Howard Dean: From The Ground Up

[cal04]

The idea of a decentralized campaign terrifies most politicians who have gotten used to putting out ideas and letting others respond. We discovered that the path to power, oddly enough, is to trust others with it.


The true mark of a modern campaign will be to listen to Americans and let them shape campaigns instead of simply allowing them to respond. Our campaign was far from perfect, and we did not win. But our organization today is almost 600,000 strong that we know of, and there are more people in the organization today than there were on the day I dropped out of the presidential race. People still meet monthly in about 500 locations across America to talk about how to bring reform, and then they act on their plan locally.

I wish I could tell you that this was all because of my leadership and charisma; that is not so. The reform movement lives because it isn't mine. Our people know that they have the power in their own communities, linked across the country, to elect reform-minded people. They did exactly that on six months notice all across the country in places like Utah, Alabama, and Idaho, not just New York and Ohio.

If Democrats use this model, we will effectively leapfrog the Republicans, who despite their discipline and organization, are still a top-down, control and command organization.

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http://www.yubanet.com/artman/publish/article_17414.shtml

[Cha]

1. I just saw this on buzzflash, too!

Here's Dean telling us..it isn't because of his "charisma" and "leadership"!

But, I'm sure glad he came on the scene to help us get started on "shaping our campaigns".

And we can e-mail Dean and tell him what we think about all this..

[e-mail]

[Democrat Dragon]

2. decentralized?

just hope it has effective leadership!

[LittleClarkie]

3. Snatched it for the Dean Primer section on my messageboard website

Thanks.

[zulchzulu]

4. I hate to say it, but this "theory" is like herding cats

Getting people to "shape their own campaigns" (while it sound all fuzzy and warm) would never work.

If "shaping your own campaign" is meant to be the "think globally, act locally", then I'm all for it. But in a national setting, it doesn't work.

It gets down to marching orders from the top quickly, efficiently and with maturity. Oh, and with a small budget and an unlikely mix of very dedicated staff willing to listen from the top down.

If everyone can be their own boss in campaigns with their own agenda or cherry-picked policies and use that idea as a Democratic agenda and polticial template for "success", then we are in for decades of national defeats.

Imagine a restaurant that has too many chefs in the kitchen. The food would be inedible.

[Democrat Dragon]

5. Well said!

Big businesses relie on centalization, in order to be exremely efficient.

Which they are.(well most)

[Cheswick2.0]

15. the question is how much longer will you allow losers to lead you?

This isn't a job or a corporation. I don't know about you, but I am not employed by the democratic party.

[txaslftist]

16. Rock on Cheswick!

That is exactly it. Republicans have a 'corporate' style party, with the top dictating talking points to the masses in the party that they accept without question. They represent conformity and purpose and lockstep rigidity.

Democrats have to represent everyone else, which means diversity, locality and tolerance for difference.

We have to bring in and be open to disgruntled libertarians, disenchanted conservatives, alarmed moderate republicans, greens, reformists, and all of the other people unwilling to march lockstep with the Naz...er, Republican party.

Top down management isn't going to work. Grass roots populism will.

[zulchzulu]

25. Look at the flaws in your theory

First you want national campaigns to be very open to all...including Libertarians, Conservatives, Greens and others.

If you know anything about the base for each party, you will find incredible differences on the most basic of issues. Imagining a Conservative agreeing with a Green is pure folly on most levels.

While it makes for nifty mind-melding political parlor talk with glistening eyes hoping for utopian truths to somehow fly out of reality's ass, this would not work on a national level and to think the grassroots level (which by its very nature is usually bickering with "authority") would sustain a strong level of organizational prowess as Election Day comes is not knowing what really happens in the trenches.

Grassroots means many things. On a local level, it's local efforts to come upon a common goal. Nationally, it is usually a somewhat independent movement that is based on the common message that the national candidate has laid out.

In a national campaign, in order for it not to turn into chaos, there has to be a significant way for the grassroots to stay on message...or else it will confuse people as well as become a confusing campaign.

While it's fun to diss the Repugs for using a national message and having foot soldiers deliver, it is a fairly intact system that we should modify and use as a template.

Otherwise, like I said before, it's like herding cats.

[electropop]

21. Sick of the wimps

who sold us out on Jan 6th, and continue to sell us out by voting to confirm the insane neocons Bushit sends up.

[Eloriel]

27. You are completely missing the point

What Dean is suggesting is what went so well and so far in his own campaign -- you let people self-organize and DO what needs to be done locally, without waiting for orders (or help) from "on high." You EMPOWER the Grassroots.

Doesn't mean you can't have some centralized organization and even control, but the real key is releasing enough control that it allows regular, everyday Americans to take their own political organizing and grassroots efforts into their own hands.

It's INCREDIBLY effective. Many states had full-fledged state-level Dean organizations before the Dean people quite knew what was happening, and certainly well before the Dean campaign was capable in any way of directing or organizing them. A lot of these people went on to work very hard for Kerry; some of them rejuvenated the Dem party in their states/counties. Some of them got elected to the State Dem Party apparatus, and some of them became candidates for office and got elected.

You empower people enough and you just get democracy breaking out ALL over the place.

[zulchzulu]

28. Nope...I have done exactly what Dean has suggested...

Yes, I firmly believe in NOT waiting for the Cavalry to arrive when it comes to grassroots political action.

But...

...in a national campaign, you need to have materials to give to people in the street where you are doing your grassroots stuff. OK, you need to have people go to a web site too.

What web site? What materials? What issue papers? What stickers or buttons? What candidate?

If you aren't armed with the above and you have a table with a sign somewhere where there are people and you want to back a certain political candidate, what do you show them? What do you give away? What do they sign up for and where do they go?

It gets down to actually having somewhere to go to at least download issue papers and make your own flyers. At least...

You have to know where your candidate stands on the issues. Where do you find this information?

It has to come from the "top", i.e., the official campaign. Unless you want to misrepresent your candidate and/or not have anything to give to the curious person interested in your candidate, you need some semblance of what the national candidate's specific issues are.

Do you start your own new mailing/phone list or do you find out about a good list from your local Democratic party and not overlap and over-contact potential voters, hence alienating them? Do you print your own flyers or look for others and pool together money to get more impressive documents to sell your candidate?

I've been doing grassroots politics for many years...I'm no newbie.

If you have too many sub-groups of people in their own little grassroots dominions, you run the chance that common efforts are watered down.

And not to put anything down on those that went for Dean in the primaries and set up their own camps, but his campaign is hardly the model of success to base a template for victory on.

I remember different sub-groups of Dean supporters that didn't even communicate with each other on events and made their own goals less than they could have been.

AND I knew people who worked as Dean staff that were very frustrated that they weren't getting clear direction on organizational and event-driven campaign strategy.

Local races...you do locally. National races...you work with the national message...or else waste your time or worse, get tossed when the "official" staff finally makes it to your town.

[Old and In the Way]

6. Love this quote-

"the Republicans, who despite their discipline and organization, are still a top-down, control and command organization."

That's the truth.....or, to simplfy, a totalitarian organization.

[Democrat Dragon]

7. Big big BIG mistake!

"'the Republicans, who despite their discipline and organization, are still a top-down, control and command organization.'

That's the truth.....or, to simplfy, a totalitarian organization"

that's why they're ahead of us! dammit!

Many Rethuglicans come from the harsh, comeptitive, and cruel world of business. In business, there is strict loyalty, discipline, organization, and overall centralized leadership. Huge corporations have these traits and therefore can attack swiftly and ruthlessly. When the Rethuglinazis went back into politics, they took these principiles with them and organized their party like so. They moved together like a school of fish swimming in the formation of a shark.

The Dems cannot go for the "socialist" type of organization,like zulchzulu said, "herding cats", Keep that most liberals and Democrats can't even agree on many issues. The Dems also have to realize they are like domestic cat fighting a wild cat. The Democrats are the domestic cats who can fight well, but the Rethuglizais, the wild cats, can fight even harder due to living in the harsh conditions in the wild.

Laughing at the rethugs style of organization is like laughing at a monster that has cornered you and wants to eat you.

[cali]

8. So you want to emulate the 'thugs?

I don't, and I think your business model comparison is specious.
Dean's right on the money here; empowering people to become involved is key. It doesn't mean that a national campaign shouldn't make decisions.

[John_H]

22. absolutely.

"you want to be like the rethugs" seems like a last resort argument, often used by DUers when anyone proposes fighting to win. It implies that anyone who recognizes the success of GOP campaigns and message strategy wants to adopt their political philosophy. I don't think that was what the poster was saying in the least. What the poster said was unarguably true--they're kicking our asses, and one of the reasons they're kicking our asses is that they run streamlined, orderly, ruthless, merit based, win-at-all-cost message and organizing operations.

The proof is in the pudding: If Dean wants to run the DNC the way trippi ran his campaign we can probably expect the same results. Thankfully, I think he's going to run the DNC like he ran the DGA and vermont, which is to say ehighly fficiently, with Howard Dean's hands on fingerprints on every aspect of it's operations. That's fine with me. I just worry that it's not going to be fine with the people who believe what he's saying to get elected.

[burythehatchet]

9. I don't laugh at their style of organization

I GUFFAW at it. Monolithic thinking and repression of dissent and counter-point really is not something we should strive for. The Clinton's fooled me for a time, but Dem party trying to be like big brother is one dead smelly rotten idea.

\and this quote: "Rethuglizais, the wild cats, can fight even harder due to living in the harsh conditions in the wild. "

No. They're not a lean mean meachine, my friend, they cheat. They own the media. They re-distribute wealth upward at every opportunity. A fat piece of shit can sit in his living room and fix elections.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

10. Can You Name A Successful Organization Without A Hierarchy?

eom

[burythehatchet]

11. hierarchy has nothing to do wih the point related to

intellectual supression. Take for example DU. There's no formal hierarchy and relatively few cnstraints on the process. One could argue that DU is a "successful organization".

I think what Dean is promoting is a DU-like vision where our voices are heard and considered and represented. I think there's a lot of merit to it.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

12. A Hierachy Is Not A Dictatorship

And with all due respect there are quite a few rules or "constraints on the process" at DU and I believe even Skinner would agree with that assessment...


Whether the rules are good or bad are not for me to judge because this is a privately owned website and posting here is a privilege...

[Eloriel]

29. What Dean is promoting is what he saw in his own campaign

when people were empowered to self-organize and did AMAZING things locally and in almost all the states -- without either the help or interference from some centralized campaign HQ.

It's very empowering, and speaking from personal experience and observation, VERY exciting to be part of. Really exhilerating, and it gives you a STAKE in what happens, which builds all the more loyalty and involvement.

here's the difference: You don't call the local campaign HQ and give them your name and address and hope they'll call you back to so you can stuff envelopes or something. Instead, you go to monthly MeetUps, toss in your ideas, sign up with the folks who are doing something (such as planning an event, working on the group website, working on flyers or buttons or office space, etc., etc.) or YOU start the plans for an event yourself if people like your idea, and get busy. YOU ARE the campaign, not some interchangeable, nameless, faceless envelope stuffer.

My first Dean House Party (a fundraising idea developed by the grassroots of the Dean Campaign somewhere, shared over the blog, and adopted by others AND the campaign as a whole) was in the summer of 2003, and it was great fun. When I walked in, kinda early, there were maps of the county's PRECINCTS on the wall!! They were already planning to walk the precincts for Dean in the early summer of 2003. The most amazing thing is that NO ONE HAD TRAINED THEM (the ones who were planning this) or probably even suggested it to them from the central Dean campaign. They thought of it themselves and were off and running. The Georgia Dean folks were/are totally amazing people -- I was so impressed. But that was true eveyrwhere, including the blog!

That's what Dean wants to do -- let the grassroots in on the fun, empwower them, make use of them, give democracy a chance again.

[txaslftist]

17. The Body of Christ.

And all of it's branches and denominations worldwide.

[Cheswick2.0]

13. you Dean avatar doesn't make a very good mask

:eyes:

[DemocratSinceBirth]

14. That Might Be True...

but arguing that the Republican party is not a highly efficient organization is a dangerous proposition.......

[txaslftist]

19. Their conformity is a weakness...

as much as it is a strength. The US is a diverse country, with a gazillion different viewpoints. There are some common things we want, equal opportunity, quality education, equity and fairness, to be a beacon for the world.

The democrats have to be tolerant to the differences and keep our eyes on the common things we want. More than that, we have to be a peoples' party, aiming for the betterment of the common man and the fair treatment of the least among us. We represent everything decent about Americans, the reason we were once admired and liked almost worldwide.

Leno said once that "looking for the heart of the Republican Party is like looking for the brain of the Democratic party." People laughed because he identified a common perception of our party. We are the party of heart and feeling and empathy in the public view. We need to remain that party as well as growing a brain.

We only fail when we try to compromise and 'reach out'. We succeed best being true to ourselves. That means a diverse party drawing its strength from the grass roots.

[Name removed]

20. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Democrat Dragon]

24. I do respect Dean, I would like him to be DNC chair

I am just doubtful that his model would work. It MIGHT work but I'd be cautious.

I'm not saying we should be like the rethugs, I'm just saying what were're up against. Besides one can be hierchical and organized and still stand up for the values of constituents instead of corporate pigs.

"No. They're not a lean mean meachine, my friend, they cheat. They own the media. They re-distribute wealth upward at every opportunity. A fat piece of shit can sit in his living room and fix elections"

That's part of it, that's part of the strategy. They do not use brute strength completly but rather use a heck of a lot of strategy. Underestamating the opponent is the worst thing one can do.

I do agree we must appeal more the grassroots, but let's not forget the power of unity and organization.

I support Dean because he knows about the fucking e-voting machienes, dosen't bow down to BushCo., and the Rethugs FEAR him! Having a leader that causes fear to the opponent is an important step toward taking the Senate and the House.

It is possible that the model would work, if it does then it could be the reason or add another reason why the rethugs fear him.

I would like it to work but I am doubtful.

[Eloriel]

30. His model has already worked

I don't think you understand it all that well. Please see my post upthread.

[Cheswick2.0]

26. is that the best you can do?

That's your idea of a effective insult. Man, you need some lessons.

[jswordy]

18. Read the book!

That piece was almost lifted word-for-word from Dean's book "You have the power!" It's a good read.

[realFedUp]

23. oh yyyyeeeeeeeaaaaahhhhhhh!

hey Doc.