E-democracy is dangerous. It pulls us away from the street.

Backing a guy for saying the right stuff is the inevitable
outcome. And missing the guy who has it, and who does it.

The Dean campaign recognizes that supporters are good for more than just forwarding emails and sending in money–they have talent and other resources, too. A traditional campaign just sucks in money and considers volunteers to be flyer-handing-out machines (too reductive, I know–and I’m not knocking the value of canvassing). But if all of the video cameras, computers (for editing, Photoshop), weblogs and talent among all of the Dean supporters can be harnessed effectively, that will add an incredible amount of real $ value to the campaign–value that most campaigns to date utterly waste. I might not have much money to give Dean right now, but I CAN offer him shooting and video-editing services for which he’d pay tens of thousands the regular way.

They just announced an Assignment Desk to help try to organize these creative resources. This one innovation could change everything. “Become the media” has never felt less like a pipe dream.

(FYI, Dean MeetUp tonight, nationwide.)

So good luck to the Doctor and to everyone else who speaks truth clearly. But there is a place, I hope, for people who say what they believe, without fear about whether it will make it easier to
(1) get votes, (2) get clients, (3) get money.

This is exactly the sort of statement which says to me “Beware! Hype alert!”. It’s given without information to allow much of a comparison, as to what it does in fact mean. If what would be a $2,000 check is now done by PayPal, that’s nice, even mildly innovative – but not indicative of anything new, except that people now send money using online payment systems, and it’s wise for candidates to take advantage of that.

“Take a look at the campaign blog, and you’ll see people who are really excited about this candidate.”

I don’t doubt it. Again, one of the best things that blogs do is generate talk.
I don’t need to look very far to see people really excited about Libertarianism. And they get around 1/2 of 1% of the presidential vote. Let that be a cautionary tale about confusing talk with action.

Let’s look at it this way: In the last week of the quarter, Dean made collected more donations than he collected in the entire first quarter (that was $2.6 million, btw). Dean raised more money online than Lieberman raised total, and like I said, these are not people cutting $2,000 checks.

Take a look at the campaign blog, and you’ll see people who are really excited about this candidate. There’s a reason for that. And it’s translating into big bucks.

No matter who the Democrats ultimately come up with, I’m afraid Bush will eat their lunch. He’s got the most money and all the friends in business, and that’s what matters these days in America.

Dean seems to be a decent guy, don’t get me wrong. But finding angles to generate hype and buzz is what campaign managers are supposed to do.