I see you survived your first Italian New Year, Michael. This sentence sums this article up.
Ralph Reed, the Southeast chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign, agrees. "It's ironic that the technology of the 21st century is taking us back to the politics of what most thought was a bygone era, which is grass-roots,
Old-time politics meets new strategy
By TOM BAXTER / Cox News Service
ROCKY MOUNTAIN NEWS
ATLANTA -- The Howard Dean supporters who gathered at a cafe in Decatur, Ga. ranged from twenty-somethings to retirees, and included veterans of previous campaigns as well as a lot of newcomers.
They found their way to Ashton's by first visiting a Web site, meetup.com, which has emerged as the hottest, and stealthiest, campaign tool of the 2004 presidential campaign.
The gathering of about 70 people in Decatur was one of 18 meetings organized for Dean across Georgia that December night through meetup.com. Altogether in December, more than 900 "meetups" for Dean occurred across America and in a few European cities. There were 303 meetups of supporters of Gen. Wesley Clark during the same period.
Meetup.com, though, is a nonpartisan Web site that never had political organizing as a core mission when it was launched in 2002. Participants find out about meetings by looking on the Web site for a discussion topic that interests them. In the case of the meeting in Decatur, the common interest was politics -- specifically the Dean campaign. Searching by ZIP code for a Dean meeting directed them to the nearest meeting of like-minded folks interested in a self-guided expedition into presidential politics.
"The Internet is a way to communicate to a relatively small group of people who can do amazing things with the old-fashioned politics of shoe leather and door-knocking," said Dean's campaign manager, Joe Trippi.
On that, Ralph Reed, the Southeast chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign, agrees.
"It's ironic that the technology of the 21st century is taking us back to the politics of what most thought was a bygone era, which is grass-roots," Reed said. The Bush campaign has a database of 6 million e-mail addresses nationwide and is making use of e-mail and Internet-driven meetings.
'Grass-roots work'
At Ashton's, Ki-wing Merlin, 30, a software trainer, showed a piece of campaign literature -- suitable for leaving at restaurants -- that had a calendar listing Asian holidays on one side and Dean's small-business platform on the other. There were reminders to write personal letters to Iowa caucus-goers and a call for volunteers to work on the primary campaign in South Carolina.
Then the group waited good-naturedly as an operator struggled to hook into a conference call in which Dean was fielding questions from meetups in the Carolinas and Virginia and elsewhere in Georgia.
"Beside the technical glitches, this was actual grass-roots work in action. I was really surprised," said Justine Thompson, an environmental attorney who was attending her first meetup.
Only four people, none committed to Dean, showed up for a meetup in Rome, Ga. that same night, and two took home Dean bumper stickers, according to campaign workers. There were seven newcomers at a Roswell, Ga. meetup, including three who said they had voted for President Bush in 2000.
This is politics at the micro level, but it has been having a cumulative impact.
Politics has been a bonanza for meetup.com, drawing more than 200,000 participants, far outstripping interest in the topics New York Internet entrepreneur Scott Heiferman originally thought would bring people to his Web site.
Heiferman came up with the idea of meetup.com a couple of years ago when he attended the "Lord of the Rings" premiere and, seeing the crowd of Tolkien fans, realized there might be money in bringing together people of similar interests -- from poker playing to paganism -- through the Internet.
Exactly how www .meetup.com made the leap from a fledgling commercial enterprise to the year's hottest political innovation has been the subject of conflicting accounts. Some credit the Dean campaign with a stroke of organizational genius. But Myles Weissleder, the firm's vice president for communications, said it was a young staffer, William Finkel, who got the idea late last year to test interest in Dean by listing politics as a topic.
Weissleder said that when company representatives called Dean's campaign manager, Joe Trippi, to say they were getting unusually strong responses to the Dean test, Trippi said he had been on the verge of calling Meetup and proceeded to negotiate a cut-rate deal allowing the Dean campaign to post notices of events.
By spring, supporters of an effort to draft Clark began using meetups to recruit around the nation. By the end of summer, Dean held a surprising financial lead over his more established rivals, thanks to grass-roots fund-raising by meetup members. Meetups were multiplying dramatically as other campaigns -- including Bush's -- scrambled to get on board.
One of the key questions in the 2004 presidential campaign is whether meetup and other Internet strategies will have peaked before the primaries begin in January, and if they can make a difference in the general election. Regular Internet users make up a small percentage of the American electorate, and many key Democratic constituencies, such as African-Americans and the elderly, are among the nation's least wired.
Awakened interest
The biggest impact could simply be to get people involved in a system in which many had lost faith.
Earlier this year, Steve and Gail Byrd flew to Denver to pick up a convertible they'd bought on the Internet. In their entire meandering trip back to their home in Acworth, Ga., the couple said, they didn't see a single presidential bumper sticker. It was evidence, said Gail, 56, of a nation "so polarized you're afraid to speak up."
The Byrds' previous political action was limited to voting. But they were interested in Dean's candidacy, and in searching the Internet for information, came across meetup.com. Now they are unpaid meetup coordinators for Georgia, traveling the state to make sure the monthly gatherings in restaurants and bars are on track, and plugging sign-in information from each meetup into a spreadsheet program so that every new name is in the campaign database at Dean's national headquarters in Burlington, Vt., the next day.
Although most meetups eventually become task-oriented, the Byrds firmly believe they should be social events first and foremost, and that their primary purpose is to give voters a voice.
"As a nation we have become less likely to speak out over the last few years," Gail said. "But to go to a meetup and see a lot of people who are saying what they believe, gives you courage to talk about what you believe."
Tom Baxter writes for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. |
