Why would the CEO of an explicitly progressive political tech consulting firm out himself as a “supporter” of McCain?  And then take a “leave of absence” from said firm? 

Odd.  Disturbing. I don’t know what to make of this.  There must be more going on here than meets the eye.

95 Theses of Geek Activism. Good stuff.

(Hat tip to Alex at Worldchanging.)

Mark Schmitt offers a realistic asssesment of the significance of bloggers in Ned Lamont’s thriving primary challenge to Joe-menutm Lieberman in Connecticut.  

Can we please put to rest the idea that Ned Lamont’s challenge to Senator Lieberman is a product of, or a wholly-owned subsidiary of, that thing called “the netroots.” (Without, in so doing, disparaging or minimizing the netroots themselves.)

Instead of crediting “Markos and his loyal minions,” Schimitt cites

Decades of statewide progressive organizing in the state. Lamont’s campaign manager is no blogger, but Tom Swan, who left his job as head of the Connecticut Citizen Action Group (CCAG) to run the campaign. According to one of the Connecticut blogs I mentioned above, much of the CCAG staff has also quit or taken a leave to help Lamont. CCAG got its start before even Al Gore had heard of the Internet, in the same year that Lieberman won his first primary – 1970 - and from the same impulses that created the reformist/anti-war Caucus of Connecticut Democrats in which Lieberman was active.

CCAG has had its ups and downs over the decades, but it is one of a very few multi-issue progressive groups of that era to have survived. A related group, the Legislative Electoral Action Program (LEAP) was very successful at getting progressives elected to the state legislature, many of whom are still there. CCAG has had a very successful last couple of years, most notably in winning passage of the state’s public financing law for campaigns, the first such “clean money” law to be passed through a legislature rather than by voter initiative. It takes a lot of skill and political savvy to get a legislature to back a proposal with low political salience that most politicians view as a threat. (That is, they would like to bury it and expect they can get away with it.) The Lamont campaign is coming off the energy and lessons learned of that victory.

You could imagine a challenge like Lamont’s emerging without the “netroots,” although they certainly drive a lot of the enthusiasm. You couldn’t imagine it without politically savvy, experienced organizers like Swan, with a base in a long-term, multi-issue progressive coalition that has allies and experience and understands the state. And anyone thinking about how to build structures and parties that can win elections against Republicans needs to understand this as well.

Schmitt also points out that Lieberman has run one of the worst campaigns of the year, again nothing to do with bloggers, before concluding:

So let’s credit the netroots for what they do well – generate enthusiasm, force the big questions onto the agenda, generate a new definition of what it means to be a Democrat. But by themselves they can’t create a viable candidacy or bring down a popular three-term incumbent. Only organizing and the incumbent’s own mistakes can do that.

Micah Sifry offers a lengthy post-mortem on the spectacularly unsuccessful “open-source” campaign of Andrew Rasiej for NYC Public Advocate. It’s a long article, but worth reading its entirety. Down near the bottom, two learnings jumped out at me as particularly important lessons for would-be cutting edge campaigners.

Tech “community” a fiction? Another one of the unconventional premises of our campaign was the idea that young, “wired” individuals who work and play in the new technology economy would rally to support one of their own, a candidate who “gets it” — that is, who demonstrably understands the power and potential of networks and transparency in politics. Indeed, we started with lots of support and good will from key Internet organizers from the Dean, Clark, Kerry and Kucinich 2004 presidential campaigns along with “A-list” technology opinion-shapers like Doc Searls and David Weinberger….

But the fabled tech community turned out to be mostly a fable when it came to actually embracing Andrew’s campaign and setting aside time to spread its message. Yes, about 100 local and national bloggers linked to the campaign. But few made an extended commitment to pitch in. To give one telling example, when I asked a core group of about 30 tech supporters to help us “kick the tires” on our WeFixNYC.com site by sending in a picture of a pothole before we announced the project to the public, at most 3 or 4 responded.

I chalk up our difficulty in mobilizing techies to several factors: 1) the number-two office in NYC is just not of great interest to techies, no matter how innovative the campaign tactics or message; 2) techies are predominantly political independents, or libertarians, and thus hard to mobilize in a Democratic primary context; 3) techies are focused on work, making money, and, for all their complaining about politics, a relatively immature political grouping (compared, to say, Old Media moguls in Hollywood). And unlike some cities where political bloggers play an important role in local affairs (take Portland, Oregon), in New York there is no hive of vibrant conversation about local politics….

Viral campaigns are hard to do in a low attention environment. We made several attempts at engaging our supporters and interested visitors to our website in a conversation that we hoped they would help spread. First, and throughout the campaign, we asked people to share their ideas for how to make New York City a better place. As email messages came in through our online suggestion box, we picked out the interesting ones and wrote back to the senders, thanking them for their ideas and asking for their permission to post them on our blog. Then I wrote up a blog post, adding some comments in the voice of the campaign, and urging others to join in. At one or two points in the campaign, we e-mailed our whole list asking them to help develop a list of “21 ideas for 21st century NYC” But we got very few responses. Yes, a few of the people who we listened to in this manner became campaign supporters, making a contribution or offering to volunteer. But not enough to become a self-sustaining hub of activity. (Overall, we got about 160 comments on a total of 150 blog posts between April and September, a sign of little community involvement.)

Likewise, we envisioned our videoblog as having a viral potential, especially the humorous “Where is Betsy?” posts that we did, attempting to track the current Public Advocate and demonstrate how inaccessible she is to the public she is supposed to serve. But again, apart from some decent press coverage, this “meme” didn’t spread. Since every one of our “techie” gimmicks also functioned as a press hook, the time we spent coming up with them was not wasted. But our larger hope that these would help spread our message and build our grass-roots base was for nought. Again, the general lack of public interest in the Public Advocate’s office deadened these possibilities.

It took us a long time to implement a “tell-a-friend” feature on our website that we thought would have viral potential. We wanted a way for strong supporters to not only forward a simple message to their friends, but for them to also be able to track their friends’ responses and to see their own impact on growing our network…. We deployed this tool late in the campaign, and about fifty people (a little over 1% of our list at that point) used it to invite additional people to join.

Update: My friend Gregory Heller, NYC activitst techie, also has some good thoughts about the Rasiej campaign from a much closer vantage point.

If you’re trying to understand how blogs influence the mainstream media, here’s a case study that you can really wrap your brain around.

My friend David “Goldy” Goldstein, who writes probably the best liberal blog in Washington state, broke a big piece of the post-Katrina story — how FEMA Director Mike Brown’s previous employement record was… well, a bit spotty.

David recounts how his story leapt from a “small” blog to national blogs and thence to major media outlets in 48 hours.

Truth is, I didn�t really even know what I had. I rarely cross-post to Daily Kos, but since this was a national issue, and I was angry, I thought, what the hell. My original headline was a profane rant, and the first few comments insisted that this was too important a diary to be lost due to a non-descriptive headline. I followed their advice, changed the headline, went to bed� and awoke the next morning to find the story featured on Kos, and the traffic flooding in. Then the calls and emails from the MSM started coming, and I knew we were going to move headlines.

So if any of you out there believe that you cannot make a difference, let this be lesson to the contrary. A single email from a horse breeder to the proprietor of an oddly named local blog provided the angle the MSM needed to expose the Bush administration cronyism that doomed thousands of Katrina�s victims to a week of unimaginable � and unnecessary � suffering, and which may have condemned thousands of others to an untimely death.