Joho the Blog
An Entry from the Archives

This was supposed to be a debate, with Zack Exley (MoveOn.org) and a guy from RightMarch.com on one side [Sorry, I didn't get his name! Ack!] and Markos Moulitsas Zuniga (Daily Kos) and me on the other. Predictably, we all agreed that campaigns need both, although Kos and I did push the decentralization side harder.

We each gave a 5 minute intro, moderated by the natty Sidney Blumenthal of Salon and general media fame. Zack made an impressive, coherent case for the power of centralized control, while admitting that decentralized community-forming does have a role. But, to win the damn election, we need to be as disciplined as the Republicans, he says. I don't disagree with that, but I also see benefits to campaigns allowing and encouraging decentralized, bottom-up self-organization: It creates enthusiasm that then can lead to action. And, without it, campaigns tend to become top-down machines marketing a product or brand to us "consumers." I guess I ranted a bit about this during my five minutes. I was up to my demographic earlobes with all the talk of "consumers," "marketing campaigns," "branding," and, most of all, "messages." I told them that they were debasing our democracy. A highpoint of the campaign so far was when Kerry uttered five words off-mike because we got to hear his real voice.\ I want more off-mike comments! And, by the way, campaign blogging is off-mike, which is why it works and is important. We need to hear a human voice now and then. The lesson of the Dean campaign and of the Internet is (I said) that control kills scaling, and control kills voice. And that's why we need decentralization. We're about to begin 8 months of relentless, saturation advertising of the most offensive and stupid kind. It will to wear us down to nubbins of indifference. Only by connecting with others, in our own voices, will we find any passion or enthusiasm. Finally, I said, the campaigns ought to be thrilled when we take over their "messages," change the words to ours, apply them to our lives, go off in a thousand directions with them, because that's what it means to make an idea our own. By connecting with one another and by escaping from the controlled messages of the campaigns, we can make those campaigns ours. End o' rant.