

The Organic community did not give up it's principals when big companies accepted us, in fact they were the ones that changed to meet out standards.

The question is do you want to stay in your current financial situation or become sustainable?

Ask any organic farmer what sustainable means and they will tell you making a good living.  Profits and principal are not mutually exclusive.

Don't know how DC works.

Here in CA, the best consultants gravitate toward the frontrunner long before the primary and the bond formed there gets them the job in the general.  

The less able consultants are stuck with the less able candidates, or perhaps it's vice versa.  I think there is even a suggestion, maybe more than a suggestion, that in the primaries, the less able consultants are willing to sabotage their own candidates in the interests of 'playing the game' or for future consultant benefit.

A few months after the election of Gov. Davis, McClatchy published an analysis.  One of the questioins was how could an attractive, articulate candidate with a positive story and unlimited funds (Al Checchi) wind up with 19% (IIRC) of the vote?  It was quite a story.

is inversely proportional to the number of times he(she) has appeared on Meet the Press.

I've been thinking about this for awhile and I think there is a great business opportunity for an enterprising person to provide a real service to both the blogging communities as well as the readers.

Basically, my concept is similar to the Act Blue page. Perhaps Act Blue could expand their focus to include this.    I'd be willing to spend, say, $100.00 month on supporting various blogs and organizations.  I would like to have an account where I can allocate (and reallocate on a continual basis) where this money goes.  Maybe to start: $10.00 to MyDD, maybe $15.00 to DU, maybe $5 to T-Bogg, maybe $25.00 to the DNC, maybe $20.00 to Drs. without Borders, maybe $20.00 to the ACLU, and $5.00 to Crooks and Liars.  The money would be distributed monthly based on these user defined allocations. A % of this monthly fee is retained by the website to fund this service.  The benefit to the user is a single place to manage these allocations and the ease to adjust the allocations over time.  The benefit to blogs is getting a more consistant revenue stream that doesn't rely on tip jars, fundraisers, etc.

One of the most infuriating things for me when I worked for federal candidates was the false threat the DSCC/DCCC would make to a candidate, saying they "wouldn't give them any money" unless they hired Consultant X.

It was a BS threat, since of course, if a candidate was winning, they'd want that candidate to win, and would not lose a race just to make a point about hiring Consultant X. Try explaining that to your candidate, though, ESPECIALLY a first timer.

I agree, there is a handful of really stupid, really bad, really rich consultants in DC who screw up and get promoted/hired no matter what. I have had the misfortune of working with some and their ethics and work product suck.

That said, I don't know if witholding money from candidates unless they hire another group of consultants is any better. Maybe the way to solve the problem is to help candidates navigate some difficult choices when they don't have anyone to ask questions of. Trust me, if you perhaps spent some time writing up a manual called "How to Hire a Decent Political Team" and made it available on the site as a PDF, you would be doing a lot of candidates and their allies a big favor.

In terms of who gets the benefits of political blogs, friendly candidates, and Democratic institution like the DNC, DCCC and DSCC should be paying the money. Looking at the ActBlue pages, bloggers clearly generated millions for democratic candidates this year. There's a lot of volunteer and publicity support too which is hard too quantify but doubtless even more valuable.

How to convince them to pay and how to deal with ethical issues is a bigger problem. Direct payment to the bloggers raises some obvious conflict-of-interest problems. Ad payments duck that issue but create a freeloader problem - if candidates A and B advertise on MyDD or BlueJersey or whatever, it will benefit Democrats/liberas by allowing the blogs to get more done but the benefit will be spread out over all the candidates supported by the blog.

You might be able to convince candidates to participate via an ad+guestblog system. Guestblogs can generate a lot of interest in a campaign and this could be linked to a contantly changing set of ads linking to position papers, event updates and the like at the candidates/organizations site. The DNC had a nice platformish set of positions early on in 2006 that never got much air - ads and guestblogs for it would really have helped.

Writing ads that appeal to blog readers is important, and neglected. Blog readers want hot-off-the-presses news, lively discussions, and links to stick into their own stuff. Advertising on blogs, such as it is, tends to be bland links to donation pages or slowly-changing homepages, which is odd given that I eagerly read stuff from the candidates or workers in their campaign, like (on dKos) Rook, Sarah Carter, or John Conyers.

Unfortunately there's still a freeloader problem, in that 90% of the benefit could be gotten just by guestblogs, with no ad payments. My idea for addressing that is that the $$$ to keep a couple of lively blogs going is rather small compared to the extraordinarily large expenditures of modern campaigning. I know most politician are self-centered and greedy but there have to be some who are willing to cough up $10000/campaign to groups that generate them far more than that in benefits even if they'd get the benefits without paying.

I don't have any suggestions about the larger problem, but in regard to funding the site, you might consider the Sluggy Freelance model.  It's a webcomic whose creator originally got most of his revenue from ads, but has moved over time to getting the majority of it from subscriptions to "ad-free Sluggy."  You pay an annual fee ($25 in the case of Sluggy, but I'd be willing to pay considerably more than that for MyDD) and when you enter the site as a logged-in subscriber, the ads don't appear.

More generally, setting up a non-profit that makes grants to blogs might be a good way of funding the netroots; such an organization would be better positioned to solicit funds from wealthy donors and other sources such as Working Assets.

Suggestion:  Since there is no Consumer Reports for consultants, why not start one?  Maybe start it here at MyDD, with the long-term goal of spinning it off into its own site.

My loose idea: come up with some metrics to measure the quality of a candidate, establish a team of experienced professionals to judge and rank the consultants.

I've only sketched some pretty broad strokes here. Anyone else want to take this up and fill in the details?