"The Most Aggressive Defense Of Teachers You'll Hear This Year" (video)

moveon, video (03:08):

The guy who asked teacher Taylor Mali, “What do you make?” at a dinner party certainly never thought he’d get this answer.

MoveOn: "1310 Mercer FW: You (AND ME). This weekend.‏"

MoveOn:

If you read one thing about the election today, read this:

The New York Times' chief polling analyst just wrote, "If our forecasts turn out to be biased against Democrats by just 2 points overall, the party becomes about an even-money bet to hold the House." (And then they'd almost certainly keep the Senate, too.)

So a Democratic gain of 2 percentage points is enough to stop the takeover of Congress. And historically, a strong get-out-the-vote push can deliver at least that much on Election Day.

That's why the Patty Murray campaign has spent weeks carefully planning for the final push. But they've told us that they still need more volunteers in Seattle, in order to reach out to every Democratic voter who's at risk of staying home on Tuesday.

This election is still very winnable, and this weekend is the most critical of the entire election season. Can you sign up to volunteer for Patty Murray in Seattle?

Yes, I'll sign up to volunteer.

Sorry, I can't.

Here's a little more about why this race is so important: Karl Rove's shady corporate front group has spent 3.2 million dollars working to replace Senator Patty Murray with a corporate Republican. Patty is holding on to a tiny lead, but a loss here could hand Republicans the Senate, so a massive get-out-the-vote effort is critical.

Thanks for all you do.

–Adam, Laura, Duncan, Ilya, and the rest of the team

"Hands Across The Sand at Alki protests offshore drilling" (with video)

Patrick Robinson (West Seattle Herald), with video (02:40):

Hands Across The Sand saw 167 people line up on Alki Beach and join hands in a peaceful protest of offshore drilling. The event, international in scope took place at Alki and in 41 other nations, 71 cities outside the United States, and 24 events in the Seattle Area. It was sponsored by Moveon.org and the national Hands Across The Sand organization formed in Florida in 2009. MORE...

"Patriotism"--new MoveOn ad on HC (video)

MoveOn.org, with video (00:30):

Leaders through out history have been faced with challenging decisions that set the course of our country towards justice. The one facing all Congresspeople now is whether they will side with Big Insurance companies or with struggling Americans desperate for health care reform.

MoveOn: "An Honest Investigation on Torture" (video)

MoveOn, video (00:35):

Dick Cheney said Sunday the Bush torture program was "the right thing to do." He's wrong - and we need to push back. Watch the video and then sign the petition to the Attorney General, asking for an investigation into the torture program.

"Beyond MoveOn: Using the Internet for Real Change"

John Stauber (PRWatch.org):

Recently the Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice asked me to write an article for them with my ideas of how grassroots activists could better use the internet for real change. As a member of the group, I was happy to tackle that assignment, and here are my thoughts.

Barack Obama owes his election in no small part to his brilliant use of social networking websites, email, cell phone texting and blogs, all utilized in unprecedented ways by his campaign staff to promote, organize and fund his unlikely victory. He employed techniques pioneered by online groups such as MoveOn and took them to an entirely new level. Thanks to Obama's use of the Internet, politics in America will never be the same. It's crucial that peace and social justice activists at the state and local levels understand and harness these new technologies in organizing for fundamental social change.

The grassroots movements for peace, economic justice, environmental sustainability and other fundamental reforms -- representing millions of individual political progressives who helped elect Barack Obama -- are for the most part delighted that the Bush/Cheney regime has been vanquished. However, disillusion and disappointment is rightly building among activists who are now seeing Obama and the Democratic Party cutting deals with corporate special interests and backing down on commitments to change US foreign policy.

The main online activist efforts that elected Obama -- his own Organizing for America and the liberal lobby MoveOn -- have become cheerleaders and lobbyists for his legislative agenda, policies that in many instances betray his rhetoric of change. I am referring to Obama's refusal to quickly end the war in Iraq; his military escalation in Afghanistan; his support for Wall Street bailouts; his endorsement of tax subsidies for the coal industry ("clean coal") and the nuclear power industry (saving us from global warming). Obama is about to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on health care subsidies that cater to the insurance industry and undermine the only real solution to the current crisis, the adoption of a single payer health care system such as that enjoyed by the Canadians and most other western democracies.

Yet my email box is filled with missives from MoveOn and other liberal online campaigns that spin these dismal policies as "real change," or ignore them entirely to dampen criticism from the Left of the Obama Administration.

What are grassroots activist organizations to do to avoid marginalization? Peace and justice organizations at the local and state level need to learn and adopt the new media tools of MoveOn and Obama, but use them to give birth to fundamental change that empowers people rather than seeks accommodation with powerful corporate interests. Rather than organizing for an agenda determined by a handful of partisan Democrats at the top, this new organization should work to empower and represent people from the bottom up.

Obama's Online Coup

Barack Obama is president of the United States for a number of key reasons including his political positions and image. During the Democratic primary he was able to position himself as the anti-war alternative to Hillary Clinton and this helped him beat Clinton at her own money game, raising much more in contributions from both wealthy donors and smaller contributors than she did. Polls show that during the race against John McCain he benefited from the sudden collapse of the U.S. financial system, as voters turned to the cool and calm Obama and away from the brash McCain.

But arguably the most important key to the success of President Barack Obama was his use of the Internet and his ability to harness it for publicizing his campaign, among young voters especially; mobilizing enthusiastic supporters by the millions via email, websites and text messaging; raising tens of millions of dollars from these online supporters and organizing them successfully at the grassroots level to actually turn out and vote in primaries and the general election.

In using the Internet so effectively, Obama and his campaign staff built upon the previous successes in 2004 of Howard Dean, the Vermont governor who came from nowhere and rode his wave of anti-war Internet supporters to become the leading Democratic candidate for the Presidency, until his campaign crashed and burned in the not-so-virtual reality of the Iowa Caucus. Dean was unable to translate his army of online supporters into a grassroots force that could turn out voters and win elections on the ground. Succeeding where Dean failed, Obama was able to marry his online "netroots" mobilization to an effective old-style campaign of getting out the vote.

The Obama campaign carried online and digital activism to a new level of fundraising and political organizing through its "Obama for America" campaign, which built a massive email list complete with phone numbers for simultaneous text messaging. When Obama moved into the White House this political machine was moved into the office of the Democratic National Committee to become a coordinated lobby force for the new administration, renamed Organizing for America. No previous president has ever come into office with his own electronically-networked grassroots lobby of over ten million Americans, able to be activated to support the goals of the Administration.

Obama's victory has forever changed how electoral campaigns are run and it underscores the necessity for both candidates and social change organizations to harness the power of the Web, whether to stop a war, gain national healthcare, or win electoral office.

The Rise of MoveOn

A seminal moment for online activism was in 1998 when a liberal millionaire couple from Berkeley, Wes Boyd and Joan Blades, launched MoveOn as an online petition to condemn President Clinton's White House philandering while urging the Congress to move on to other more pressing matters than the Clinton impeachment.

MoveOn's petition campaign failed to dissuade Republicans from impeaching the President, but it was wildly successful in building for MoveOn a list of contributors that has since provided tens of millions of dollars for political ads and liberal candidates. In 2002, MoveOn used and grew this list into the millions of people, becoming the most visible organizational opponent of the war on Iraq. In 2008, MoveOn's members endorsed Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary, and today MoveOn claims a list of more than 5 million contributors.

It has become a powerful cheerleading force and lobby for the policies of the Obama Administration, yet it has no office, phone, or mailing address, functioning virtually online off its website while raising millions of dollars and organizing rallies, media events and launching advertising campaigns in support of President Obama.

The Blogosphere and the Rise of the Netroots Nation

"Blogging" refers to writing web logs or journals, a style of online speech and advocacy that has become a powerful political movement in its own right. The online world of liberal bloggers -- the "liberal blogosphere" -- was crucial to the resurgence of liberalism during the Bush years.

Two youngish Democratic consultants, Jerome Armstrong and Markos Moulitsas (founder of Daily Kos blog), wrote the book, Crashing the Gate: Netroots, Grassroots, and the Rise of People-Powered Politics in 2006. Armstrong earlier coined the term "netroots" to describe the liberal blogosphere. Moulitsas' popular blog has inspired an annual conference now called Netroots Nation that next occurs in Pittsburgh beginning Aug. 13, 2009. Thousands of people including Democratic Party activists, liberal think tanks, public interest organizations, lobby and PR firms, celebrities and citizen bloggers are certain to attend, and the event will receive attention in the mainstream media.

In their book, Crashing the Gates, Armstrong and Moulitsas use the term "netroots" to describe the "online grassroots community that has grown dramatically in the past five years ... By late November 2005, the top 70 or so liberal blogs, led by Daily Kos, garnered about 60 million page-views every month ...The netroots activist, much like the new generation of grassroots activist, is fiercely partisan, fiercely multi-issue, and focused on building a broader movement. It's not an ideological movement -- there is actually very little, issue-wise, that unites most modern party activists except, perhaps opposition to the Iraq war.

The rise of MoveOn, the emergence of the liberal blogosphere and the revival of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party during the darkest years of George Bush were chronicled by New York Times reporter Matt Bai in his 2007 book titled, The Argument: Billionaires, Bloggers and the Battle to Remake Democratic Politics. Bai's book was the first to examine the new power alliance within the Democratic Party composed of the organizations referenced in his long subtitle, an alliance that is now mostly united behind the Obama Administration. These players include billionaires such as George Soros and other wealthy members of an exclusive group of funders called the Democracy Alliance; the major liberal bloggers like Armstrong and Moulitsas; and the organization MoveOn, whose political action committee had become one of the top money contributors to Democratic candidates.

The Essentials for Netroots Organizing

The heady success of Obama and MoveOn is impressive and has created a new liberal power structure. But the power of the Internet is available not just to them, but to individual activists and thousands of small progressive organizations whose supporters have the basic computer hardware, software and Internet Technology (IT) skills to raise money, promote ideas, and launch and conduct successful online and grassroots campaigns for candidates or causes.

Indeed, it's imperative that grassroots organizations learn to better utilize the Web to become a more progressive counterweight to the slick marketing and mainstream politics of MoveOn and the Obama Administration. Grassroots organizers need to understand and adopt the new tools that propelled Obama into the presidency, that have rejuvenated the Democratic Party, and allowed the emergence of MoveOn. Below are some of the online tools that are available and should be studied, used and adopted by activists. Let me say that I am not a geek, I don't write computer code and I have no Internet technology skills. Luckily many people do and every organization of more than a few dozen people likely has within it or among its extended network people with skills to build the nucleus necessary for online activism. Here is the basic toolkit.

Interactive Websites

Many grassroots organizations already have one, and every organization needs one. If no one in your organization has ever built one, look at the websites of organizations you belong to and work with and talk with them for advice. Ideally a website should be built with using an "open source" platform made for activism and marketing, such as Drupal. "Web 2.0" is a term coined to describe making anything online as interactive and useful as possible, and is good jargon to keep in mind because interactivity and user-friendliness are crucial to successful web activism.

Email Sign Up

A website should invite, cajole and encourage visitors to sign up for email messages from the organization. Building and maintaining the email list is the key to publicizing the goals and work of the organization and to developing a paying membership of online contributors. Constantly growing and expanding this list should be an organizational objective.

Put a Big Honking Donation Button on Your Website

Organizations like Groundspring make it easy for anyone visiting an activist website to click and contribute funding. This is essential and important especially during an economic depression when foundation and major donor funding is hard to come by, or at election time when funding is often too tied to a partisan agenda. Put a prominent graphic on your site so anyone can easily click and donate.

Blogs

Blogs essentially turn a website into an engaging online source for information and debate, and the more and better information that appears, the more visitors will attracted to the website. Blogs can be brief informative articles, opinion pieces, stories that point to other people's online writing or websites, or in-depth journalistic analysis. The organization should decide who within it will write articles on the website. Blogs can also be offered for free reprint on other websites such as Daily Kos, Common Dreams, AlterNet, and Counterpunch, spreading the views of the writer to a much larger audience.

Online Campaigns

Most activist organizations work on specific issues, like stopping the spread of industrial hog factories in rural communities, ending the war in Iraq, or pressuring a politician by organizing a protest at his or her office. Your website should make it easy for people to: endorse your campaigns through online petitions (which also build your email lists); download information about your campaigns; and mobilize attendance at specific events such as rallies, vigils, lobby days, and conferences that advance your work through old-fashioned grassroots activism and organizing. Obama had a great online campaign, but his real genius was in linking it to his on-the-ground, get-out-the-vote efforts. The same should be true of activist campaigns.

Citizen Journalism

The blogosphere has given rise to the citizen journalism movement. For instance, on your website you can write a factual, informative, documented article on an issue important to your group, and if you have a digital still camera you can attach a photograph. You can make an online video and upload it free to YouTube, where anyone online can see it.

At the website SourceWatch, a high-traffic online "encyclopedia of the people, organizations and issues shaping the public agenda," you can easily create accurate, fair and documented articles, or edit and expand existing articles, then link to them and link them to your website. Two-thirds of the 2 million monthly visitors to SourceWatch arrive through Google searches, so SourceWatch articles on your issues are likely to drive traffic back to your website.

MySpace, Facebook and Twitter

These social network sites are now getting lots of TV media attention and are likely already used by individuals in your organization. They should be woven into your online activism. Obama used social networking sites very successfully. Some organizations have created activist networking sites such as WiserEarth, but you should also use popular existing sites.

Uniting the Grassroots with the Netroots: Beyond MoveOn

In early 2007, I began publicly criticizing MoveOn for co-opting the peace movement on behalf of the agenda of Congressional Democrats. The Democrats gained control of the U.S. Congress in the fall of 2006 based primarily on public revulsion over Bush's war in Iraq, a war that was endorsed from the start by leading Democrats including John Kerry, Tom Daschle, Hillary Clinton, and many others. In early 2007, the Democrats had an opportunity to cut off funding for the war, but blinked. MoveOn, an organization considered by the mainstream media the leader of the peace movement, sided with Speaker Nancy Pelosi in an effort that marginalized the Congressional Out of Iraq caucus and gave Bush all the funding he wanted to continue the war.

The peace movement has never recovered. Although Obama was elected as the peace candidate, his Iraq withdrawal plan is anemic and would leave 50,000 troops in Iraq indefinitely, while he has ramped up the U.S. war in Afghanistan. MoveOn has declared Obama's Iraq strategy a success, even as the war continues, and is refusing to oppose Obama on Afghanistan. Meanwhile the grassroots peace movement that consists primarily of the scores of groups that make up the United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ) coalition are disorganized and dispirited and UFPJ is in danger of going broke.

It's likely that all these groups that comprise UFPJ have among their own existing email lists a total number of peace activists in the millions. Yet they have never figured out how to mobilize these lists to create the sort of mega-list that is wielded by MoveOn. Hopefully down the road a network of non-partisan, web-based local and state activists will come together and create state and national email lists of millions of mobilized activists. Until these grassroots local and state groups learn the tricks of online activism and marry it to powerful grassroots organizing campaigns, real change will be deferred.

Barack Obama

MoveOn Torture Ad (video)

MoveOn, video (00:31).

"New MoveOn Director Backs The President, For a Change"

Ari Melber (The Nation):

Justin Ruben had a good meeting with President Obama last week.

As the new executive director of MoveOn.org, the 35-year-old Texan was invited to a small White House gathering for allies on February 18, where he brought a message from his five million members to the new President. "This is a moment to go big," he said, citing daily conversations with MoveOn activists. "We understand that's not going to be easy, but people are mobilized and willing to fight to make it happen. That's really what I carried with me into that room," he said. Ruben outlined MoveOn's goals, its Obama strategy and its mechanisms for grassroots accountability in an exclusive interview with The Nation this week, his first extensive discussion with the media since taking the helm of one of the largest progressive organizations in the country.

As executive director, Ruben must now take a network that has long battled bad ideas – impeaching Clinton, invading Iraq, gutting Social Security – and adapt it to supporting and broadening the administration's agenda. "We're in this amazing position now where we get to fight for stuff," he says. MoveOn's four "core" policy areas, decided by members during December house meetings, are economic recovery, universal health care, climate change and ending the Iraq war. "Finally our top priority," he enthused, "is winning real substantive changes that will make a difference in the lives of everyday Americans."

That change agenda tracks closely Obama's, obviously, and excludes some popular liberal issues that the administration has sidestepped. Politico's Andie Coller noted, for example, that MoveOn's new agenda does not address "holding the Bush administration accountable; fighting for gay rights and LGBT equality; and reforming campaigns and elections." And while MoveOn loudly led the battle against the Iraq "surge," Ruben said he not expect ending the war Afghanistan, where Obama is deploying additional troops, to make the priority list. The "overwhelming priority" is still Iraq, Ruben explains, and while his members are concerned about Afghanistan, they tend to "differ on what ought to be done about it."

Some critics complain that the organization has already swapped its independence for incumbent boosterism. "Clearly MoveOn has completed its morph into an Obama Cheerleading Squad" said John Stauber, a liberal critic of the group and longtime corporate gadfly.

Ruben, who has organized for labor, trade and environmental groups, thinks people have the ability to back incumbents and hold them accountable.

"Having spent a lot of time with MoveOn members, I think folks are loyal first and foremost to their vision of the country. They are tremendously hopeful about Obama," he acknowledged, while stressing how netroots activists gather a rich range of views on policy debates. "In the end they will come to their own judgment, and it will be informed by what he says, and what we say, and what they read in the New York Times and blogs -- and certainly Moveon members are pretty independent. They're not going to believe it just because we said it, or because the president said it."

While MoveOn is more democratic and member-driven than many liberal interest groups and virtually all foundations, the decision to tap Ruben was still made by five people, without any input from the group's millions of members. The board, made up of MoveOn's founders and the group's popular outgoing executive director, Eli Pariser, simply tapped Ruben from his post as organizing director. In our interview, Ruben was sympathetic to the idea that the members who provide the labor and money that fuels MoveOn should have more influence, but he argued that they control important decisions in other ways. It is worth quoting at length:

Ruben: The thing that's so interesting that a lot of folks don't get -- it wasn't obvious to me until I came work for MoveOn – [is that] you can only work on the stuff that is right on the tip of people's tounges, right on the forefront of their consciousness -- the things that people are looking for a way to have an impact on. As an organization, a huge part of our focus is just oriented on just trying to figure out what those things are -- what people want to work on and how we can give them opportunity to make biggest impact, much more so than any other organization I've ever been a part of. That's our DNA. It's our whole core operating model. In that sense, I've found MoveOn to be more member-driven than formally democratic institutions that I've been part of.

The Nation: Like unions?

Ruben: Yes, or other more local grassroots groups that work by consensus. Because there are always power dynamics in situations -- things are formally democratic but you can heave leaders who aren't seeking out what the great majority of folks are most passionate about. That said, technology is a powerful tool for aggregating opinions and allowing people to make decisions together. I am really interested in how we can keep using technology to make MoveOn more member-driven….When I think about role that members play in the organizaiton, I want to see more ways we can tap into ingenuity, skills -- a lot of them are smarter than me and know lots of stuff that I don't know. The question is more than just allowing people to click and sign a petition, make phone calls or organizing a rally… Can they be formulating policy? Finding opportunities for other MoveOn members to get involved? We have a small staff, [so] we tended to not be very process intensive. Historically, that's something that people like about us: "I don't have to do lots of meetings; I can do it right from my house; Let me know exactly when there's something to do." [We want] to do more, but without the trappings of process that an end up excluding folks.

In a blog post last August, Ruben wrote that he could envision MoveOn adding "more formal democratic mechanisms," noting that members could not "vote for the board" or "fire the staff" or "frame the questions" in emails, and such reforms might make the group stronger. For now, the focus is on trying to "devolve more responsibility to shape our campaigns on the ground," Ruben said, though he doesn't know if members will vote on the next executive director.

In the end, it is hard to balance moderated grassroots energy with coordinated national campaigns, or to toggle from White House meetings with the President to hammering the administration with independent pressure. But for a relatively young, self-organized political organization, these are good problems to have.

Barack Obama

"MoveOn Members Make Their Voices Heard" (video)

karinmoveon, video (03:08):

MoveOn members delivered more than 325,000 petition signatures and more than 30,000 questions and comments for bank CEOs appearing before the House Financial Services Committee on 2/11/2009. They demanded accountability and transparency that are only afloat because of an infusion of Americans' hard-earned dollars.

Several representatives, including Reps. Cleaver, Ellison and Grayson read their questions in the hearing. And Rachel Maddow featured MoveOn members' questions on her show that night.

Howie P.S.: This is some liberal pushback that appears to have been successful. This post appeared on Kos this afternoon: "Obama unhappy with executive pay restrictions in stimulus." Could it be that Obama is underestimating the populist anger, as in the Daschle appointment?

Barack Obama

Today's Online Video Pushback to McCain (videos)

"Gimmick," video (00:32) from MoveOn.org:

If you want others to see this video, help it climb the YouTube ratings. 5-star it, favorite it, comment, and pass to friends!

"Full-Nelson: John McCain v. Barack Obama on High Gas Prices," video (00:30) from National Sierra Club:

A new television spot airing in key battleground states that contrasts John McCain and Barack Obama's plans for dealing with America's energy crisis. This week's news—another quarter of billions in record profits for Big Oil—underscores why America cannot afford another president who sides with Big Oil instead of consumers.

Barack Obama

"MoveOn Up with new pro-Obama ad" (video)

First Read (MSNBC), with video (00:30):

MoveOn has announced it will spend $150,000 to air this new pro-Obama TV ad on MTV and Comedy Central. The ad -- which won MoveOn's “funniest video” in its recent ad contest -- features Rider Strong of "Boy Meets World" and Amber Benson of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Howie P.S.: Reader Advisory--I am told this video is for the "under 30" demo.

Barack Obama

"Clinton (Bill) rips right wing for ‘feigned outrage’ over MoveOn ad." (with video)

Think Progress with video:

In an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, President Bill Clinton said there was something “completely disingenuous about the feigned outrage” from conservatives over the MoveOn ad. Clinton noted that many of the same conservatives who expressed outrage had likened Sen. Max Cleland (D-GA) to Osama bin Laden and had smeared Sen. John Kerry’s (D-MA) war record. He added:

It was just bait and switch. It was just, oh thank goodness, I can take this little word here and ignore what we’ve done in Iraq and what we’re gonna do — and the outrageous way we gained political power by smearing John Kerry.

Watch it

"The Virtual Primary"

Ari Melber (The Nation):

Long before votes are cast in modern presidential elections, elite donors narrow the race by picking a few acceptable candidates, who are then crowned frontrunners for leading the "money primary." But wait--wasn't the Internet supposed to change all this? Now thousands of people can pool relatively small donations to boost a candidate into the first tier, while bloggers promote their favorites to audiences rivaling those of major newspapers. Yet a funny thing happened on the way to the revolution. Internet fundraising has made the competition for early money not only fiercer but even more influential in handicapping the race, because donations are revered as proof of electability and grassroots enthusiasm.

When Barack Obama raised a whopping $25 million in the first quarter, for example, MSNBC headlined the news as confirmation of his "grassroots power." After Obama pulled in an unprecedented $32.5 million in the second quarter, he said the money proved his team had "built the largest grassroots campaign in history." Never mind that most voters and activists never donate to presidential candidates, and that grassroots campaigns are supposed to emphasize issues important to local activists, not national fundraising. Now if candidates fail to raise big money quickly, they are disregarded before the public ever hears about their positions.

But one powerful group is challenging this system with an alternative to the money primary. MoveOn.org, the organization that pioneered low-dollar Internet fundraising and showered Democrats with more midterm campaign donations than almost any other liberal PAC, is advocating a primary campaign that is downright old-fashioned. A primary based on the issues.

"We have this presidential campaign process that's starting earlier than ever before and in some ways is less about the issues than ever before. It's all horse race all the time," explains Eli Pariser, MoveOn's executive director. Instead of fixating on fundraising or electability, the organization is convening three "virtual" town halls for candidates to address the group's 3.3 million members via YouTube and podcasts. Each event is devoted to a single topic. Candidates field questions directly from MoveOn members, providing "real depth on the issues they care about," Pariser says.

After each gathering, MoveOn members appraise the candidates on the issue at hand. After the Iraq town hall the question was not whom people might vote for on election day--the horse race query that drives most polls and campaign coverage--but simply "which candidate do you believe would be best able to lead the country out of Iraq?" Obama and John Edwards led with 28 and 25 percent, followed by 17 percent for Dennis Kucinich.

In July the second town hall tackled global warming, with 1,300 gatherings around the country coinciding with Al Gore's Live Earth concerts. More than 100,000 people participated, making it the largest MoveOn event since 2004. One-third of participants favored Edwards's approach to the "climate crisis," while Kucinich, Clinton and Obama each drew 15 percent. The final town hall, in October, is on healthcare, coordinated with Michael Moore's documentary Sicko, and then MoveOn will help its members put some muscle behind their policy preferences.

Pariser says that in October, the group will run a virtual primary for MoveOn's endorsement--the closest any Democrat can get to becoming the official netroots candidate. Campaign operatives agree that the endorsement could transform the race, cementing a prominent candidate like Edwards, catapulting a liberal underdog like Chris Dodd or igniting and funding a late entry by Al Gore. Unlike the famous out-of-state activists who flocked to help Howard Dean in Iowa, MoveOn's membership, which has almost doubled since 2004, wields the power of voting at home. Take the first two states on the primary calendar: MoveOn boasts 25,000 members in Iowa--about 20 percent of caucus turnout--and 17,000 members in Nevada, where only 9,000 people voted in the 2004 caucus.

Yet the last time MoveOn went down this road, when Dean's antiwar, anti-establishment campaign united the nascent netroots more than anyone has since, the group never issued an endorsement.

Four years ago this month, MoveOn held its first virtual primary, heralded at the time as a breakthrough for participatory politics. Dean dominated with 44 percent, but he did not break the group's 50 percent threshold for an endorsement, and no runoff was held.

Zack Exley, an organizer who worked on MoveOn's first primary, said the goal was not to endorse one candidate but to challenge the focus on high-dollar fundraising with an alternative indicator of viability. "The money primary, driven by big donors, was the most important first test for candidates," he explained recently, so MoveOn designed its 2003 primary to show that grassroots support could trump monetary support.

John Stauber, an activist and author who has criticized MoveOn for getting too cozy with Democratic leaders, predicts the group will never endorse a presidential candidate, instead opting to avoid any action that could undermine Democratic unity or the party's chances in 2008. Stauber argues that the primary and town halls are basically a brilliant "political marketing" operation to harvest e-mail and raise money, while MoveOn will continue to be "primarily oriented to bashing the Republicans, whipping up support for Democrats and getting online petitions and funding appeals going to keep the netroots alive and the money flowing to Democratic candidates."

Pariser says he hopes MoveOn will endorse a presidential candidate, since this cycle there are "much broader" opportunities for its members to have an impact on the race. But an endorsement is possible only if a strong consensus emerges. He is admirably frank about the limits of decentralized power. "We don't have a lot of resources that aren't our members," Pariser explains, and if they endorsed despite a split in membership, "we'd end up pissing off 49 percent of our list."

None of the candidates in the race look poised to rally such overwhelming support, judging by the town halls and blog straw polls. If MoveOn's process does not culminate in an endorsement, it is unlikely to challenge the influence of the elite-driven money race. Still, the MoveOn primary is shaping up to be more substantive, thoughtful and participatory than the actual presidential primary--even if it's a contest without a winner.

"And the winner is..."

MoveOn.org:

The votes are in, and Barack Obama is MoveOn members' top choice to lead the country out of Iraq, with John Edwards a close second (see results below).

At the Virtual Town Hall meeting Obama said, "The hard truth is there's no military solution...It's time to end this war." Edwards declared, "Congress...must not write George Bush another blank check without a timeline for withdrawal. Period."

Ensuring that Obama or Edwards—or another progressive—wins the presidency will be a huge fight, and we have to start today: We're launching Victory 2008, an ambitious drive to win the White House. We'll build strength in key neighborhoods, create cutting-edge tools for volunteers, and design the most sophisticated voter turnout effort progressives have ever run.

We've done the math and we can only launch this if we know we'll have the resources to pull it off. Can you chip in $920 for Victory 2008? Click here:

https://pol.moveon.org/donate/victoryin2008.html?id=10190-3104278-PMDpIZ&t=4

Why start now? With the candidates focused on each other for the next 10 months, we need to lay the groundwork for victory against the Republicans. Starting early will give us a critical leg up by allowing us to:

• Advance progressive issues in the presidential primaries;
• Train volunteers to counter Republicans' messages through local media;
• Find neighborhood leaders to form the backbone of a massive voter turnout effort;
• Create new high-tech tools to connect volunteers directly with swing voters and people who might not vote without a reminder;
• Show targeted TV advertisements in swing districts;
• Run the most advanced progressive voter turnout and persuasion program ever.

Now, here are the full results from the Virtual Town Hall vote (remember, this does not imply a MoveOn endorsement):

Sen. Barack Obama	28%	www.BarackObama.com
Sen. John Edwards	25%	www.JohnEdwards.com
Rep. Dennis Kucinich	17%	www.Kucinich.us
Gov. Bill Richardson	12%	www.RichardsonForPresident.com
Sen. Hillary Clinton	11%	www.HillaryClinton.com
Sen. Joe Biden	6%	www.JoeBiden.com
Sen. Chris Dodd	1%	www.ChrisDodd.com

These candidates' views differed in quite a few areas, but they all rejected President Bush's plan and agreed that it's time to start bringing the troops home. Imagine what it would mean to have an anti-war candidate in the White House. Think about it.

We have a good shot, but it won't be easy. Republicans have already begun their attacks and we can't give them any advantage—we need to get started organizing on the ground today and not let up. Will you support our Victory 2008 plan with $920 so we have the resources to win? Please give now:

https://pol.moveon.org/donate/victoryin2008.html?id=10190-3104278-PMDpIZ&t=6

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Thanks for all you do.

–Adam, Carrie, Justin, Mari and the MoveOn.org Political Action Team
Thursday, April 12th, 2007

P.S. MoveOn members who watched the Town Hall at one of the parties voted differently from those who did not. Here are how the folks who attended the event ranked their choices:

Sen. John Edwards

25%

Gov. Bill Richardson

21%

Sen. Barack Obama

19%

Rep. Dennis Kucinich

15%

Sen. Joe Biden

10%

Sen. Hillary Clinton	7%
Sen. Chris Dodd	4%

Howie P.S.: Thanks to Bev Marcus for passing this along.

"MoveOn.org Iraq Forum YouTube Rankings"--Obama "Wins" MoveOn member vote

Chris Bowers:

As of this morning, about an hour before this post, here were the number of YouTube views for the full segment of each candidate's stint at the MoveOn.org Iraq forum:

Obama: 11,060
Edwards: 10,142
Clinton: 5,142
Richardson: 3,914
Kucinich: 2,839
Biden: 2,195
Dodd: 1,433

With numbers like these, it appears highly likely that either Obama or Edwards will "win" the forum, once the votes are counted. I wonder if Richardson will be able to sneak past Clinton for third place.

These numbers are interesting for another reason. While not exactly equivalent of a trial heat or a straw poll, the dominance of Obama and Edwards, and the surprising strength of Richardson, bears a striking similarity to the straw polls at MyDD and Dailykos. This might be evidence to support my theory from last year's BlogPac Netroots Survey:

The more frequently a netroots activist readers blogs, the less likely s/he is to have a favorable opinion of Hillary Clinton. While netroots activists who never read blogs have an opinion of Hillary Clinton roughly comparable to all Democrats, netroots activists who regularly read political blogs actually have an overall negative opinion of Hillary Clinton, at 45% favorable and 54% unfavorable.

Given these rather remarkable numbers, the $640,000,000 question is whether or not blog readers really are the influential, cutting edge of Democratic public opinion, or whether we are an isolated group that has little overall impact on the sentiment of the Democratic rank and file. Considering results from the recent Iowa poll, the recent Connecticut poll, and the Montana Senatorial primary (among other things), I am strongly inclined to believe that the opinions held by progressive, political blog readers eventually come to be shared by a wide percentage of the Democratic rank and file.

In the 2008 Democratic nomination process, the preferences of the progressive netroots as a whole appear to be slowly merging with the early-adopter preferences of the progressive blogosphere. If this pattern continues, and the preferences of the netroots begin to seep even further into the Democratic rank and file, it would significantly strengthen both Obama and Edwards relative to Clinton, and might even put Richardson clear of the other candidates outside the first tier.

The progressive blogosphere typically needs two things in order to effectively mold the opinion of the Democratic rank and file: a lot of time, and an established media with its attention focused elsewhere. Basically, in addition to the many indirect means we use to shape public opinion (influence on the media and activist elites), we can succeed in directly shaping opinion of the Democratic rank and file through a long, slow process of viral marketing. In this case, it is entirely possible that the excessive attention currently being given to the 2008 Democratic nomination process by all medias might actually retard our ability to influence the campaign. On the other hand, the elite pundit class is quite surprised at how quickly the campaign has turned into a three-way, and the progressive netroots are undoubtedly one of the prime factors in this development.

It actually surprises me that established media outlets have not written more about the rather significant difference between national and early state polls for the Democratic nomination and the preferences for 2008 Democratic candidates among the progressive netroots and blogosphere. Monitoring how much, or even whether, online and national Democratic opinion continue to approach one another will be a very interesting subplot throughout the nomination process.

Update: MoveOn member vote, overall:

Obama: 27.87
Edwards: 24.84
Kucinich: 17.18
Richardson: 12.26
Clinton: 10.70
Biden: 6.19
Dodd: 1.05

To me, the biggest surprises are the Kucinich and Biden numbers. Both are higher than I would have expected.