The point is that even Tom "Friedman Unit" Friedman can smell what Obama's cooking. I helped edit this post and my apologies; I suppose that wasn't as clear as it could have been.

That link got a little mangled, here it is again:

http://www.mydd.com/story/2007/6/6/04226 /87314

In that post, I didn't get to the point of using the framework I proposed to evaluate whether a given group like Third Way is or isn't progressive. But that is (in part) what it's for, so I'll let you answer yourself - these are the summary bullet points again:+

» secure basic freedoms
» invest in people and the future
» democratize economic power
» build the green economy
» housebreak capitalism
» globalize this approach

I'd say that's very much a way of talking about expanding both security and opportunity for the middle class and the poor. What do you think?

Again, Matt B, thanks for engaging with this community.

Anyone have contact information for this character? I'd like to give him a piece of my mind.

I like these! Another one stolen from Star Trek: Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations. In fact "Star Trek Economy" could almost be another way of describing this, if not words that many audiences would connect on. Reading science fiction certainly informed some of my thinking around this, at least in terms of thinking through some of the ramifications of a civilization that made learning, science and art the priorities.

I think most Rs & Ds both believe in integrity. It's not really a differentiator. I know it doesn't seem like that, but someone like Bush or even your average Rush Limbauch listener is principled, in a way. It's just that the principles they are adhering to are wrong, and wrong in a way that happens to be incredibly destructive to democracy.

Lakoff leads with empathy & compassion but I've chosen not to, kind of deliberately. I think interdependence and freedom are stronger motivational issues for larger numbers of people. I know large numbers of people wake up in the morning thinking about who they can help, but equally large numbers of folks (I think) wake up thinking about what they can explore or create, and that's at least as much a part of progressivism as helping folks.

And about "contempt for complacency" - I don't know about contempt, that's a pretty strong negative word. But I think strongly favoring participation is definitely in there. Participatory culture/democracy is one of the direct results of expanding substantial freedom. The numbers of people involved in this side of things right now are small-ish, but it's growing fast and potentially going to be a very important issue to organize people around.

Ha. Point taken, it probably works better formulated as "conservatives are to supply side as progressives are to __".

... but I'll try to stick around for comments and keep an eye on it tomorrow morning too.

I'm on the verge of launching a site that I can point to as a demo of it. Should be ext week-ish. I'm very happy with how the integration has worked out so far.

The "if the privacy settings are right" qualifier is a huge one, I'm afraid. Anyone dig it into F8 deep enough to how big of a problem this is? The problem, I'm going to guess, is that Facebook isn't particularly designed for this, and you're going to hit your head on the sandbox the API lives in at numerous turns.

Another app that people could use is the Dems' partybuilder. In some ways it's better (like the ease of making an email list, although that's problematic too). I tried creating a group for my precinct just out of curiousity...

http://democrats.org/page/group/SF-3832

There's still a gap for a generalized politics social networking app that's designed to support this kind of organizing...

http://vizbang.com/AB

I'm working on it!

Nope, there's no export no easy way to link records to a voterfile. It's a huge limitation - look at a group like 1,000,000 strong for Barack. There's no way to actually organize those folks, to encourage them to take the next step.

Obama is telling the progressive story of this country in a way that people understand it better than any of 'em right now.

You people with your "Gore/Edwards" followed by laundry lists of X number of issues are killing me. Edwards sounds better at first glance to tweakers like us here blog readers, but he has serious perceptual issues amongst the general voting public. I saw him in Reno right after he announced, and this is a perfect example: someone lobbed him a softball on taxes or the economy and he went right into some baroque explanation about deficits and debt. I think he used the word "ratio" at some point. Complete whiff. You laundry listers would have looooved it the way the econ geek in me did, but that's a zero in terms of connection and persuasion.

Laundry lists suck. I just. Want. Someone. Who. Can. Tell. The. Story.

and raise you a Chris Daly. Now that would be a campaign.

Right on Matt. That historical description sounded like dissembling, thanks for breaking it down.

Also I am so using "triangulationistic."

I'm going to wait until I get to read the whole thing and the conclusions and present a longer analysis then, but it's pretty clear that this is some seriously tortured data. You're trying to normalize two orthogonal datasets. You can't just do that. This isn't like taking two baseball players and normalizing their number of games. It's like taking two players from two different leagues and trying to compare them.

There was a strong whiff of tortured data in the last one, too, where the middle class squeeze magically disappeared.

I think there's a lot of potential in 3rd Way's overall approach, because fundamentally there are plenty of bottom line rationales for progressive change. But in the meantime I agree with Chris about the most damaging aspect of this: some doofus will invariably wave this around on Sunday, and it will be on the way to becoming yet another part of the conventional wisdom that needs to be dislodged.

Keep this number in mind: minus thirty nine. It's the difference among likely primary voters who choose bipartisan compromise over core principles. It's 68/29:

29%: The next president of
the U.S. should be
someone who will stick to
core principles and fight
for what they believe is
right.

vs.

68%: The next president of the
U.S. should be someone
who can compromise and
work with both parties to
get things done.

http://democracycorps.com/reports/survey s/Democracy_Corps_April_26-29_2007_Surve y.pdf

Let this also serve as a reminder of how little actual narrative influence the nascent movement has so far. Our commonly accepted story of concerted conservative takeover barely exists in the wild.

I got scared when the war was starting and not a single Dem was fighting back. Maybe this is why I'm so into Obama.

I'm pretty sure both my wife and I are lifers. We're having a blast, making decent money, learning new things every moment and working with amazing people.

I would like the 15-20h days to slow down a bit, but I'm hoping that will come as Bush exits.

Dear Mr Ford,

YOU DON'T WIN AN OCCUPATION. YOU STAY OR YOU LEAVE.

Thx & Best Regards,
Your pal Dan