Guest blogged by Lynn Stinson, a recent graduate of Allegheny College. Stinson will be a student at GWU’s Graduate School of Political Management this autumn.

What chance did a young, seemingly inexperienced black Senator have against one of the most prominent women in the Democratic party? At a first glance, it seemed it would be a struggle for Barack Obama. He lacked adequate experience and was facing a woman that many claimed would easily capture the nomination. However, a series of primaries would result in a victory for Barack Obama despite these claims. How did he manage this? By turning his attention away from traditional politics and towards a new kind of politics, politics focused around the latest technology available.

Hillary Clinton ran an amazing campaign by traditional standards. In fact, she raised more money than ever before via the traditional mode of fundraising. The catch was plain and simple; Barack Obama was steering his campaign away from this traditional mode and moving it entirely towards a technological based fundraising movement. The opportunity to utilize the latest technological advances was available for both Democratic candidates. However, one candidate chose a different path as described by Joshua Green in his article in The Atlantic:

in a colossal error of judgment, the Clinton campaign never made a serious approach, assuming that Obama would fade and that lack of money and cutting-edge technology couldn’t possibly factor into what was expected to be an easy race.

Hillary quickly received a wake up call as Barack Obama surpassed her in fundraising figures, with most of his funding coming from the enormous success his campaign had found using the Internet. Not only did he raise money in astronomical numbers, but he did it by involving supporters and making them part of the process.

A Silicon Valley based website, My.BarackObama.com, propelled the campaign to financial success as well as evidenced the enthusiasm of Obama’s supporters. The website is a social networking page that provides tools to help campaign and fundraise for the candidate. A proponent of the website and Barack Obama’s new-media director, Joe Rospars, explains the success in Green’s article in The Atlantic,

We’ve tried to bring two principles to this campaign. One is lowering the barriers to entry and making it as easy as possible for folks who come to our Web site. The other is raising the expectation of what it means to be a supporter. It’s not enough to have a bumper sticker. We want you to give five dollars, make some calls, host an event. If you look at the messages we send to people over time, there’s a presumption that they will organize.

Slow and steady wins the race, and for Barack Obama, it was the small victories that contributed to his overall win. Small contributions of five dollars here, ten dollars there, have greatly benefited this campaign. The ability to donate such small amounts and truly involve yourself into the democratic process has become available because of Barack Obama’s utilization of technology.

So how did he beat Hillary Clinton, who was presumed to easily claim the nomination? By turning to technology and embracing the advances that have developed even since the campaign has embarked. Not only did Obama use the Internet to raise money in numbers unheard of in past campaigns, but he did it in a way that involved his supporters by allowing them to take the reigns into their own hands. Much like past presidents that have embraced technological advances and reaped the benefits - like Andrew Jackson and the printing press, John F. Kennedy and the television, FDR and the radio - Barack Obama has utilized what was available to him to its fullest as is pointed out by Marc Ambinder in his article “HisSpace” within The Atlantic. The success met by Obama and his campaign has already made a gigantic splash and has translated into the nomination for this unlikely candidate; the culprit of this success is technology.

Porter Bayne is the creator of a new online community called Ameritocracy.com, a site that allows users to read what politicians actually say, comment on their speeches, and rate the comments of other people. Think of it as a type of fact-checking site for people who don’t have lots of free time to read candidate speeches for themselves.

The site is in testing right now, but you can try it out by using beta invitation code ipdi.

Bayne and I spoke last week about his site, good governance, and bringing people together to talk about politics:

Who are you?

My friend Iris and I have been collaborating since January 2007 to design this thing.  She’s a brilliant creative from upstate New York and has a pretty leftist worldview.  I’m from Texas originally and have always been fairly conservative, including a die-hard stint in the College Republicans for awhile.  I razz her for being a liberal socialist hippie and I get accused of being evil on occasion.  It’s pretty fun.

James, our CTO, was a medic in the army in the late 80s, stationed in Latin America.  As he says, “I’d wake up and read in American papers that I supposedly wasn’t there doing what I was doing.”  Bobby and I met pretty randomly - online! - back in 2000 when I wrote for a small computer gaming site, and Brian - who’s had a huge impact on how we think about our system technically, brings the pragmatism of Indiana to the team.  So, we very much bring an end-user perspective on politics and media to the table.

What inspired you to create Ameritocracy?

I think each of us involved in the project had our own light bulb experience.  For me, I originally came up with a similar concept in 2004 when I was frustrated with how so many of my friends/colleagues were repeating misinformation straight from campaigns’ mouths or their favorite radio show, and they didn’t trust information from the “other side.”  Then one day my sister, who reads voraciously and has as many degrees as my right hand has digits, said “I just don’t know how you stay up on political information”.  That made it real to me: people just don’t have time to keep up.

How will Ameritocracy help solve the information overload problem that so many American citizens have?

Isn’t it something that civic literacy has declined since the web and the 24 hour cable news station became the norm?  It boils down to time and trust.  What we do is allow users to report brief quotes from politicians, pundits, and organizations, with sources cited.  Users can then write short responses that support, challenge, or simply add context to the quote.  Sources must be cited.  Based on the quote and user-written responses, community members rate the quote itself for how credible the speaker is being, and how much the quote’s content matters to them.  So the content is quick to read and engage.  And the ratings allow the community to generate reputation for users as well as the politicians, pundits, and organizations they are discussing.

Your site seems to rely on the ideas of collaboration within an online community. Can collaboration/the wisdom of crowds/crowd sourcing actually create change on a policy level? How do you think Ameritocracy and other sites may impact the political environment?

I think we’re already seeing it.  YouTube|CNN debates are a step in the right direction.  The Obama campaign clearly benefitted from multiple aspects of collaboration and crowd sourcing.  The World Economic Forum just opened up with a YouTuber addressing the crowd.
So yes… if Ameritocracy can help educate and engage more people with better information, then we can impact policy.  According to a report from the Pew Center for People and the Press, the higher someone’s civic literacy is, the more they want to learn and the more valuable they think it is to be involved in their community.  That means change in whether people vote, how they vote, and then what other steps they might take to be involved in their community.

What goal would you like Ameritocracy to accomplish in the next two years? What about long term?

Our blue-sky goal is to get regular people much more engaged and influential in important sociopolitical dialog at local, state, and national levels.  By “regular,” I simply mean those of us lacking the time or inclination to read news and editorial pieces a few hours a day.

We want to be the place people turn to check something out quickly, either by coming to the site or seeing it in a widget out in the wild.  Moreover, we want people interacting, knowing they have a place where their participation does make an impact, even if it’s just casting a quick vote.  And we hope to be a favorite, efficient resource for journalists and researchers.
We’ll be the place people come to report, rate, and respond to politicians, the media, and other organizations.

40% of Americans got news and information about the 2008 campaigns on the Internet. This means more Americans have gone online to political information by this point in the election season than in all of 2004

19% go online once a week or more to do campaign-related things. This includes things like:

• Watching online videos (35%)
• Receiving emails from a campaign (23%)
• Reading candidate position papers (16%)
• Using social networking sites to engage in politics (10%)
• Reading full text of a candidate’s speech online (9%)
• Donating (8%)

Only 4% send and receive text messages about the campaign

• 74% of Obama supporters for political news and information online (compared to 57% of Clinton supporters).
• 64% watched campaign videos (compared to 43% of Clinton supporters).
• 24% signed online petitions (compared to 11% of Clinton supporters).
• 23% shared political commentaries in blogs and on other sites (compared to 13% of Clinton supporters).
• 17% made political contributions (compared to 8% of Clinton supporters).

• Plenty of Americans (92%) haven’t donated online yet. There is room for growth.
• People like video. It’s the one activity that most people participate in online.
• There is little or no research on how people use the social networking applications built into the candidates’ websites. I suspect we won’t see much of this information coming out of the campaigns and the end of things, but future research on this area will be very interesting to the poli-tech community. How many supporters use the sites regularly? How many of those users donate and volunteer (and in what amounts) compared to non-users? Are users more likely to vote?

This post is guest-blogged by Christopher Arterton, Dean of GW’s Graduate School of Political Management

Among the reasons being bandied about as to why Barack Obama might not pick Hillary Clinton as his running mate, the idea that a ticket of the first African American and the first woman would constitute too much change is particularly spurious. Simply put, by her conduct over the last year, Senator Clinton has become more than a female politician. She has emerged an icon for many, many women and a brand for many working class Americans.

No single reason can alone account for a vice presidential choice. Historically, however, the calculations that have gone into the choice of running mates have evolved. Going way back to the era of strong state party leaders and conventions requiring a two-thirds vote, the second slot was often a bargaining chip to secure the presidential nomination

(FDR accepting John Nance Garner; Truman choosing Alben Barkley). Five decades ago, a politician would be picked in order to carry an important state or region (Eisenhower picking Nixon; Kennedy choosing Johnson). Ticket balancing to achieve party unity contributed to Kennedy’s choice, to Carter’s pick of Mondale and to Reagan’s nod to George H. W. Bush. As television coverage of politics has accentuated personality over ideology, the attributes of the anointed individual have become more critical. Experience looms large: George Bush’s selection of Cheney offset a thin political resume. Governors have routinely turned toward picks that compensate for their lack of Washington experience (Carter – Mondale; Reagan – Bush; Dukakis – Bentsen; Clinton - Gore).

Since Jimmy Carter’s administration, once in office, the responsibilities and influence of the vice president have expanded dramatically, increasing the significance of personal compatibility between the two nominees. A vice presidential nomination is worth a great deal more than a “pitcher of warm spit,” as V.P Garner so famously groused. Gone are the days when the Kennedy crowd could stomach Johnson by sidelining and ignoring him. Personal chemistry is undoubtedly the first screen that any contemporary presidential nominee considers; will they be able to work together?

In recent elections, electoral college math has given way to calculations of the national appeal of the ticket. Clinton’s choice of Gore stands out if only because Gore’s personal characteristic accentuated Clinton’s strengths; the team was stronger than the individuals that composed it. The fact that a rising tide can lift all states may be Senator Clinton’s strongest allure. She is a very different politician now than she was six months ago; she has solidified a national constituency, established herself as a gutsy fighter and, in the process, emerged as her own person and become a unique brand, transcending gender.

Given the tightness of the race against McCain, Senator Obama does not have the luxury of discounting Clinton’s political appeal and her brand loyalty. Surely calculations involving personal chemistry will be a major factor, which, incidentally, will necessarily include Bill. But, the Obama camp has to consider the durability of her support among critical segments of the electorate. We’re not simply talking about the extraordinary transformation embodied in the pairing of an African American and a woman. We’re really talking about a merger of two unique brands: Barach Obama and Hillary Clinton. Change to be sure, but the degree of change is overwhelmed by the political realities. By mid-July, the durability of Clinton’s support should be clear.

Christopher Arterton is dean of The Graduate School of Political Management at George Washington University and is a Democrat who has supported Senator Obama since the South Carolina primary.

The IPDI Ideas Series presents
A Brown Bag Book Discussion with Nate Wilcox and Lowell Feld,
authors of Netroots Rising: How a Citizen Army of Bloggers and Online Activists Is Changing American Politics

Join IPDI and authors Nate Wilcox and Lowell Feld for a discussion about the issues and events presented in Netroots Rising. How is power shifting in American politics? Will the mid-term elections in 2006 be viewed as a major turning point in American political history? Bring a brown bag lunch, hear the top notes from NetRoots Rising, and discuss them with the author.
This lunch is strictly limited to the first 20 people who RSVP to akellner@ipdi.org in order to encourage as much discussion as possible with the authors.

Wednesday, May 28
Noon-1:30pm
The library of the Graduate School of Political Management
4th Floor
GWU’s Media and Public Affairs Building
805 21st Street, NW
Washington, DC 20052
RSVP REQUIRED to akellner@ipdi.org



About Nate Wilcox
NATE WILCOX is an award-winning political consultant and recognized expert in online communications. He is the co-author of “Netroots Rising” with Lowell Feld. Wilcox was online communications director for Governor Mark Warner’s Forward Together PAC in 2006, a consultant to Richard Morrison’s 2004 challenge to Tom DeLay which was the first campaign endorsed by DailyKos and Democracy for America and raised over $500,000 online. He founded the blog SaveTexasReps.com and built a grassroots organization of over 30,000 members to oppose the 2003 redistricting of Texas. In 2002 he was the Online Communications Director for Tony Sanchez for Governor of Texas, which Slate.com called “the best online campaign of 2002.” Prior to entering partisan politics, Wilcox was the first Director of Online Communications at Public Strategies, Inc. where he worked under former Texas Governor Ann Richards, direct-mail guru Dave Gold, Clinton advisors Paul Begala and Jeff Eller, future Bush advisors Mark McKinnon and Matthew Dowd, and Chairman Jack Martin.

About Lowell Feld

LOWELL FELD is founder and editor of Raising Kaine, the largest progressive blog in Virginia. In 2003, Feld was heavily involved in the Draft Wesley Clark movement, running two grassroots websites — Environmentalists for Clark and Hispanics for Clark. In early 2006, Feld co-founded the Draft James Webb movement, gathering 1,000 signatures and $40,000 in pledges for a Webb candidacy in just a few weeks. In July 2006, Feld joined the Webb for Senate campaign as its netroots coordinator, helping to raise more than $4 million online (out of about $8 million total). Currently, Feld consults for the South Dakota Democratic Party and the Judy Feder for Congress campaign. He is co-author of the book, “Netroots Rising: How a Citizen Army of Progressive Bloggers and Online Activists is Changing American Politics.” In addition, Feld has 17+ years of experience in world oil markets as an analyst and team leader with the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

About Netroots Rising: How a Citizen Army of Bloggers and Online Activists Is Changing American Politics
The 2006 elections will be remembered as the year when the center of power in American politics shifted from traditional “top-down” central broadcasters to new “bottom-up” decentralized activists in the blogosphere and netroots. The authors give firsthand accounts of the burgeoning power of the netroots to determine the outcome of political contests, most notably as when the national balance of power was tipped by Jim Webb’s “rag-tag army” of bloggers and netroots activists who provoked and exposed the gaffe that proved fatal to George Allen’s senatorial bid. Veteran online campaigners Feld and Wilcox recount and analyze many other political campaigns in which netroots activism was decisive or instructive, including:U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay’s downfall. *Tim Kaine’s election as Virginia governor. *Howard Dean’s and Wes Clark’s presidential campaigns. *Ned Lamont’s primary victory over Joe Lieberman.
The authors conclude with an assessment of the prospects for Netroots 2.0: Will the netroots hordes “crash the party” or will they work out an uneasy cohabitation with the traditional party power elite? The foreword is written by Markos (”Kos”) Moulitsas Zuniga, founding editor of the world’s biggest political blog, daily Kos.

About the IPDI Ideas Series book discussions

The Institute for Politics, Democracy & the Internet (IPDI) is part of the Graduate School of Political Management at The George Washington University. Our mission is to promote the use of the Internet and new communication technologies in politics to enhance democratic values, encourage citizen participation and improve governance, at home and abroad; in short, to “democratize democracy.”

IPDI presents a series of regular, discussion-based events that explore technology policy and emerging issues in the technology and political spheres. Previous events in the IPDI Ideas Series looked at broadband policy and discussions about new research. Each event is designed to provide an forum for conversations about the ways in which technology affects politics – and vice versa – that are accessible both online and offline. This includes brown bag lunch conversations with authors, bloggers, and journalists about major themes in the politics and technology space.

What is the Internet useful for in political campaigns?

The general consensus of many of the “old guard” political consultants that I have come in contact with is that the Internet is not a successful tool for driving messages. This group believes that the best way to promote a campaign’s messages is through earned media and paid advertisements on television, cable, radio or print media. Messaging is considered the top priority of campaigns and is central to the majority of their actions. Part of this disbelief regarding the Internet’s potential among “old guard” consultants certainly derives from a fear that they can’t control their message online (something that has been debated online since the Dean campaign). However, many consultants believe that, regardless of online message control, it is impossible to convince people of anything through Internet tactics.

There isn’t a political consultant in their right mind who would advocate completely ignoring the Internet. However, the Internet is not considered to be the top priority in lower budget campaigns because political consultants don’t see evidence that the Internet can convince people that their candidate/cause is better than their opponent’s.

The real question boils down to this: What kind of medium is the Internet? Is it a reach medium? Or is it a reinforcement medium?

To clarify, I consider a reach medium to be one where a message distributed on the medium reaches and is consumed by a population of people. Thus, if the message is effective and the consumer is receptive, the message will impact the person’s opinion on the matter at hand. Television and the radio are the best examples of reach mediums. They both amass large audiences and more importantly they affect the opinions and decisions made by those consuming them.

Whereas, a reinforcement medium is one where people explicitly seek out opinions similar to their own and through consumption strengthen those opinions. Niche publications and ideologically affiliated publications are the best example of reinforcement media. There is certainly an argument to be made that certain television channels and radio stations are reinforcement media. However, as a whole I view media to fall on a spectrum falling somewhere in between a pure reach medium and a pure reinforcement medium.

“Old guard” political consultants would argue that based on people’s online habits, they use the Internet to reinforce preexisting opinions, rather than seeking out information from both sides of an issue in order to choose a stance. Unfortunately, there hasn’t been an academic study based on whether or not the opinion of “old guard” political consultants is accurate on this issue.

As such, one of IPDI’s next major research projects will be to look into the political information consumption habits of people. I believe any research must combine survey data similar to the Pew Internet & American Life Project with a controlled experiment that specifically watches people’s consumption habits.

We are looking for input on how such a study could be conducted. My current thoughts entail giving people a news story about a topic such as the economy, global warming or foreign affairs. Following the article the research subject would be provided with a list of stories from a variety of ideologically coded news sources, which they would be required to click on at least one. The experiment would be preceded and followed by a questionnaire regarding their views on the issues at hand, in order to determine how their opinion changed over the course of the exercise.

Do you think an experiment in this style would work? Do you have any ideas to improve the study? Please email me at akellner@ipdi.org.

Caveat: If the Internet is jus t a reinforcement medium, it isn’t necessarily a bad thing. There is fairly substantial anecdotal evidence that the Internet is very successful at rallying the base and invoking them to take action. A recent example is the number of people who have volunteered for the Obama campaign that was initiated and often carried out entirely online.

The Campaign Finance Institute just released its latest figures on small donors to the three major presidential candidates.

Here are my top notes:

March

Percent of contributions in March that came in amounts of $200 or less:

• Obama – 60%
• Clinton – 58%
• McCain – 18%

Cumulative

Amount the three major presidential candidates have raised from small (under $200) and large (over $200) donations since January 1, 2007

OBAMA

• $101 million from small donations.
• $83 million from large donations.

*CFI notes that Obama has raised almost as much from small donors as all the candidates raised combined by this point in the 2004 election ($105 million).

CLINTON

• $44 million from small donations.
• $82 million from large donations.

MCCAIN

• $16 million from small donations.
• $45 million from large donations.

Looking back at 2004

CFI suggests that we haven’t seen much of an increase in small donations since 2004. By this time in the 2004 cycle, Democrats raised 33% of their money from small donations and 48% from large ones. In 2007-2008, those figures are 37% and 46%.

In 2007-2008, Democratic and Republican candidates raised $135 million in small donations and $138 million more in large donations that the candidates in 2004.

I just wanted to link to a new Obama supporter-created online video that has been making waves in the Internet over the past couple days. Barack Obama as Rocky and Hillary Clinton as Apollo Creed.

Baracky: The Movie (note: I’m having trouble embedding this, so I have to only link)

I touched on political online video a few months ago here, and this new video definitely holds true with my earlier thoughts. At first watch, this video seemed to be a little wonkier than the all-appealing Yes We can, Hillary 1984 and Obama Girl videos. While I still believe that Baracky:The Movie’s target audience understands and closely follows electoral politics, it succeeds in drawing in the general public with its use of the Rocky theme, one that is especially fitting for today’s Pennsylvania primary. The metrics back up its viral appeal because as of today Baracky: The Movie has received over half a million views.

[cross posted at http://alexkellner.com]

Last week, Nate Wilcox of the Webstrong Group spoke to one of my graduate classes. Wilcox’s lecture entitled “Confessions of an Internet Hack,” overviewed the history of politics and the Internet. While much of the lecture wasn’t news to me as an avid follower of Internet politics, Wilcox said one thing that really struck me. Throughout the lecture he “named” each of the elections, and his title for the current election cycle was perhaps the best metaphor to describe the state of the current political Internet that I have come across.

Wilcox’s metaphor began by talking about the 2006 election. He discussed the innovations in mobilizing, messaging and fundraising online that were made in the election cycle. He compared these innovations to rock and roll bands in the late 1960s and early 1970s like The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd. Moving on to the 2008 election cycle Wilcox said that The Beatles are to 2006 as Foghat is to 2008. In other words, no one would suggest that Foghat revolutionized the music scene or was even particularly innovative, but, regardless of that fact, they sold out gigantic arenas throughout the mid to late 1970s. The metaphor carries over to Internet politics because while very little innovation has happened online this election cycle (with perhaps the exception of the use of social networks), the effects of old innovations have had made a larger splash because the people are online in larger numbers (just as people were hooked on the rock and roll scene for Foghat).

I think when you look at the oft-pointed to evidence for why 2008 is “the first real Internet election” it backs Wilcox’s characterization. Ron Paul’s money bomb, Obama and Clinton’s online fundraising prowess, Obama’s offline movement with online roots and the campaign’s webpages themselves are all just extensions of developments that occurred in the 2006 election cycle. These events were more pronounced in 2008 because they involved more people and because they received more coverage in the press. This is not necessarily because the campaigns were doing anything drastically different; rather, there are more people comfortable with “new technology”, more people connected to the Internet and the press has become increasingly more likely to cover “Internet” stories in the mainstream press.

Now, I’m not sure that this means that we actually have reached the “first Internet election.” As a child of the millennial generation, The Beatles and Foghat were both before my time, but I have 12 hours of one of the bands and 0 minutes of the other on my iPod. The Beatles are still relevant in today’s music scene, even to someone born almost 20 years after Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was released, and Foghat is largely forgotten. Perhaps this is carrying Wilcox’s metaphor slightly too far, but I predict that in 20 years, 2006 will be considered far more important year for the development of online politics than 2008. Whether or not it is “the first Internet election” is going to depend on how 2010, 2012 and beyond carry out as the Internet continues to evolve.

It’s 2008. We call this the digital era. Yet, in the United States we seem to lack political leaders with a vision for technology, much less an interest in the ways technology can make all levels of government services more efficient, effective, and accessible to regular voters.

Yes, indeed, the rumblings are starting to get a little louder – snuggled, as they currently are, within our niche community of tech-savvy politicos and politics-friendly techies. Is a technology transformation upon us?

For some, the transformation begins when elected officials use technology to listen. There’s a word – listening. In the middle of an election season that has seen a glut of staged conversations, online and offline. Andrew Feinberg rants about some of these so-called listening exercises today at Capitol Valley. There’s a difference between talker at voters and listening to them.

Talkers get headlines. Listeners get things done.

Like fixing potholes and handling case work, increasing the efficiency and efficacy of government programs. A year ago, IPDI published Constituent Relationship Management: The New Little Black Book of Politics, which looks how political campaigns and elected office can use online and offline feedback loops to run case management and constituent communications. Many elected officials and political candidates already use database platforms to help this process.

The next step? Government institutions that employ tech-enabled feedback loops to deliver better goods and services.

In their Politico column, Andrew Rasiej and Micah Sifry write about some of the ways in which foreign citizens and governments are using technology to listen and act, including e-petitions in the United Kingdom and the government of New Zealand’s wiki for a new Policing Act. As Rasiej and Sifry put it, you can use the Internet to file your taxes, but you can’t use it to make suggestions on how your tax dollars ought to be spent:

Imagine then, that the next time you file your taxes online, your government asks for your feedback on how those tax dollars are being spent. Or it takes your suggestions on how to make a law more understandable. Or it helps you find groups near you that are doing things that benefit your community. It may sound mundane, but today in America, it would be the equivalent of a revolution. How much longer do we have to wait to bridge yet another digital divide?

What about tech policy?

At the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, Robert D. Atkinson writes,

we need a debate in America that focuses on the most important issues like to get fast broadband networks to all Americans; how to use IT to transform our health care system, transportation system, education system, and government; and how to encourage all organizations to become digital, thereby driving productivity and income growth and a better quality of life.

Atkinson thinks that better private-public partnerships can help create an environment of “digital transformation.”

Over at Open Left, Matt Stoller blogs about the successful efforts of blogger and member of the California Democratic Party platform committee, Dante Atkins, to get Net Neutrality in the party platform:

California Democrats, in order to promote vigorous free speech, a vibrant business community, and unfettered access to all information on the Internet, support policies to preserve an open, neutral and interconnected Internet. California Democrats strongly agree with recent rulings by the Federal Election Commission that political communications, including blogging, which take place independent of a political party, committee or candidate, receive a media exemption from campaign finance regulations. California Democrats further reaffirm their support of the right to free speech as expressed in the First Amendment, including the right to critique any elected official or comment on any and all public policy, whether during war or peace, without fear of reprisal.

 Perhaps it is time that we — voters that we are — begin to expect more from our elected officials and encourage digital leadership on our blogs as well as in our voting booths.