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Netpolitique : You've been publishing a series
of recommendations on internet campaigning to the
attention of the new DNC chair. Is your objective to
make internet communications a priority for the party?
Zack Exley : I had a couple specific objectives:
First, to explain how the new online assets of the party
(built during the 2004 campaign) can be used to build
a powerful on-the-ground grassroots organization much
faster than would be traditionally possible. The party
has the ability to email millions of activists who signed
up during the 2004 campaign. If they build some simple
web tools and follow a smart strategy, then they can
build a powerful
organization virtually overnight. In France, and many
countries around the world, there are healthy grassroots
networks that can, for example, produce a nationwide
protest against attacks on the social safety net. In
America, we used to have the same thing. But that's
been broken down. The new party email lists hold the
potential for speeding the rebuilding of those networks.
It's not internet magic. It's just old fashioned organizing
made vastly more efficient by using a new medium of
communication and information handling.
My other objective was to tell Howard Dean to pay personal
attention to the enormous email lists he is inheriting.
He had the ability to write a personal letter -- a call
to arms -- to ten million activists. He should
have made a news story around that letter, and should
have said some things that were -- in the Howard Dean
way -- surprising and controversial. As it happened,
he did not write his own email, there wasn't anything
very interesting in the email, and he didn't ask the
other big Democratic lists -- such as MoveOn.org, JohnKerry.com
and the Labor unions -- to pass the email on to their
memberships.
Netpolitique.net : Now that Howard Dean has been
chosen to head the DNC, do you expect he'll be more
receptive to your arguments considering his own 'trailblazing'
experience with internet campaigning? Have you had any
contacts with him since?
Zack Exley : I haven't had any contact with him
personally. It's no secret that Howard Dean personally
did not exactly understand how his own grassroots movement
worked. It's no secret either that he had never been
interested in the grassroots during his career as governor.
So his "bottom-up" presidential campaign was
a real anomaly in his career.
So it's an open question whether his leadership at the
DNC will reflect the grassroots organizing of his presidential
bid or the business-as-usual politics of his governorship.
Netpolitique.net : Recently, during a conference
at Harvard, you
blasted the democrats'online campaign strategy,
and praised the Republicans' organizational skills for
its effectiveness. Coming from one of the architects
of the MoveOn success, and advisor to the Kerry campaign,
it was quite a statement.
In the future, would you rather see the internet strategy
of the DNC follow the decentralized MoveOn.com pattern,
or the Republicans' command-and-control model?
Zack Exley : The irony is that the Bush campaign's
strategy online was decentralized and it was not results-focused.
At the kerry campaign we tried to follow a results-based
model. We looked everyday at our numbers of donations,
signups, and volunteers on the ground and did whatever
we could to increase those numbers. The Bush campaign
followed the Dean campaign model of putting
up tools and hoping people would come use them.
I made a real mistake at that conference by trying
to make a complex and nuanced argument about all that.
And of course, what I said was totally misinterpreted.
That register article was way off and actually blatantly
misquoted me.
What I said was this:
A) The Bush campaign ran a higher-quality *traditional*
field program than the Democrats. This was merely because
they started earlier -- 5 years earlier.
B) The Kerry campaign ran a higher-quality *internet*
field program than the Bush campaign.
C) The Kerry campaign also engaged far more people online
in terms of fundraising and online activism (e.g. writing
letters to the editor,
recruiting online activists) than the Bush campaign.
D) The Kerry campaign did better online because we were
focused on real results (number of people signed up,
number of people donating, number of people working
in the field). The Bush campaign did worse online because
they viewed their internet effort primarily as fluff
-- a PR effort.
E) The Democratic party (separate from the Kerry campaign)
made a
last-minute attempt to support field organizing with
web tools. But that effort was too rushed and it failed.
Note: I wasn't even going to bring that up at the conference,
but a women got up and started yelling at me about how
disastrous that project was, so it kind of had to be
addressed.
Netpolitique.net : Considering your wealth of
experience, have you considered consulting for international
campaigns? Have you been approached by European parties
for instance?
Zack Exley : I'm currently working with the UK
Labour party. Because they are incumbent, and have been
in power for two terms, it's exactly the opposite dynamic
from the Kerry or Dean campaigns. So the fascinating
challenge is: how can an incumbent party use these tools
and this communications medium to build an online base.
I'd love to talk to any other European parties, especially
opposition
parties -- so long as their politics are basically compatible
with my own.
Netpolitique.net : Last but not least, our ritual
question: what are your top 3 sites/blogs?
Zack Exley : Well, favorites are always hard
to decide on. But here are 3 interesting ones: MeetUp.com,
I think, is right now reaching a new plateau of relevance.
Their new features allow Meetup communities more flexibility.
And I really thing they are an example of the web actually
changing society.
Keep an eye on these guys -- apparently left wing evangelical
Christians: relevantmagazine.com
And I can't live without Shoutcast.com.
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