The NetRoots came out on the wrong side of the TX-28 race yesterday. Cuellar won. Rodriguez lost.

What happened? Kos posted this:

"The bottom line: we helped a campaign that was the walking dead and gave it new life, pumped in resources, and made it competitive. We did much to even the playing field even if ultimately we came up tantalizingly short."

I credit Kos for noting later in his post that coming up 'tantalizingly short' is equivalent in politics to, in his words, the bubonic plague. But I would feel better if he were to take some responsibility for the loss. Isn't it possible that part of the reason the balance tipped towards Cuellar in this race because the other campaign was associated with DailyKos?

I can't fault the DailyKos community for wanting to change the Party. The Democratic Party is screwed up and needs fixing. But they shouldn't be eating our young. And they shouldn't be taking elected Democrats and weakening them through intra-party squabbling. That's what I think Kos and his community are doing. Their tone is negative. They aren't willing to compromise, or it seems, to even discuss, alternatives to their view. Who knows, maybe they would learn something if they listened more and ranted less.

John Sweeney, President of the AFL-CIO, held a briefing today to outline the union's plans to push the 'Fair Share Health Care' campaign in state legislatures around the country. Patterned after legislation currently pending in Maryland, Sweeney pledged a state-by-state ground game in 30 different legislatures.

A ground game? What a snooze.

There was no mention on the call that the AFL-CIO would launch a blog, use mobile communications, or even place online advertising to promote their effort. These are the tools of modern politics, but they are apparently not part of the AFL-CIO's repertoire.

Other Unions are taking advantage of the web. Both the UFCW and SEIU have launched online efforts in opposition to Wal-Mart practices. SEIU has garnered a lot of attention for their Purple Ocean effort – a low-cost, hands-on counter to Wal-Mart's high-intensity publicity campaign designed to raise awareness 'person-by-person and city-by-city.'

I'm surprised there hasn't been more discussion on PDF about what the online community is doing to support the Hurricane Katrina relief efforts. There is plenty to discuss. I challenge PDF readers to collect and post stories about the online responses to the Hurricane so we can be a beacon of best practices going forward:

Here are some to start with:

CraigsList New Orleans has a listing of housing available to Hurricane refugees.

Bloggers are coordinating their efforts to raise money to support relief efforts -- InstaPundit has a growing list of the blogburst participants.

Wal-Mart has launched a Emergency Contact Service to allow Wal-Mart associates and customers to post messages regarding their well-being on the company's websites. Their service is also available in any Wal-Mart Store, SAM’S CLUB, Neighborhood Market, or Distribution Center. Anyone in the affected area can go to their local store and post a message regarding their well-being.

I wrote about this first in my regular column for National Journal's The Hotline (subscription required). I never got a response from the DNC, so I thought I would post some comments here as well.

If you are at the DNC and reading this, I want to hear from you. Please call me. Post a comment. Anything!

Here's the quick background:

Within two weeks of each other earlier this month updated versions of the DNC and RNC websites were released. The Democrats' new site has a clean, colorful presentation -- an improvement over the cluttered, red-white-blue-heavy focus of the old site. But, there are no real 'take action' tools, no moving images, and not much to do beyond just reading. On the GOP side, the new home page is dominated by an 'Action Center' encouraging site visitors to recruit new volunteers, register & vote (or help register others to vote), contact elected officials, and call talk radio. Its everything you would want in a national party website.

Breaking News: All 27 members of the Democratic caucus in the Oregon State Legislature will announce today that they are now blogging together.

This is the first legislative caucus in the country with a group blog and it represents a tremendous opportunity for Oregonians to have a two-way conversation about the future of our state with their elected leaders. The Democrats are in the minority, so the blog will also serve to give them a louder voice on the issues where they aren't otherwise getting the attention they desire.

As the Democratic Leader writes, "In today’s hot political climate, information is everything. But it’s not enough simply to read newspapers, magazines and websites, or to watch cable news. Legislators need a way to participate in a no-holds-barred exchange of ideas,
opinions and views on a 24/7 basis. And the people need a way to make their voices heard. That’s what this blog provides, and it’s open to everyone who has a view to express."

Breaking News! It snowed in Moscow this week.

Ok - that isn't really big news. After all, winter in Russia is notorious for being cold and snowy. But apparently the weather forecasters hadn't predicted snow, so it took everyone by surprise. In response, the mayor of Moscow has suggested that weather forecasters should be fined for getting their forecasts wrong (CNN).

On a related note, did you know that WeatherBug has a blog? It was launched to address customer concerns and to offer insight into the weather gathering and weather reporting process. It ended up as a storm tracker (and doesn't seem to have been updated since September).

UPDATE: Steve Rubel pointed me to the updated URL for the WeatherBug Blog -- it is in fact updated regularly.

So, when politicians promise one thing, and do something else, should we have the right to fine them? Or maybe we have stumbled onto the argument for why campaigns, or better yet, government, should blog. Politicans make the argument that they can't always be held to a promise they made during their political campaign because the reality of government (budget crises, divided legislature, etc.) have changed the situation. But if they blogged, then they could address constituent concerns and explain the political process - you know, how it really works.

Asked about how the Democratic Party should rebuild after the 2004 election, Al From told MSNBC's First Read "You've got to reject Michael Moore and the MoveOn crowd." His point was that online activists, and overweight documentarians, have damaged Democrats' electability by forcing the Party's public positioning on security issues to the left. He went on to say that rank-and-file Democrats "are more like us than MoveOn," which he called a group of "elites, people who sit in their basements all the time and play on their computers."

Al From is the head of the Democratic Leadership Council, the self-appointed voice of Third Way politics. He is undeniably one of the smartest people in the Democratic Party, credited with helping to craft many of the policy positions that elevated Bill Clinton to power in the 1990s (anyone who has seen him speak will also say that he is also the least charasmatic political figure ever to grace a podium). That aside, his criticism of online activists is misguided and seemingly motivated by left over hostilities from the very public spat between the DLC and MoveOn over issue positioning during the last election.

Everything Ron Brownstein writes is worth reading. But rarely does his regular contribution to the LA Times include references to the Internet, or the use of technology in politics.

Today was different!

In today's article about how "Democrats Aren't Giving Bush a Break This Term," Brownstein discusses MoveOn.org.

He writes:

'Liberal groups such as MoveOn.org are far more advanced than party centrists at building a grass-roots organization through the Internet, and are moving with increasing confidence to push the party toward a more combative strategy.

"We want to be in a position to give a backbone to the Democratic Party," said Eli Pariser, the executive director of the MoveOn political action committee, which says it has 3 million members.'

And then later in the article, Brownstein notes this little gem:

'MoveOn's PAC rewarded Boxer and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) for the challenge to Ohio's presidential vote by posting an online petition to thank them and by giving the legislators the names of about 100,000 signers — a potentially valuable fundraising list.'

Stop! Stop what you are doing and go to the Online Social Networks 2005 Conference.

OSN 2005 looks at the how online social networks are altering our information resources, modifying the way we learn and changing civil engagement and public discourse. The conference is scheduled to start February 9, 2005 and continue for two weeks, concluding on February 23rd.

The two-week online conference features an all-star line up, including Howard Rheingold, Lisa Kimball, Joi Ito and other trendsetters who are using interactive social applications to support projects, issues, causes, teams and communities across the globe.

(ok, prepare yourself for a little shameless self promotion, but for a good cause)

I will deliver an online keynote address exploring how political parties, politicians, and others have used OSNs to raise money, explore issues, and mobilize at the grassroots level. My keynote will be posted on February 14th. Last night I recorded a podcast on the topic. The discussion has already begun!

The Wall Street Journal published an article today outing Howard Dean's presidential campaign for hiring "two Internet political "bloggers" as consultants so that they would say positive things about the former governor's campaign in their online journals." This, of course, comes in the wake of reports that the Bush Administration paid radio personality, Armstrong Williams, to speak highly of the Administration's education plans.

Zephyr Teachout, the former head of Internet outreach for the Dean campaign, made the disclosure earlier this week on her blog, zonkette, according to WSJ.

Here is her original post on financially interested blogging.

Here is her clarification.