Now would be a good time to start planning DK's 2008 Pres campaign

[genius]

The main obstacle it the lack of publicity. So who about if for the next three years, we each deliver say 50 flyers to people who know nothing about him. Or how about if we stand up and meetings and start talking about him. If he wins the primary, he'll win the Presidency. We can count on the right-wing media giving him no publicity of any kind. I think we can get him elected. He's probably the only one who could clean up the mess Bush has created. But he needs a much better campaign staff than he had last time. I don't think they were actually trying to get him elected. This time he needs a staff that will make some winning decisions.

And even if he waits until next year to declare his candidacy, everyone needs to start working now so that it will be easy for him once he jumps into the race.

[Mairead]

1. A proposal

As we here all know, in February 2002 Dennis gave his now-famous 'Prayer for America' speech to the ADA in Southern California. In a nation looking desperately for someone to stand up to the illegitimate BushCo regime and its limitless greed for wealth and power, that speech electrified nearly everyone who heard it. As news of the speech spread, thousands upon thousands of us mailed Dennis imploring him to stand for election as President.

A year later, in February 2003, he announced his exploratory candidacy, and we were ecstatic! But it didn't work out. Despite dedication and hard work on the part of everyone involved, and despite Dennis keeping a travel, speaking, and Congressional schedule that would have felled an ox, it didn't work out.

Why not?

Putting it as kindly as possible, the timing was off. The speech wasn't bait on a 'draft-me' hook, it was just Dennis being Dennis. It might not even have crossed his mind that he'd get the reaction he got. He was in the middle of re-thinking his stand on Choice, and perhaps wasn't yet clear in his mind about other things someone of national importance had to be clear about. Unlike other politicians, Dennis seems to play it fairly straight; we don't seem to see him getting by on vague generalities very often. So apparently he took the best part of a year to think about whether he should do it.

But the delay didn't really make much difference. Even if he had decided then and there to accept our draft, there would have still been little time for anyone to build an effective, distributed support system for him before he had to say whether he was in or out. Yes, if he'd been wealthy, or a sellout to the wealthy, he could have hired it done. But he wasn't and isn't. That meant that, when he declared, there was absolutely nothing at all in place except maybe a few people connected to his previous congressional campaign plus us--tens of thousands of enthusiastic but completely unconnected and unorganised people. So the whole thing immediately turned into a Keystone Kops routine with everyone scrambling madly to get systems working that should have already been in place, tested, and greased before he ever opened his mouth.

Too few people across the nation knew anything real about Dennis, the corporate media made damned sure it stayed that way, and there was no way to solve that problem from a standing start. So Kerry was handed the nomination, and we've all now seen how well that panned out for the nation and the world.

Fast forward to November 2008. Do we still want to see Dennis being declared President-Elect?

If we do, I propose that we start right now to put together a campaign support system -a 'machine'- using the well-understood program model from industry. It's a model that's universally used in industry around the world to create complex systems like cars, airplanes, and computers and bring them to market.

If we do that, and if we start now and work steadily, we have a 2-year window, maybe more, in which to make it all happen. That's probably enough time. Not for sure (we have to build everything from scratch, and we're amateurs who've never done this before), but probably.

That's if we start now. If we screw around for a year hoping for a miracle--such as Dennis solving the problem for us--then we might as well kiss it off now and save time because there isn't going to be any miracle and Dennis is not going to solve the problem for us. The only way another unstructured campaign could work out is if for some reason it turns out that the corporate media has to play it straight next time and give Dennis the coverage his record and ideas deserve. Does anyone think they will? I don't. I think they'll do exactly what they did before: ignore, mock, and belittle him.

The Jesuit priest and editor Edward Dowling wasn't kidding in 1941 when he wrote about 'the chronic terror among the rich' lest we get people in office like Dennis.

So if the word is going to get out about why it would be a good idea to elect Dennis, it's people like us who will have to build the channels, state by state, town by town. We cannot leave it up to Dennis. If Dennis were going to do it, he'd be doing it right now because, as Genius says, now is the right time to start. And we'd know because he'd be involving us. But he's not involving us, which means he's not doing it himself, which means if we leave it up to him then it is not going to happen. We ourselves must do it, for him and for us and for everyone. If we can't do it --we're too busy, we don't truly care enough, we secretly believe it'll happen by magic, whatever-- then it is not going to happen. Period. End of story. I'm sorry to be so blunt about it, but if we each had a dollar for every time somebody said 'someone should do something about that' but completely failed to add 'and that someone might as well be me', we could all be living in big villas on the French Riviera! The corporate media will not help unless we force them, and the only way to force them is to actually get out there, beat feet, and do the first 80% of it ourselves.



If we do elect to use the program model, it won't necessarily yield a good 'machine', or a successful one. Whether the result is good or successful depends on having people on the program and functional teams who are perceptive and have good ideas and, more important, who can recognise when somebody else's idea is better than their own, and be ego-free enough to say so.

Although the program model cannot guarantee that we'll create a successful system for the campaign, what it fairly much does guarantee is that we will get a system out of it.

The program model doesn't depend on everyone being engineers or having rocket-science doctorates from MIT. Regular non-technical people --artists, accountants, carpenters, teachers-- succeed all the time as members of program teams. If you're an adult and live on your own, then you already know how to do the things it requires, and you do them every day: make shopping lists, get the kids off to school on time with their lunch or lunch money, be cooperative at work, budget time and money effectively. Common, everyday activities.

For the program to succeed, the teams need to do careful, cooperative planning, scheduling, and then carry out the plans by the numbers as much as possible. The planning goal is to identify all the things that need to be done, understand how and where they fit into the larger picture, where the cross-connects and interdependencies are, and how to recover and keep going whenever one of the wheels comes off (the damned things always come off--it's a way of life).

I've drafted a planning template plus a first cut at the program plan. The program plan currently identifies 10 functional areas:

• Commitment solicitation: encouraging and sizing potential public support
• Democracy assurance: making sure on election day that the votes count
• Educational outreach: making Dennis and his politics known to everyone in the US without media help
• Engineering: finding or building the software that make a distributed team functional
• Fulfillment : sourcing and delivering campaign materials
• Marketing communications : copywriting, graphic design, and similar creative work
• Professional support : identifying legal, accounting, and other professionals
• Recognition : providing volunteer staff personal and memorable recognition for all their work
• Scheduling and advance work : making sure the travel and speaking logistics are adaptable and reliable
• Staff recruitment, training, and supervision: identifying who we need where, and how we put them in place ready to rock and roll.

We need at least one person--preferably several--on the program team for each of those functional areas. If you have some experience in one or more of them, or have the basic aptitudes/skills plus a willingness to learn as you go, and you have the time and energy to commit to helping make Dennis the President-elect in 2008 with a supportive Congress, decide how much you're willing to do to make it happen. I'm willing to fill the program-function (overall coordination and helping-out) role, or step aside if someone else also has experience and wants to do it. (I would actually prefer that someone else do it if they have the experience, because I'm already overcommitted. But I really, really want Dennis in the WH in '08, so I'm willing to back-burner other priorities if that's what it takes.)

You need not commit to personally carrying the load the entire distance. The whole idea of doing it in cyberspace rather than a back room in Cleveland is to spread the load across as many people as possible. Last time, as I'm sure many of us remember with pain(!), a ton of things fell through the cracks, and it was a mess. We need to keep that from happening again, but we don't want people collapsing from overwork, either. If we have lots of people spread across the country (and maybe internationally if we can get the FEC's okay), nobody should have to do more than a few hours a week for most of the time. The only requirement is that we each follow through on whatever commitments we do make. It's a part-time, volunteer job, but we have to be clear in our own minds that it's a real job.

If we decide to do it, whoever's doing the program function (that's me, at the moment) needs to find/create private space somewhere (not a mailing list) for the team(s) to work in.

Note: This is a world-readable forum, and some of the participants/lurkers here would probably be happy to run all of us over with a truck rather than see Dennis in office. We do not want any of them on the program or functional teams, nor do we want them to have any window into what we're doing. So, if you intend to sign up, please be prepared to prove your political bona fides, as for example by showing you contributed significantly to the '04 campaign, or by pointing to a long, verifiable history of the appropriate politics, or by being vouched for by people whose assessment of your good will and commitment the rest of us can trust.

[Mairead]

2. A planning template

Planning Template Good planning is like good design: it's an incremental process, sketchy at first with lots of TBDs and guesses, and then becoming more and more detailed with each revision as the other functional planners look at your plan and think of things to suggest to you and you get more information nailed down. You (and your mates, if applicable) own the plan you're working on--what goes into it is up to you, though the rest of the program team have the right to withhold their blessing if they believe your plan is soggy or has seriously bad holes in.

----------------------------------

1. Name of this functional area



2. Summary. This is a very brief description of what this function will deliver to the program, and when. (Consider writing this part last.)



3. List of deliverables. This is a detailed but somewhat abstract list of the problems/needs this function will deal with. What is the problem or need this deliverable will solve/meet, why does it need to be solved at all, and how will your functional team solve/meet it? This is the heart of the plan, so it will probably be the longest part and take the first 80% of your time and energy to write. The rest of the plan will take the other 80%.



4. List of dependencies. If this function depends on some other function delivering something, identify what that something is, the best date to have it by, and the drop-dead date when it either must be there or the relevant part of your function will stop working. If some other function depends on your one, get together with the person(s) planning for that functional area and negotiate deliverables and dates.



5. Staffing needs. Identify how many people must be recruited to perform this function, whether they can be volunteers or must be paid, the number of hours you presume they will work per day/week (whatever number you think they'll work, divide that by 4; people have lives and lives have interrupts that must be serviced), the special skills if any they must bring to the table, what training if any they will have to undergo once recruited, and whether they must be located in a certain place or can 'telecommute' to their campaign job. Remember the cardinal rule: Everything Takes Longer.



6. List of milestones. Milestones are important checkpoints that tell everyone on the program team whether everything seems to be going well or, contrariwise, something is in trouble and needs people to rally around and help out.
   
   Each milestone should be defined clearly enough so that it's easy to say whether it's been passed or not. This usually (not always) means that there should be numbers attached to it: '$N in the bank' (in the plan, N would be an actual number), 'No more than N literature requests still in the queue after M hours', 'N or more volunteers committed to each shift', etc.
   
   Each one of the things this function will deliver to the program should have at least one milestone called out and preferably several incremental ones, so that there are no surprises and success doesn't become an all-or-nothing, do-or-die situation. We are amateurs who have no history to use as a benchmark; we are definitely going to underestimate things and get into trouble. So include lots and lots of milestones. Milestones are our friends. It is much easier to get back on track if we realise something's behind schedule when it'll only take a few person-hours extra work to catch up.
   
   Each dependency should also have at least one milestone called out in your plan, whether your function depends on some other, or some other depends on yours.



7. List of risks to this function. What are the problems that might arise that could delay or prevent one or more of your deliverables being delivered, how bad is each potential problem (show-stopper, severe, moderate, minor), what's your best guess about the likelihood that it'll happen, what are the ways to guard against it coming true, and what should/can be done if it comes true anyway.

[Mairead]

3. I won't post the program-function draft plan here

for security reasons -- it's a confidental/program-team-only document. If you credibly believe you will be signing up to be on the program team, pm me and I'll pm you back with a copy. Please don't ask for a copy if you're not serious about committing.

[Desertrose]

4. Kicking this to the top for now....

Mairead,Genius....I don't know how I missed this thread.

I will read it over later today...I still have someDK material and some disappointed people that Dennis was shut out by the media that things never got off the ground.....

I agree...it will take all the time we have but I think we need to get this up & running.....

Thanks both of you for all your time work & energy...we need Dennis more than we ever ever have.....

Don't give up here yet Mairead:)

DR

[rhite5]

5. Hi all.

I was a strong Kucinich supporter, maxed out donor, and worked on his campaign in Oregon, but not as a leader or organizer. I did take a lead in the final months of the Primaries to help get the Kucinich key issue positions taken into account in the framing of the State and National Party Platform. It turned out to be impossible because things were structured to keep such considerations completely out of sight. But you all know about that!

Just briefly about me..... I am elderly (over 70) and female, too old to actively work on political campaigns now. I have led local campaigns for public transportation and against anti-gay legislation, and have worked on many other local issues (public power, public hospital district exploration) and candidate campaigns. I have been a County Democratic Central Committee officer and am currently an elected Dem PCP.

A couple of things occurred to me as I read through the structural parts of your suggested plan, so I will just jump in with those.....

Believe me I am in no way trying to throw cold water, but it is going to sound like it (sigh)

You suggest that the DK campaign was weak and not centralized enough and you say an awful lot of things fell through the cracks. Here are some of my observations --- some good, some not so good, but instructive.

First: I think the campaign website was EXCELLENT, better than any other except maybe Howard Dean's website. So, we know the people involved in designing and augmenting it were dedicated and sharp, good at what they did, and in tune with us.

Second: The email network worked well -- messages were good and were eye-catching and inspiring. We ALL needed the "inspiring" part when things were looking grim. They continued to be inspiring even after it was obvious that Kerry had the delegates and would win all remaining primaries. We could still go after the issues and try to snag a few more delegates, by convincing voters in the late Primaries they still had a way to show how they felt about the war and a lot of other things --- Dennis' name was still on the ballot.

But as you know, most voters seemed to think their Primary vote was a "bet on a horse race" or was required in order to show they would support the party nominee, not a place to show their personal preference, and we had to fight that. (sigh, again) (I am talking about the late primaries, like in California and Oregon. In both states, had the Primaries been 3-4 months earlier, Kucinich would have gotten more votes and more delegates, so would Dean and Clark).

Third: The state coordinator in my state was a poor choice, an inexperience older man, totally devoted, but without much clue as to how to organize people beyond scheduling monthly Meet-Ups in several cities and towns. He himself seemed not to have a pre-existing network or any connection with State and County Dem Central Committee people. There was more grassroots support for Dennis than he expected, I think. He was not prepared for that.

Fourth: Best leadership came from outside the Democratic Party! At least that is how I saw it in my state. These were other people who picked up the state co-ordinator leadership slack in their own towns or regions and took their direction directly from the National Campaign bypassing the State Coordinator and bypassing the Meet-Ups and bypassing the County Democratic Party. National did what they could to coordinate these efforts where it related to Dennis' travel but they too did not realize how much potential grassroot support there really was, and they weren't ready for it. In my own dealings with the National Campaign people, they were great. No complaints here. There is also something to be said for the populism involved when things are not rigidly controlled at the center. I kinda like the concept.

Some of these local leaders did terrific work, including putting together packed fundraiser events and actual appearance opportunities for Dennis, but it was always independent of the party structure itself and limited to their own small areas and limited to the local funds they could raise. So Dennis was making appearances in small Oregon towns and few appearances in the cities. Typically, these best leaders were not Democrats initially. They became Dems in order to do this because they believed in Kucinich. I tried to get them to apply to be appointed as Dem PCPs or to run to be elected as PCPs in the Primary. They did not want to do that. Now they have left the party again and reverted back to the Greens or have become Independents.

We managed to qualify a few DK delegates in some counties, but they pretty much got squeezed out at the state convention, and no DK input was allowed in the State Dem Platform.

There is a lot of truth in the message there. The Democratic Party has moved away from where Kucinich's strengths are. It is not a populist party anymore. We knew that when we saw what went on at the Convention in Boston. It made me sick. Would the party today even recognize a budding Wellstone?

Two other quick thoughts.... I will just mention them without adding more ranting to this long post ....

• Two Structural changes are badly needed. A Loooong Primary season is a set up for defeat. When the front runner is decided before the horses have hardly gotten out of the gate. I never want to go through that again. Our government badly needs to be opened up to third parties. We have seen how poisonous the two-party system is. That means a major change in the set up of the Legislative branch of government, especially in the committee structure. Both changes are undoubtedly beyond our reach. Dennis and Conyers and a couple dozen others, almost all of whom are in the CBC, belong in that hypothetical third party with a bargaining position in a true coalition government where no single party holds a majority.

• External events may control the 2008 election more than anything else. These are unpredictable things like another War, one where the US and Israel stand completely alone against an alliance of powerful nations, (Russia, China, much of Europe, the stronger nations of South America, India --most with nuclear power--- along with united muslim nations) or a genuine very serious worldwide energy crisis that can no longer be hidden, or more likely both simultaneously because they are very much connected. Credible people expect this has a fairly good chance of happening. Under those conditions of chaos, I would not expect a General Election to be allowed at all. Just at a time when the people of our whole country would be demanding a leader like Kucinich.

[genius]

6. I think the wrong people were running the campaign.

He let people run parts of his campaign who had their own agenda. The campaign could have learned more about grass-roots operations from Dean. In the Dean campaign, the local organizations were more autonomous. There was a downside to Dean's organization. In some places, the grassroots got out of control in the Dean campaign and started engaging in stuff that could have gotten Dean in a lot of trouble.

Certain people (particularly one I can think of from the LA area) within Dennis's campaign felt threatened by grass-roots organizers. Dennis needs to make sure that these people are not in a position to control things next time around. He should have gotten someone like Bob Fertik to run his campaign.

Kucinich was the only real progressive in the race last time and Dean managed to prevent that message from getting out. We need to get the American people to understand the message this time and to give them a better sense of who is who. Dean is pro-occupation and that word needs to be spread - in case Dean decides to run again.

[rhite5]

7. One thing that came through to me, loud and clear .....

few people really understood what ANY of the candidates stood for!

I saw intelligent people in internet forums who were projecting on their favorite candidate, whoever he was, the positions and attributes they themselves believed in. The spinning was incredible and, worse, they sincerely believed what they were saying! There are dozens of examples of this. They also seemed to know very little about Kucinich beyond a handful of oft-repeated distortions, which they took as gospel. And I am talking about people that I consider generally pretty well informed.

Our efforts to correct this situation successfully depended on whether or not we as individuals already had established credibility with our listeners. Without that credibility we looked like another cult of eager, but blind, hero-worshippers.

It was easier to sell Kucinich to our real life friends and acquaintances who were not being subjected to all the cult hero-worship we saw on the web. They tended to be eager to read his position papers or summaries. (probably because they were not getting much of any information from the media, so they were hungry for it).

As far as California goes, I was surprised DK's support was so thin in that state. After Dean withdrew I expected DK would pick up a lot of votes, especially in N.CA. I did not know about the leadership problems in the DK campaign there. It did seem like Dennis spent very little time in California, and it puzzled me. What you say makes some sense of it.

Running a successful National campaign is incredibly difficult without any help from the media. Identifying good leaders early enough in every state should be easier now. Expanding the email database (with state indentification) is extremely critical. Getting structural help from the Democratic Party is a pipedream, but focusing on specific constituencies (Af-Ams, environmentalists, labor, human rights orgs, P&J orgs, Farmworkers, Naderites, etc.) where there is some structure might have a chance.

This is not the place to go into further detail.

The big question is: Does Dennis genuinely want to attempt a campaign again? My guess is No, unless something happens that causes a sea-change in public attitudes. (I think we may be seeing that now).

[Mairead]

8. bump

[Desertrose]

9. Thanks, Mairead

:hi:
Things have been getting a bit interesting around here.......

[Mairead]

10. You're welcome, K.

It doesn't seem to be attracting any committers, tho.