GregsOpinion.com

Kerry net chief: cool software doesn't win elections

Telling quote here:

"The difference between the approach of the left in general, and the Republicans, is that the left was more interested in just putting cool software up. The idea was to put up the tools and let people use them."

He derided net evangelists who believed that the answer was 'let's come up with new ways of talking!'

"The belief was 'let's get 5,000 people out there and they'll talk to each other. but to put a president in office we need to get people organized and trained." In the end, he said, a field organization was far more valuable than blog blather.

"The left's now saying we didn't have people on discussion forums," Exley said. "But we did. It didn't move votes."

He sympathized with a young Democrat volunteer who pointed that the Committee's software - devised by the central DNC, not the Kerry / Edwards campaign [or ACT, as stated in an earlier version of this story] - was actually, um, pretty awful. She had volunteers aplenty but no decent materials for them to use.

"There wasn't a shortage of people - but we didn't have an organization," Exley agreed.

Howard Dean writ large, it sounds like. And yet locally, I hear a loud echo of my own complaint that the organizing tools put forth by our own party were lacking in numerous ways.

Now, to be fair, here's my view of the local effort:

We had two competing tools offered by two very well intentioned party loyalists. They both fit the bill of being "put up for people to use" without really possessing of any leadership on how to use them and how to measure progress with.

In the hopes of having something better in place for 2006, I'll name names, even though I don't offer this to just point and bicker. I'll try and save that for after the holidays and/or David Sirota's honeymoon.

DemDataOnline.com was the initial entry into the realm. Nifty tool, with the voter files databased to which a precinct chair/organizer could go in and update with phone numbers, willingness to volunteer, etc. The second one, I'll be darned if I have the URL for, but it was essentially a phone list of 50 contacts put forth by a former County Party Chair. I'd heard the presentations for both tools put forth by the owners of such and have to say that I was not impressed by either. It isn't that they weren't effective for something ... it's that they weren't effective at reaching out to voters and winning countywide. Naturally, I have the benefit of hindsight in pointing out that the numbers bear this out. I can offer witnesses to my own doubts pre-election, but obviously, when the battle is on, you're nose is a bit closer to the grindstone and your doubts are a bit more guarded. But neither of these tools will make a difference to the degree we need and it's time to rethink this.

The argument for DDOL, was that it allowed for the most data to be accumulated. It was derived straight from the most recent voter files from the state party, and served as a convenient replacement for some of the clumsier offline organizing tools. You could generate a call list or a walk list from it, you could hit up volunteers for various campaigns. As long as you used it, it could do great things.

The call list was a pretty straightforward list of 50 numbers you could get. You'd call them, ask if they'd support all our candidates, and then register the answer you got. I think there was something like a 5-point scale from Hard Dem to Hard Rep and maybe the Hard Dems would get a call back to remind them to vote during early voting. In other words, if people were already going to vote for us, we'd be there to tell them to vote. Can't tell ya how down on this system I was. but still, it's better than nothing. The gain you get, though, is that small sliver of votes that might otherwise miss out on voting. We're talking a very small number of votes. Might not be a bad tool when the party is in the majority, but utterly meaningless when you're the party looking for a comeback.

One of the more comedic moments in all of these online tool presentations was when I was informed by one local faithful that I shouldn't be so down on them because one was used in 2000 and it did a very good job for the party getting out Gore/Lieberman yard signs. I thought the logic couldn't get worse. I looked at this person and said: "Didn't we lose that election in Harris County?" Despite this, I think my point was lost.

I'm reluctant to draw too many cut & dried fixes for any election, but one thing might be an easy target if nothing else. Harris County has to centralize some of the efforts on organization and networking. What's that saying? That which gets measured, gets improved. There's a few easy ways to accomplish this, I think, with the setup and structure of the party as-is. Still putting the finishing touches on a few ideas to flesh this out some, but it may well be time to reform the party of Will Rogers to something resembling organized status. Only then can we move beyond chattering among ourselves and reaching out to our neighbors in those red precincts. Zach Exley wasn't the only one who saw what he saw.