On the Western Banks of the Shenandoah

As we speak both sides of the stimulus debate are trying to rally their troops to grassroots action. However, just how they are accomplishing this couldn’t be further apart. 

On the Democratic side the Administration is already converting MyBarackObama over to efforts focusing on the stimulus. From Bloomberg:

The Democratic National Committee is overseeing a new advocacy group called Organizing for America and using its 13 million e-mail addresses and network of Obama volunteers to encourage people to host house meetings to view a video about Obama’s economic recovery plan.

The essence of MyBO (yes, what an unfortunate name, but hey, the man’s President now, so a rose by any other name….) is that it is not just a social network but something that moves people to organize and move to action. Facebook is wonderful, but at the end of the day it is ultimately just another method of communication. MyBO offers individuals involved with the social network tools to act, first towards the goal of electing Barack Obama and now towards the President’s policy goals. The McCain campaign tried a similar effort, but ultimately it was just a glorified social network for McCain “lovers” (I’m sure they exist, just like albino squirrels) with only a flimsy fundraising tool built. 

Over on the Republican side we have word that a site has been launched to push back against the stimulus package by Whip Eric Cantor. Here’s the statement on the Minority Leader’s Website:

“We hope that Americans from coast to coast visit our website, read our plan and contribute ideas,” said Mr. Cantor.   “We can get our economy moving again if we focus on helping working families and small businesses get back in the game.  Republicans will continue to speak directly to the American people and ask for their best ideas.  America deserves no less.”

Sounds promising; we have an alternative proposal, and the House Republicans want to work with US, the people on their plan. However, when you get the website, all you find is a copy of the plan, a comments section, and a video by Eric. 

It’s great to see an effort, but I see two major problems here. One, there’s no real call to action. At this point, the pressure needs to be on Senate Republicans to stage a filibuster that will either kill (best case scenario and highly unlikely) or shrink this bill. Now, granted, if Gregg goes, we may not have the votes to keep it alive, and Obama can probably peel off on of the northeastern Republicans pretty easy. But it’s still worth a shot. The second problem is that the comments section is wide open and right there on the page. The Obama team is smart about this–you can comment on their blog posts, but they aren’t right there for public consumption. When people come to the Whip’s site, they can see the comments section right there, where our people are making less than cogent arguments, our opposition is openly mocking us, and the Paulistas are grand-standing for their pet causes. There’s interactivity, but there’s no action. 

I’m not saying that the website is an utter disaster, or that I expected an instant social network to spring up. What I am saying, though, is that this is further proof of just how far behind we are on social networking and that a cogent social network that interfaces the Congressional, national and grassroots of the party should be Chairman Steele’s top priority over the next year.