I received a lot of feedback on my piece about the disappointing California election results and I want to thank everyone who participated.  A few points:

• The CDP has a version of Neighbor-to-Neighbor called Neighborhood Leader.  The program asks for a commitment from the activist to talk with 25 friends on multiple occasions throughout the year.  I don’t have metrics on it, which would be nice to know, but my suspicion is it needs to be expanded.

• There is a lot of back and forth about the extent of the ground game here in California.  Many have written in to talk about the field operation in key districts and field offices throughout the state.  Some have said that I overlooked this element, including all the doorhangers and phone calls made inside the state.  Others have told me that the calls tried to shoehorn too many messages into one (I did have experiences calling for multiple propositions and a candidate at the same time, which ends up shortchanging all of them) and that the results on the ground in general were unfocused.  And the insistence from some to talk about field elides the point.  Even if I grant that every targeted legislative campaign had the most aggressive and far-reaching field program in American history, the facts are that most of these campaigns lost, and so it’s time to come to terms with the fact that the type of organizing done in the state isn’t working.

• Some have suggested that Democrats, in fact, did not underperform the Presidential ticket in House races, but I think a lot of this is fun with statistics.  Yes, House Democrats in California may have done better than Barack Obama, but that would be because a substantial number of them had token or no competition.  Like 30 out of 53.  While on the chart at the link, it appears that California exceeded the Presidential numbers, the proof is in the lack of pickups despite a 24-point blowout at the top of the ticket.

• Other local organizers have the right idea.  I’m going to reprint this comment in full:

We ran a very intensive and very grassroots effort in Monterey County with more than 1000 volunteers (5 fold increase over 2004) that was by and large successful, got some newcomers into office and saved some progressive incumbents from conservative challengers.

We did all of this without CDP help.

We were offered use of the CDP voter database which in many ways was quite inadequate when it came to mapping and would have costed us money.  We were also offered 1000 doorhangers on Thursday before the election (we have 80,000 Democrats in Monterey County).

Instead we commissioned our own slate mailers and door hangers and mailed and hung 80,0000 and 30,000 respectively in conjunction with the local unions.  We used the VAN through CAVoterConnect for free with great results for us. We were able to manage our volunteers with it and we used it for all of our phone banking and Neighbor-to-Neighbor activities.

Here is what the CDP could have done – and can still do for future campaigns:

Support the VAN and help all local parties get access.  Help integrate State VAN with Obama VAN.

Conduct more capacity building, especially in how to run county-based campaigns, along the lines of Camp Obama but applied to state and local races.

Provide a template for door hangers that local parties can buy into instead of having to go out and design their own.

Work toward a more modular – bottom-up campaign.

Vinz Koller/ Chair/ Monterey County Democratic Party

I particularly want to emphasize the VAN, the California VAN is for some reason not integrated with the DNC’s Votebuilder program, which doesn’t make much sense to me.  There ought to be an effort to clean up all that idea in the off-year to get it ready for 2010.  Votebuilder is simply easier to work with and can be managed by volunteers.  And since there will be off-year elections this year, it can be test run.

• I don’t think I ever blamed the Obama campaign for draining the state of resources, but let me say again that I don’t.  In addition to many of the best volunteers leaving the state, many of the top organizers, including most of labor, left as well.  And Obama’s election was crucially important for a variety of reasons so you can’t blame them.

• Therefore, the biggest thing California Democrats can do to reverse this disturbing trend of the “political trade deficit,” sending money and organization elsewhere and never importing anything, is to argue for and pass the National Popular Vote plan, which would force locals to organize their own communities in a Presidential election.  If the Electoral College were offered as a system today, it would be found to be an unconstitutional violation of the principle of “one person, one vote” as determined by the 14th Amendment.  It shrinks the pool of competitive states down to a geographically significant battleground, and has made California irrelevant – again – as it has been for Presidential races for a generation.  A disruptive change like the National Popular Vote would go a long way to changing how campaigns are conducted in Presidential years in California.

Back in 2006, I and a lot of other grassroots progressives were angered that California showed little to no movement in its Congressional and legislative seats despite a wave election.  You can see some articles about that here and here, when I explained why I was running as a delegate to the state Party.  And frankly, I could rerun the entire article today, but instead I’ll excerpt.

I’ve lived in California for the last eight years.  I’m a fairly active and engaged citizen, one who has attended plenty of Democratic Club meetings, who has lived in the most heavily Democratic areas of the state in both the North and South, who has volunteered and aided the CDP and Democratic candidates from California during election time, who (you would think) would be the most likely candidate for outreach from that party to help them in their efforts to build a lasting majority.  But in actuality, the California Democratic Party means absolutely nothing to me.  Neither do its endorsements.  The amount of people who aren’t online and aren’t in grassroots meetings everyday who share this feeling, I’d peg at about 95% of the electorate.  

I mean, I’m a part of both those worlds, and I have no connection to the state party.  I should be someone that the CDP is reaching out to get involved.  They don’t.  The only time I ever know that the CDP exists is three weeks before the election when they pay for a bunch of ads.  The other 23 months of the year they are a nonentity to the vast majority of the populace […]

Only two Democrats in the entire state of California were able to defeat incumbents last November: Debra Bowen and Jerry McNerney.  Both of them harnessed the power of the grassroots and used it to carry them to victory.  They also stuck to their principles and created a real contrast with their opponents on core issues.  The only way that the California Democratic Party can retain some relevance in the state, and not remain a secretive, cloistered money factory that enriches its elected officials with lobbyist money and does nothing to build the Democratic brand, is by building from the bottom up and not the top down.  By becoming more responsive to the grassroots and more effective in its strategy, we can ensure that California stays blue, which is not a given.  This is a long-term process that is in its third year, and will not happen overnight.  But it’s crucial that we continue and keep the pressure on.

In 2008, we experienced that most anomalous of events, a SECOND wave election in a row.  Barack Obama won the biggest victory at the top of the ticket in California since WWII.  And yet, the efforts of downticket Democrats yielded only minimal success.  This is despite a decided improvement in the party in terms of online outreach and voter registration.  So something is deeply, deeply wrong with how they’re conducting campaigns.

I’m going to lay out the good, the bad and the ugly on the flip and make some suggestions as to what we must do to improve this for the future.

The Good

This wasn’t a wipeout at the downballot level.  The voters agreed with the Calitics endorsements on 8 of 11 ballot measures, with 1, Prop. 11, still too close to call.  We did manage, at this hour, a net gain of two Assembly seats, which could expand to three if Alyson Huber in AD-10 has some luck, and a gain of one Senate seat if Hannah-Beth Jackson holds off Tony Strickland in SD-19.  It is true that those numbers, 50 in the Assembly and 26 in the Senate, would be high-water marks for this decade.  And we came close in a few other seats that we can hopfully capture in the future.  In the Congress, we have thus far gained no ground, but a couple seats, CA-44 and CA-03, look well-positioned for the future, and with Bill Durston set to run for a third time, his increased name ID and the closeness of partisan affiliation in that district should make it a targeted seat at the national level.  

Voter registration was the driving factor here.  In red areas, Democrats did the leg work of registering thousands upon thousands of voters and making uncompetitive seats suddenly competitive.

The Bad

They forgot to turn those new voters out.

What shortsighted CYA masters like Steve Maviglio and Jason Kinney fail to understand, apparently, is the concept of opportunity cost.  When you have Barack Obama on the top of the ticket winning 61% of the vote, it is simply inexcusable to have gains that are this modest.  Maviglio doesn’t tell you that AD-78 and AD-80 were gerrymandered to be Democratic seats, so essentially we got back what was expected in the Assembly, and with a 106-vote lead, who knows what’s in store with SD-19.  The concept of a wave election is that such energy at the top of the ticket will necessarily trickle down.  And that’s what I based my initial projections on, that Obama would make “out-of-reach” seats suddenly competitive.  But he didn’t.  And there are two reasons for that: ticket-splitting and voters that stopped at the top, causing a significant undervote.  I don’t have numbers for Obama at the district level, so it’s hard to be sure about ticket dropping, but the ballot measures are generating about 600,000-800,000 less votes than the Presidential race or Prop. 8.

If you want a further analysis, djardin did a great analysis comparing Barbara Boxer’s share of the vote in 2004 in Assembly districts, when John Kerry was on top of the ballot, against the vote share from the Assemblymembers who were built for the district in 2008, with Obama.  The numbers are astonishing.

District Candidate       Boxer Vote      2008 AD Vote

*78 Marty Block                      57.9%               55.0%

*80 Manny Perez                   57.5%               52.9%

*15 Joan Buchanan               52.6%               52.9%

30 Fran Florez                 49.8%               48.3%

26 John Eisenhut                 48.6%              48.3%

10 Alyson Huber                 48.1%               46.2%

*pickup

In most of these races, the AD candidates are slightly underperforming the 2004 Boxer vote.  The exception is Joan Buchanan in Assembly District 15.   Buchanan may have been helped by demographic changes in the district.

It’s simply ridiculous that any district candidate would underperform the Boxer vote, after four years of incredible registration gains and a 61% performer at the top of the ticket.  It’s inexcusable, and nobody inside the party should be feeling good about missing out on the second wave election in a row.  These moments don’t happen often.  And these failures are what lead Yacht Party leaders like Mike Villines to crow about how “Republicans will still be empowered to protect Californians from higher taxes.”  He knows that he keeps dodging bullets and doesn’t have to worry about a backlash for his party’s irresponsibility.

These expectations are not unrealistic and this is NOT about gerrymandering, regardless of what fossils like George Skelton say.  Alyson Huber, Linda Jones and John Eisenhut had virtual parity in terms of registration in their districts.  Fran Florez had a much higher Democratic share.  Obama should have carried them to victory.  Thanks to him, Democrats took multiple state houses and made gains all over the country, in far more difficult circumstances.  There are systematic barriers to a progressive wave here right now.

So what is to account for this?  It’s important to note that the problems we saw with the No on 8 campaign should not be viewed in isolation.  They are a symptom of the poor performance of the consultant class here in this state.  No ground game?  Check.  Maviglio is crowing about the fact that they had a lot of volunteers on ELECTION DAY.  That’s too late.  Based on what I’ve heard, the CDP dumped all their door-hangers on the local parties, who had no volunteers to hand them out and instead relied on the Democratic clubs to do it.  That’s dysfunctional and disorganized.  Furthermore, that makes clear that no money was put into field – door knocking, phone banking, etc.  Instead, the consultocracy again relied on slate mailers and a modicum of TV ads, hoping the IE campaigns, which spent over $10 million, would take up the slack.  There was a low-dollar donor program, and it netted something like $200,000, which doesn’t pay for two days’ worth of spots, and it didn’t start until 8 weeks out.

There’s no sense of urgency, no notion of the permanent campaign.  Did ANY CDP messaging mention the yacht tax loophole?  Did they exploit the Republican budget, which was unnecessarily cruel?  Was the drive for 2/3 used as a banner across campaigns to frame a narrative on the election?  Were any issues put to use?  No.

Part of this is what I call our political trade deficit.  We export money and volunteers and get nothing in return.  The energy and effort put into the Obama campaign locally was impressive, but it didn’t translate into anything locally.  

California is a state that was expected to vote heavily for Obama. California donors accounted for perhaps 20% of his record-setting $640 million-plus. In the final days of the election campaign, Californians provided even more for the Democratic nominee: They volunteered.

Even though California was not a swing state, Californians still mattered. Some took leaves from work to knock on doors and traveled to the battleground states of Virginia, Colorado, Ohio and others. They even have a name, “bluebirds,” people from blue states who flock to Republican strongholds and swing states to help Obama’s campaign.

Jack Gribbon, California political director for Unite Here, the unions that include hotel and restaurant workers, oversaw an independent campaign focused on the swing area of Washoe County in the battleground state of Nevada. Knowing that Las Vegas and Clark County, in which the city is located, would probably vote for Obama, Gribbon sought to help swing the more conservative Reno-Sparks area toward the Democrat.

Using multiple voter lists, Gribbon targeted 16,000 voters, most of them with Spanish surnames, many of them Democrats and some of them newly registered.

It’s incredible that Californians can be so easily motivated to contribute to a national effort, which requires a lot of work on their behalf, picking up and moving across the country, but they cannot be tapped for a local ground game.

But I don’t blame Obama on this.  He’s trying to win an election.  It’s not his fault that he’s more charismatic or more of a volunteer magnet than the California Democratic Party.  The point is that the party has to supplement this, by working in off-years and early in the year to build a grassroots base.  And there’s a blueprint for this.  It comes from Howard Dean.  This was part of his memo after the election:

Governor Dean’s first step was to assess our Party’s strengths and weaknesses and put in place a strategy to address those issues.  Dean developed a business plan to rebuild the Democratic Party, modernize our operations and expand the electoral map.  The emphasis was on lessons learned and best practices, and it included the following key components:

·  Rebuild the Infrastructure of the Party – After assessing the needs on the ground, we hired full-time permanent staff in all 50 states, trained staff and activists, introduced new measures of accountability, and developed a unified technology platform. Over the past four years we’ve held 140 trainings for candidates, campaign staff, organizers, Party leaders and activists in all 50 states.

·  Upgrade and Improve the Party’s Technology/Modernize the Way We Do Grassroots Organizing –  Over the past four years the DNC has made significant investments in technology, creating a truly national voter file, improved micro-targeting models and developed 21st century campaign tools that merged traditional organizing with new technology.

·  Diversify the Donor Base – Shifting the emphasis of Party fundraising to include both small donors and large donors, the DNC brought in more than 1.1 million new donors and raised more than $330 million from ’05 – ’08. The average contribution over the last three years was $63.88.

·  Amplify Democratic Message and Improved Outreach – Created a national communications infrastructure to amplify the Democratic message and reach out to groups we haven’t always talked to and expand the map to regions where Democrats have not traditionally been competitive – including the South and the West.

·  Professionalize Voter Protection Efforts – Created a year-round national, state and local effort to ensure that every eligible voter has the opportunity to vote.  

Those are the bullet points, but the details are important.  Training and deploying full-time staffers throughout the state is very desperately needed.  They could implement a version of the Neighbor-to-Neighbor program that proved so successful nationwide.  The DNC voter file is an amazing tool that I have had the opportunity to use.  California, a leader in technology, ought to have the most comprehensive online database of its voters in the country, which we can use for micro-targeting and outreach to distinct communities.  And finally, this is about PERSONAL CONTACT AT THE STREET LEVEL.  Two years after I campaigned for delegate on a platform of making the party present in people’s lives year-round, not just at election time, that is still not a part of the picture.  This is why everybody walks away to go volunteer and donate elsewhere.  They have no connection to the state party, no interest in the state’s issues, and are in many ways contemptuous of the efforts of state politicians.  They haven’t been drilled on why the government is unmanageable thanks to the 2/3 rule, and they haven’t internalized the urgency of why that must be dealt with.

The silver lining is that these thousands of California-based volunteers, who learned organizing on the Obama campaign, could actually be channeled and put to use by the CDP if they chose to do so.  The role of the next state party chair in this effort is crucial.

Quite simply, what has been tried isn’t working.  In two election cycles with massive gains at the national level, in California we have crumbs.  Something is deeply wrong.  Something is broken.  And that must be fixed.  

Not really, but it did make you look, didn’t it?  

Please, wait, just stay for a little bit and read about my husband’s campaign?  I know you are busy and I know there are a lot bigger fish to fry, but I’m hoping you will hear me out, please?

You see, Gary needs your help.  In order to raise money you need to raise money.  Make sense?

Follow me…

Gary and I met with the Democratic Party of Orange County and we also got a chance to meet with a wonderful grassroots organizer.  Well, he’s actually a full time student who is an intern at the DPOC and we want to hire him to help us with our campaign.

Gary is running as the “Sacrificial lamb” in this contest but we also both promised that we would do whatever we could to forward the Democratic cause and issues in our so very red County.  So, for me, personally, I think one of the best things we could do would be to hire a student, who wants to work in campaigns and also forward the Democratic Party in our very red County.

Does this make sense?  The best way for him to get experience is to actually help run a campaign, but right now, we don’t have enough to pay for him.  We do desperately need help because I’ve promised that I would only do as much as I could without losing my job or neglecting my child!  It’s quite an undertaking and we are fighting in quite a large district.  Take a look.

This area covers over 500,000 voters, yes, that’s more than any of the congressional districts in California.  It’s 100,000 more than the largest Congressional District in our area, CA-48 which is just over 400,000 registered voters.  Yes, we really do need help!

So yes, this is a plea for money.  And you are just the tip as they say, I’ve made phone calls to our families and friends and we need to get access to donor lists.  If you want to know something about Gary, here is his ‘About Gary’ page on his website.

And here is our “priorities” information on the website.

Priorities

Transparency and Responsibility in Government

Transparency and responsibility are the first priorities. Every resident should have access to how their taxes are spent in the State of California. It should also be easy to understand and to know who exactly was responsible for parts of the budget and who put forth earmark spending. Fiscal responsibility is imperative at all times, the good and the bad. Why doesn’t the State currently have a surplus from when our economy was booming? Important revenues were cut and spending was expanded without any regard for unforeseen future economic circumstances. Would the average household not prepare for hard times by saving when times are good? Should we not expect the same common sense approach in our Government by demanding our legislature treat our money like theirs?

Education

Education is the largest part of our State’s budget, as it should be. It is what allows California to lead the way in technology, keep business thriving and maintain our high quality of life. Education is a lifetime process from K-12 to our State’s public Colleges and Universities. Parents should be able to expect a quality public education for their children and for themselves, learning is a lifetime pursuit.

More money per student does not mean better teaching but funds for the classroom, teacher pay and school improvements are important for a quality public education. Bureaucracy and endless paperwork takes time away from the classroom and we have to not only fully fund our schools but make it possible for teachers to spend more time doing what they are there to do, teach!

Environment

Our Environment is one of our most important assets and resources which shouldn’t be taken for granted. Many are arguing about whether Global Warming is happening and if it is man made, it’s not relevant since our dependence of foreign oil has put our Country at risk. By working on alternatives to many of the resources we rely upon that are not renewable or sustainable we can lead the way as a State and show how greening our jobs and our communities can be profitable and improve our quality of life. The State should be investing in new technologies and rewarding companies that transition their businesses to greener solutions.

One failure of our current Governor was to veto the bi-partisan bill AB 1147 which would have reclassified industrial hemp as a safe crop and not as a “drug”. The current laws allow the importation of hemp to be sold here and manufactured into products but does not allow it to be grown. Hemp is a highly sustainable plant that could be used for paper, food products and beauty care products. It makes no sense to block such innovations because of arcane drug laws.

The economy is a very important to our quality of life in Orange County and depends upon the above priorities in order to thrive. Without sustainable resources and a supply of well educated and trained workers, businesses are free to go elsewhere to find what we cannot provide as a County and a State. This does not mean that business should not pay its fair share in taxes. Most businesses use our resources at a much greater rate than an individual taxpayer and they also rely on our infrastructure, court systems and Government. It is important that the business/community relationship does not come at the cost of our quality of life.

Health Care

Health care insurance is another very important issue that needs to be addressed by our State. There are just some things that should not be profit driven and when lives don’t come before the bottom line Health Insurance is not working as it should. There is no need for “Universal Health Care” what we need is Universal Health Insurance. By getting rid of red tape and letting Doctors decide what is best for their patients we can insure that every Californian can afford health care. The burden of this benefit should not fall on businesses since there are so many different kinds of employers. If we can take the burden of cost from our business we can encourage them to stay in California where they can thrive as can their employees knowing they will have coverage no matter where they work.

All of these vital priorities directly affect our quality of life and we should not have to compromise education, the environment, the economy and our wellbeing in order to find a balance between work and family and what we want for our children and grandchildren. The State Government should make it easier to live in Orange County and it’s the job of your Senate Representative to be sure that your interests as a resident in South Orange County are a priority to them. Even if they do not have all the solutions they should be willing to work towards balanced solutions to difficult problems that will not get better with time and legislative gridlock.

So, I ask that you give a little bit to help us raise the money to hire a local organizer, so he can help us raise more money, put up a good fight and let this guy learn how to run a campaign.  I’ve met him, he’s worth it and I seriously don’t want another campaign to snap him up.

I believe this is why we support Obama, it’s not just about the campaign, but about organizing, registering Democrats and getting more people involved in the process.

Thanks for reading if you got this far.  We will probably be running against Mimi Walters, check out her hit piece against the other Republican running against her in the Primary.  Ouch.  Seriously, it scares me that Gary has put himself in the shark infested waters of politics.

Dear California… a report from the Draft Movement and their CA Primary Ballot Campaign

We are in the halfway mark of the ballot effort. It’s been real interesting meeting people, listening to their comments and learning how to work the political system from the grassroots levels. I recommend it to everyone to get involved with this effort as it will open your eyes to what is really been felt and said by us regular Americans.

Right now in my area I am pushing for voter registration along with our nomination papers. You can’t believe how many people don’t know their address has to be updated every time they move, some people don’t even know what party they are. So we working on correcting these problems.

I wish this experience could go on a long time, but alas, we must stop Dec. 4.

We are looking for volunteers, money and properly registered CA Democrats with a little moxy, imagination and political will. Are YOU one?

WE NEED MONEY AND PROFESSIONAL CIRCULATORS RIGHT NOW TO FINISH OUR JOB! GO TO
www.california4gore.org

The Draft Gore Movement Is Setting A Standard. We believe our “candidate” represents the level to which all other political aspirants should aspire to, including our current crop of presidential candidates.

And guess what? So does a lot of mainstream America.

I have Green Party members becoming Democrats so they can sign the nomination papers.
So many people ask me “Oh we really wish Al would run.” Less and less are saying no thanks. Get the picture? 

Like the song says… “I need to wake up”

Every vote counts!!!

Take Care California…Until next time…

From The Santa Barbara Independent
“The People’s President”
The Draft Al Gore For President Movement
By Marta Jorgensen, co-regional director of AlGore.org (AGO), Southwest chapter.
Thursday, July 19, 2007
“In my heart, I do believe that democracy was harmed by my network and others on November 7, 2000.”
—?Roger Ailes, chairman and CEO of Fox News Network, February 14, 2001. (How to Steal an Election, David W. Moore)
Most of us remember painfully well the 2000 election. But some of us aren’t content to let it be simply a painful memory.
In 2002, a dedicated group of individuals who had been involved with Al Gore’s 2000 presidential campaign set up a Web site called gore04.org and organized a rally in Nashville, Tennessee. Gore told them to stop. He wasn’t into it. In the middle of 2006, the group got it rolling again, teaming up with AlGore.org (AGO) and working with other sites such as draftgore.com, meetup.com, and algoresupportcenter.com. To date, the combined Draft Gore Movement has collected 120,000-plus signatures urging Gore to run. And this time Gore hasn’t told us to cut it out.
The Draft Gore Movement is a labor of love on the part of its rapidly growing membership. Members and organizers do not have deep pockets, but use their own resources and intelligence to try to accomplish what mainstream political parties accomplish with their special-interest money and media spin doctors. They intend to place his name on the primary state ballots and put in place a voting base. Just in case …
Why all this effort? Why not support one of the Democratic candidates who has officially thrown his or her hat in the ring? To put it bluntly, none of them come close to Gore. He has established relationships with numerous world leaders, is well-liked internationally, and is not in anyone’s pocket.
Given the Bush administration’s unprecedented expansion of the unitary executive and sweeping constitutional changes, our next presidency may mean the difference between preserving our constitution and the principles upon which this country was founded, and losing them forever. Gore put it best himself in his 2006 speech, “Restoring the Rule of Law”: “If the pattern of practice begun by this administration is not challenged, it may well become a permanent part of the American system. Many conservatives have pointed out that granting unchecked power to this president means that the next president will have unchecked power as well. And the next president may be someone whose values and belief you do not trust.” The Clintons were involved in various breaches of constitutional law while in office, including allegations that Hillary’s brothers received large sums of money in exchange for requesting (and obtaining) presidential pardons. Both John Edwards and Barack Obama are too inexperienced to adeptly lead America out of its current constitutional and diplomatic crisis.
Gore would make the climate crisis the number one issue for 2008, a necessary agenda no candidate from either party has adopted. By unifying world powers in pursuit of the goal to save our planet, Gore would restore America’s standing in the world, thereby changing the global dialogue on other geopolitical crises as well. If elected president, Gore would: eliminate all payroll taxes and replace that revenue with pollution taxes, principally on CO2; help negotiate a stronger second-generation Kyoto Treaty; create an “Electranet,” a smart electricity grid that would allow individuals and businesses to buy and sell electricity, forcing them to monitor their own consumption; and promote profitable alternative energy business models. Gore is also committed to ending the war in Iraq, which goes hand in hand with reducing our dependence on oil.
In The Assault on Reason, Gore stated, “Many Americans now feel that our government is unresponsive and that no one in a position of power listens to or cares what they think. They feel disconnected from democracy. They feel that one vote makes no difference, and that they, as individuals, now have no practical means of participating in America’s self-government.” Gore is well connected with the citizenry, even engaging in citizens’ Web blog discussions from time to time. As president, he would restore public participation in politics.
Gore has stated that he can accomplish his goals as a private citizen, without getting caught up in the political game. But that can only go so far. Real change in governance must come from the executive. The goal of the Draft Gore Movement is to show him that the people want him to run, and that he has enough popular support to win. According to a recent 7NEWS / Suffolk University poll, 32 percent of Democratic voters would support Gore over the candidate toward which they are currently leaning.
That’s why the Draft Gore effort is becoming so insistent and vocal. Members have shown up at all of The Assault on Reason book-signings. In Los Angeles recently, the “Gore People” were in full force, handing out Gore ’08 buttons, signs, and gear to the 2,000 attendees. Gore said he was “flabbergasted” by the level of organization.
This is real democracy in action. Since 2000, a sizable part of the nation has grown from its pain, is less naïve, and more politically active and vocal, thanks to the Internet. Gore has also grown from his pain, as a man and as a leader. He would be the People’s President. It’s high time the nation and the leader shook hands.
Visit AlGore.org to get involved.

Our latest project: Getting his name on the CA
Primary Ballot.

(What a flippen surprise. They focus on the money and past 527 rather than what the group is actually doing. – promoted by juls)

Cross-posted at votehope2008.org

The mainstream media has discovered Vote Hope, and it seems like they can’t quite get their heads around it.

While we are thankful for the publicity (any press is good press as long as they get the url right!), it’s clear that it’s going to be a little difficult for some people to grasp an independent campaign that isn’t designed to ruthlessly smear someone. News stories published in two places today, both the L.A. Times and MSNBC’s “First Read”, are focusing on the past history of negative independent campaigns, rather than on the reality of what Vote Hope is trying to do in California.

Part of that is the cynicism around politics that Vote Hope is explicitly fighting, with a grass-roots campaign that is designed to empower Californians to be involved in this presidential race, and to increase voter turnout in communities that are woefully underrepresented in our state’s electorate.

We do recognize, however, that in the landscape of national politics, what we’re trying to do is different and unique. So while we did explain when we launched in the blogosphere last week where we were coming from, it’s worth saying again.

The people who are leading Vote Hope are activists who have worked in California politics for the last two decades, around issues of economic justice, education and voter engagement. Our PAC is working to win the Feb. 5 California primary for Obama, but we will also use the 2008 election to support local and state candidates who share our values, and to educate California voters about the early primary election.

Contrary to the conventional wisdom, it is possible to spend political money on something that is good for democracy, and that is precisely what Vote Hope is doing. Once the mainstream press realizes that, I hope the story will remain interesting to them, because it truly is a transformative moment that is worth their attention.