Constituencies

Metro newspaper just published Voices: Spitzer floated on air, but lack of roots did him in, my Op/Ed on the Spitzer debacle.

Here's the money quote :

For netroots activists like me, who have had the chance to take a peek at the mechanical beast, the New York State Democratic Party, Eliot Spitzer was nothing but a political insider’s rock star that only needed “The (little) People” to vote so the “politics as usual” could rock New York and roll into Albany. Yet there’s a reason why “politics as usual” is losing the fight in the Democratic Party’s presidential primary.

Eliot Spitzer’s weakness has been the lack of a true grassroots base. He never had his feet held to the fire by his own party base, by The People who ended up voting for him. The Republicans have known this all along, and it’s not a coincidence that they tried to scare him last year by astroturfing the Internet with fake attack blogs.

Go read the whole thing.

I have said it once and I am going to say it again : The people a candidate attracts matters. It matters if a candidate is willing to look the other way at their supporters' willingness to pick up the slack and run the dirty politics for them. And such is the vibe that I have gotten from the Clintons' supporters way before Hillary announced her candidacy. They want the dynasty. They want the twofer. By all means necessary.

So it's no wonder there's this coming from the Clinton side of the political aisle :

"That's when I caught on," said Coghlan. He realized then that he was being push-polled. That malicious political virus that is designed not to elicit answers but to spread positive information about one candidate and negative information about all others under the guise of an honest poll had arrived in Southern California within days of the important election.

It could become an issue in the closing hours of the campaign.

Someone who obviously favors Hillary Clinton is paying an unidentified company to spread this material phone call by phone call among independent voters, who can, according to California party rules, opt to vote in the Democratic but not the Republican primary on Feb. 5, when nearly two dozen states will choose a large chunk of the delegates to t

I running late with some of my posts today, so let me point to you to one I have been remiss in talking about. Paul Blumenthal of the Sunlight Foundation has done an excellent presentation on how The Cluetrain Manifesto for People Powered Politics is happening right here, right now.

Here's an example of what you can find at People Powered Politics or People Powered Governance? :

Citizens are online using government information to do their own watch-dogging, to make their voices heard on important legislative issues, and to create new ways to understand legislative and government information that not only aids other citizens but aids the governing process as well. One example connects directly with one of Sabater’s points:

“76. We’ve got some ideas for you too: some new tools we already use, some better services we’ve already produced. Stuff we’d be willing to pay you to use. Got a minute?”

Created by 20 Daily Kos users, the DOJ Documents database allows users to search through the enormous amount of e-mails relating to the Attorney purge investigation handed over to the House Judiciary Committee by the Department of Justice. This was made possible by the House Judiciary Committee posting the e-mails in large pdf files on their Web site. The committee understood that opening up the oversight process to citizens would provide additional labor at no cost while simultaneously making citizens feel like they have power to act in their government and can make a difference.

Dozens, if not hundreds or more, of citizens perused the documents and commented on them at blogs like TPM Muckraker and Daily Kos. The information that they uncovered enabled new conversations and new information to reach into the mainstream of American politics. The only problem these muckrakers discovered was the inability to search the documents. But this is the Internet and now we have a searchable database of these e-mails; a resource that is used by bloggers, journalists, and I presume could and has been used by staffers on the Judiciary Committee.

Paul has more examples of the work happening online from both ends of the political spectrum but also within government itself.