Bloggers' Initiative for 2004

Recent Developments

KOS gets it right - read his recent columns and commentary about our individual candidates.

Background

Seize the Moment

During my daily routine of reading roughly 25 blogs - those contained in my 'daily read' link list, I observe, in aggregate, 80% of the space devoted to unhappiness with the War in Iraq, Problems with the Current Administration, and Potential Problems with the Reconstruction of Iraq.

There is then a mish-mash, maybe 15% of the space, devoted to diverse curios of the day.

Finally, there is LESS THAN 5% devoted to any kind of action plan to do ANYTHING tangible about the problems listed in the first paragraph.

Fellow Bloggers, it is fine to address the problems, identify them, and disect them a thousand clever ways. But that discourse is not going to solve the underlying root causes.

We need not only identify and discuss problems, we need to eliminate them. Fully, and permanently.

And the ONLY way I can think of, which guarantees that these problems will not repeat themselves beyond the Year 2004, is to change our government.

Specifically, elect a new President.

Secondly, elect enough Democratic/Independent Senators to obtain control of the Senate.

Thirdly, elect enough Democratic/Independent Congressmen to obtain control of the House.

Each of you may have similar issues at your State and Local level. What all of us have in common, is that on November 2, 2004, we all go to the polling places, and we pull the lever for the president who will set the agenda for our country for the next four years.

If you think this is a thought process and decision you can conveniently and responsibly postpone until the morning of Election Day, you are sadly mistaken. We may be running out of time to do anything about bringing our political pipe dreams within the realm of reality.

Let me remind you that we have another thing in common: as bloggers, we have the opportunity to influence our readers. We have the tools to exhort them to take action.

We need to take action, as a group, and we need to start doing so NOW.

We need to channel the outrage which currently fuels our rhetoric, away from mere editorials over our Government's conduct of the war, and absence of a coherent domestic policy. We cannot take solace in our own rhetoric, and go to bed with the smug knowledge that 'I said the right thing - and how'.

In the final analysis, politically proper posturing may get us accolades from devoted readers - but we need to spur them to action, rather than merely angling for their concurrence of thought.

With the election only some 18 months away, there is an enormous amount of effort which needs to take place at the grass roots level in order to ensure that the candidates of our choice, have the backing, resources and following sufficient to guarantee them election victories over Republicans endowed with all of the advantages of incumbency, especially at the presidential level.

My clarion call is this: continue the expression of outrage over all the issues where the current administration, including democratic legislators blinded or numbed by the shaming-Congress-into-my-brand-of-patriotism exhortations from the bully pulpit, deserves legitimate criticism. Keep the pressure on everyone.

BUT - also devote 50% of your intellect and powers of persuasion towards a common goal:

Let us organize, and deploy a common advocacy front, to make sure the election, and election of OUR candidates, remain uppermost on the minds of our readers.

Despite all of the moral victories we take credit for, at the blogger's editorial desks we occupy, we have a huge uphill battle to fight, and it will take extraordinary insight, devotion and effort, to change our government next election.

1. Assemble a 'team' - 5 or 6 bloggers working off the same page.

2. Finetune our 'Message' - essentially make our "Form a New Coalition Government" Message(s) into an effective email campaign.

3. Start a coordinated marketing/motivational effort directed at all of our fellow leftist bloggers to attempt to get them aboard

4. Throughout the campaign, exhort our followers for the type of proactive participation in the local, State and National Democratic Party organizations which it will take to overcome the natural bias and huge advantage accorded an incumbent in order to attain 'Regime Change at Home'

Latest status of Information furnished to 'Founders Group' of Bloggers

Updated April 11, 2003

Here is a brief action plan, focusing more on the logistics than on the *MESSAGE*

Within a month, I would hope to have 50 - 75 bloggers make the *commitment* to

i) devote space to the upcoming election

ii) display some sort of graphic or text logo to this effort - we need to have a unifying 'visual'

To GET there, I have in mind a 'founder's group' who will do the following:

A. Massage the message, and compose a three-layer version of it

I am very much aware that a single blogger, starting to blitz his fellow bloggers, is highly likely to be turned away as the 'mad blogger' - thus killing the campaign.

As a result, it is important for me not to 'blow it' by going out now, single handed, and try to overwhelm my fellow bloggers with a singular message. I need your help!!

B. We need to organize a fairly well-coined email campaign, where 3 - 4 - 5 different individuals, sharing the email list, each go out, at predesigned intervals, and relays the same message, but better and more compelling each time. We need to voice the sentiment of a 'chorus' rather than a voice crying alone from the wilderness.

I don't for a second believe that out left-sided bloggers are not going to like the idea, but it may have to be presented to them as an inherently good idea, with a little bit of 'keeping up with the Jones' effect, for good measure. Hearing the same message, from different fellow bloggers, within a relatively short time frame, is what we can plan to do.

They are all busy, and they all have their own agenda - namely presenting [their] ORIGINAL work, and being that they all do it part time, we need to make sure that our message gets taken seriously.

So what are our long term objectives.

Working backwards towards the present from Election day - the chronologically late part is easy.

AFTER the Democratic Convention, out effort will surely concentrate on getting the vote out, to make our readers commit to voting for ABB (Anyone But Bush), regardless of personal preferences as to who the Dems select.

"Remember Florida" - and similar campaign mottos we can worry about at such time.

2. During the period from when we first start our visible campaign, up through the Primaries, and leading to the Convention, what can we conceivable accomplish.

Is it possible that we, speaking in a common voice, can actually influence or even *affect* the outcome.

I think we *have* to believe that we can. Will we all speak in one voice. Probably not - but we can at least elevate the dialog and the issues to a higher level.

How many of our readers are Republicans or uncommitted - how many of them can we turn to see our point?? How often can we proselytize - or are we merely speaking to the already convinced.

How about organizing and facilitating letter/email campaigns by our readers? Surely this is an area we have to exploit. Most of us are pretty computer-savvy. Many of our readers are *NOT*.

Then there are the big name folks - like Josh, and Eric - since they are syndicated, will they want to stamp their blogs as reactionary, pro-active, get-the-vote-out seething open forums. I don't know, and these folks may be the last we speak to, and only when we can show that we have attained fairly large-scale critical mass.

An interesting comment about the Agonist. Sean Paul has committed to 'have no opinions' while he labors 24/7 on aggregating the news for us in an easily digestible format. Once the war is over, he may go back to regular blogging. It will be interesting to see what happens to his readership. Will he join our team??

The numbers-game.

I have culled about 45 email addresses from my most frequent (daily) blog visits.

I have a list of maybe 300-500 (haven't counted them) of potentially targeted bloggers who need to be categorized (fer sure) and emails extracted from their blogs.

The email you just received earlier today, I have sent out to about 10 of my 'buddies' - those I have had actual 'conversations' with - mostly because I have helped them with web accessibility issues on their blogs. I think they all, in theory, should sign on, but who knows.

I can see from my page counter that they all have opened the mail - so far, I have positive responses from Fred at rantavation and Lisa at Ruminate This. (Both blogs are listed at the top of my links under new subheading: Political Action)

I have suggested to them, in turn, that they turn to closely allied bloggers who might want to be part of the 'Founders Group' before we contact the Full Monty.

Give me your ideas. The Call for Action webpage is on my server (1st Draft).

http://gummibear.netfirms.com/weblog/bloggersinitiative.html

I certainly want to update this draft, plus create the separate email appeals copy before we do anything else insofar as contacting more bloggers.

NOTE: The 10 who have received this email, are Hullabaloo, TBOGG, Casus Belli, Rittenhouse, Calpundit, Ruminate This, Rantavation, Food for thought, and a few much lesser known pundits who I happen to know personally)

The MEDIA

For now, we will set up a blogger page, with comments, so that the founders group can communicate with each other, by using the comments a-la a bulletin board.

Later, we will get a dedicated fast-access server, and dedicated domain.

The "ABB" [Anybody But Bush] website will acquire position papers, common resources, and a super collection of links to democratic resources all over the country. We should all start assembling, and aggregating them, once the new site is born.

I don't have a doubt that this effort is going to be successful. The worst that happens to OUR group, is that several of these 'mission' blogs spring up, and we decide to pool resources and merge into the bigger or better one. In any case, our efforts will be on-going, and worthwhile.

I HAVE to believe that others like us share our thoughts - our only advantage seems to lie in the realization - by us - that it is never too early to start the organizing effort - and as soon as the war is over and all the dust settles, we will probably get into the old humdrum where dirty politics are the main topics of the day - again. THAT's when I expect a lot of folks will want to get pro-active [Let's not have another Iraq war], and that is when I want to be ready with a sympatico, but hard-hitting platform, a catchy slogan, a nice website, with the red carpet laid out - all they have to do, is walk in and JOIN.

One of the things I want to offer the core group of participating bloggers, is a good, inspiring and engaging 'mission statement' as well as something visual as the 'unifying button'

We have the backwards ticker - you see it in two different version. Mine exhorts the reader to support the notion of 'democracy in the USA' - Fred's - at rantavation - is more blunt - it calls for us to 'Evict Bush'.

I happened to come across a "Support Democracy in Ieaq" button sported by the Hawks - a kind'a in-your-face challenge to the liberals, reminding (us) that the wear effort is over, now let's support 'Democracy in Iraq'.

I would like to do up a kind'a copycat image, but with the logo 'Restore Democracy in the USA'- same kind of imagery, Statue of Liberty etc etc

You can find it at Deanes

Colin is pretty good with Photoshop, so he will try doing a fresh rendition of the Democratic call for Democracy logo - it can be static, does not need to be an Animated GIF.

At this point, I am more interested in the concept - we can 'pretty up' the image once we get consensus at what it should look like. There may be other visuals offered up here, by others, anybody have any bright ideas or suggestions??

Cheers

Paul

TO DO LIST - April 12

At present, we are trying to organize the left-sided bloggers into a coalition with these common goals.

1. Commitment to devote significant space to the upcoming election

2. A commitment to offer SOLUTIONS, not just kvetches about the current administration's many faults and erroneous directions within the areas of domestic and foreign policy, etc etc

3. Creation of a dedicated resource/blog/commentary/bulletin board to act as a lightning rod/campaign banner for the next 18 months

4. An intelligent, enlightened dialog concerning platforms and candidates, at the Presidential/congressional level

5. As we near Nov 2, 2004, a dedicated effort to 'get out the vote'

6. Hopefully, from this will spring also similar efforts to guide/support local candidates, from Sea to Shining Sea

_______________________________________

At this early stage, we are working on a 'Mission Statement" which will appeal to the broadest possible segment, as well as some 'unifying graphics' which will mark each participating blog as one of the 'Coalition'

I take no pride of ownership in either the 'Bloggers Initiative' moniker, nor the 'Centerpoint' blog name. While I will keep my personal blog named 'Centerpoint, we need to think of a catchy name for our 'Coalition Blog' - and a nice graphic headbanner to top it off. Anyone??

Ultimately, I envision a dedicated website listing :

• Goals and objectives
• Mission Statement
• Time Line of Events leading up to the Election
• List of participating Bloggers
• Free logo/button, to be displayed by the coalition
• Backwards ticker(s) and similar unifying icons
• Huge assembly of links to
  • Candidates
  • Democratic Resources
  • Allied political parties
  • Media

Things we can use right now

Drafts/assembly of any of the foregoing

Proselytizing, pro-active comrades-in-arms who will take it upon themselves to seek out our ideological brethren-qua-bloggers and direct them, through commentary and/or personal email to look into our 'Bloggers Initiative' - this effort also encompasses a collection of email addresses so that we can communicate broadly with the bloggers to be invited into our midst.

I have assembled a 'super-size' link index (also found on the left side of my blog) with as many as possibly 500 - 700 bloggers. The list is, substantially un-organized. The bloggers (other than those who have been already identified as 'left-sided') need to be vetted, and emails collected so that we can approach them in about 10-30 days when we have our own resource sufficiently built up.

This last effort (contacting our approximately 500 ideologically situated brethren) we would like to take off at such time when we have a more fully developed website/resource to offer them. But meanwhile, the vetting and collection of appropriate emails should continue unabated.

We could also use help as follows: i) looking up across the political spectrum for any similar organizational efforts [I am not aware of any - but I don't have a total bird's eye view of our blogger world]- if they exist we want to assess who they are and how far they have progressed. Ultimately, and ideally, all of these efforts should be fused into ONE organization.

ii) any suggested platform language (whether original or copied from elsewhere) - as long as the message is the right one, this is what we are striving for, and the sooner we get there, the sooner we can start.