BlueBroward.org

Interesting article in the Boston Globe about Democrats making better use of technology to track voters and plan campaigns. Mentions the Voter Activation Network system being used in Florida.

It’s great that we’re getting better tools. I hope we’ll make effective use of them.

I missed this piece in The Nation when it was first published, but found it a very interesting analysis of what went right and wrong in 2004 and the signs of hope for the future. The article particularly looks at the issues of coordination, or the lack of it, between the Democratic Party and allied groups like ACT.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20051219/hayes

BlueBroward.org is intended to be a unifying force on the local level, open to Democratic clubs as well as sympathetic groups such as Democracy for America. We’re all supposed to be on the same side, right?

Read Robert Watson’s opinion column in the Palm Beach Post. Thanks to Barry Dockswell for pointing this out.

Excerpt:

Most Americans support restrictions on assault weapons, know that families can’t live on minimum wage, favor clean air and clean water and believe that America is always strongest when leading our allies, not bullying them. So Democratic policies don’t need to be changed; instead, the way they are presented to the country does need to be changed.

For example, the Republican Party, like a good courtroom attorney, frames debates in such a way that to oppose the war is to oppose our troops. To criticize or question Bush is to be unpatriotic. Democrats need to lead on national security and the fight against terrorism by reminding the country that being patriotic means providing our soldiers with protective armor, a livable wage, fair death benefits, and the truth about the war.

…outdated. The same could be said for most Websites, political or not. But when I do a campaign Web site, I want people to come away with the impression that there’s a lot going on with the campaign, momentum is building, this is a campaign worth getting involved with or supporting financially.

Conversely, if you’re not careful, you can present the impression that there’s not much going on with this campaign and it’s not worth paying attention to. If a visitor to your Web site clicks on a link that says “News” and sees only a few press releases that are several months old, what kind of message are you sending? Better not to have a News page if you can’t commit to keeping it current.

That’s why I always include a feature for listing current campaign events, and I have the events automatically expire off the Web site when the event date is past. I don’t want people coming to the Web site and seeing an invitation for a fundraiser from two months ago. I want them to see something new.

Often, Web sites become outdated because it’s too difficult to get new information posted. Typically, the bottleneck is a webmaster who maintains the site manually and is the only one who has access to the software and the password to make updates. But it shouldn’t be that hard!

A good Webmaster ought to be able to provide a way for other members of the campaign to post routine updates, such as press releases and event notices themselves. And they shouldn’t have to be technical geniuses to do it — anyone with the right password should be able to update the campaign Web site, and doing it should be no harder than sending an email.

So make sure it’s easy to update your Web site, and then keep it up to date.

Robert Kennedy Jr. adds up the evidence that says it was.

Read the article

Thanks to flapolitics.com, the Democratic news and opinion site, for giving a link to BlueBroward.org. They’ve got a good story at the top of today’s home page about Jeb Bush offering a letter of thanks to the Swift Boat liars:

http://www.flapolitics.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=804