Jim Moore’s blog: Innovation, Strategy, Public Policy

I’d like to suggest you consider a subtle but important nuance in how
we think about emergence.  Emergence in society is not like the
emergence that created organic molecules out of primal matter. 
Emergence in society must take into account that society already
exists.  And society is pyramidal, with a few elites living at the
top. 

So emergence does not happen on an empty landscape.  It happens on a rich complex and hierarchical landscape.

Thus consider:  Emergence is when the priorities of the bottom of
the social pyramid start to be expressed in the behavior of the top of
the pyramid.  In the case of the presidential campaign, the people
at the bottom of the pyramid—the millions of people who care about
society—want their own social scene to be richer, warmer, more
vibrant.  They want to enjoy more “social capital.”

When the Dean campaign contributes to the development of social
capital, it is rewarded with contributions and other forms of volunteer
support.  When the campaign gets sucked into a battle of negative
campaigning, like it did against Gephardt in Iowa, the campaign gets
punished by the voters.

This suggests a path forward for Howard Dean: Continue to invest in
creating social capital.  Continue to follow your dream of
facilitating citizen power.  Citizens will lift you up and support
you.

And to the extent that you need to let us all know you better, Howard, help us understand why this dream is so important to you.

Lots of folks are punditing about the Howard Dean campaign—most working
with few facts.  So here are a couple of facts to mull over. You heard it first:

1.  Through today, thousands of grassroots supporters continue
restocking the Dean campaign with cash.  As I reported here
recently, in the 72 hours after New Hampshire more than 10,000
supporters contributed almost $70 each—for a total of $680,000 in three
days.  This shows the power of the large numbers of people that
can easily touch the campaign through the web.  I don’t know what
will happen next, but I can say that numbers suggest that the
grassroots can completely reload the campaign with cash if they want to.

2.  We all know that where an organization gets its funding has a
powerful effect on its priorities—even if the members think
otherwise.  So I find the following intriguing, given the
centrality of grassroots funding in this current period: Probably the
most influential person in the campaign right now is Zephyr, our
grassroots evangelist.  She is organizing all sorts of initiatives
and creating momentum. In addition, word has it that Karen Hicks, the
community organizer extraordinaire who led our New Hampshire grassroots
campaign, and who worked with Marshall Ganz and others to create the
house meeting model, is taking on a new and central role in the
national campaign.

For me, the really important question raised by the Dean campaign is
“to what extent can a political campaign afford to create what
economists call ‘public goods?’”  Public goods are goods from
which
everyone benefits–including rival campaigns, in the case of
politics. 

The Dean campaign invested heavily in several public goods.  These
form what I call the “infrastructure for change.”

First, the Dean campaign invested in promoting the idea of real change
in America.  It made the unthinkable thinkable:  Bush could
be defeated by a true Democrat.  The Dean campaign invested in
building the case for an alternative to the Bush administration and the
Republicans and for an alternative to the Democrats who saw their only
chance of success in being just like the Republicans.

Second, the Dean campaign invested in helping people see the degree to
which special interests like the Enron boys buy influence by
contributing to political campaigns.  Prior to the Dean
investment, campaign finance reform was seen as an arcane topic of
little interest to voters. Now voters increasingly understand the
connection between money and influence.  The Dean campaign let
people act on their understanding by setting up a mechanism that
enabled thousands of individuals to give small contributions to the
campaign.

Third, the Dean campaign invested in grassroots organizing. The Dean
campaign invested to encourage individuals to come together to create
political power.  For example, in New Hampshire the campaign
supported 15 community organizing conventions and 1690 house meetings,
and maintained a staff of 40 community organizers. Across America the
campaign has encouraged hundreds of grassroots organizations.  For
example, there are more than 2000 MeetUp coordinators who host local
MeetUp gatherings.  No matter what happens in the next few weeks,
the political relationships formed among individuals will endure. 
Political power once tasted encourages continuing activism.

Fourth, the Dean campaign invested in Internet and information
technology innovation.  Many innovations were tried, much has been
learned.  This knowlege is now available to the polical world at
large–and it now finds a receptive audience among political
leaders.  This is a watershed change.  Consider this:  I
personally spent more than five years trying to get the Democratic
establishment to adopt advanced information and communication
technologies, as did numbers of other folks.  We were not
successful.  Now that the Dean campaign has shown the way,
politicians are interested, and politics will never be the same. 
Information technology will forever more be understood to be a critical
element of campaign strategy.

The Governor’s campaign is not the only one to benefit from its
investments in public goods.  These public goods help other candidates.  Other candidates have picked up the
message of change.  Other candidates are talking about special
interests.  Our grassroots organization in New Hampshire helped
us, but obviously not enough for us to prevail.  And the lessons
of technology are being rapidly adopted by other campaigns.

I’m proud that the campaign created these public goods. I believe that
the campaign significantly increased “social capital” and the political
empowerment of Americans.  I believe it helped to wake us
up. 

But creating these public goods was expensive.  Creating them came
at the expense of helping voters learn about Howard Dean, the person
and the experienced leader.  And this probably was to our
campaign’s detriment. 
Meanwhile, other candidates focused less on creating public goods, and
more on promoting their own success.

Perhaps in an ideal world the Democratic party would invest in the
public goods, and candidates could focus on being candidates.  The
Dean campaign had to make the investments because the Democratic party
was unwilling to invest in a messaging of change, in grassroots
development, and in information technology innovation.

Bill Drayton of Ashoka points out the change comes to society by way of
entrepreneurs.  Entrepreneurs are those who bring new patterns
into play.  Entrepreneurs take ideas and make them real.

Howard Dean and his team are the true entrepreneurs of the 2004
election.  In business there is a joke about how the pioneers in a
market  often get arrows in their backs.  Howard certainly
took some arrows.  But we should be thankful for pioneers–even
when they take a few arrows. And I am thankful for Howard’s
entrepreneurship!

The white guys in the gray wool suits are coming into the process now–as other campaigns adopt the innovations pioneered by the
Dean campaign.  Perhaps the guys in suits will
prevail.  On the other hand, perhaps voters will learn to value
innovation in democracy.  Perhaps voters will learn to reward
entrepreneurship and creative risk taking. 

We need to help voters recognize and value innovation in democracy.  When voters
reward
innovation we will enjoy a more interesting and successful democracy.

Here, is Roy Neel blogging about the strategy for the Dean campaign. Excerpts from the post:

This year is very different. The media and the party insiders will
attempt to declare Kerry the winner on February 3 after fewer than 10%
of the state delegates have been chosen. At that point Kerry himself
will probably have claimed fewer than one third of the delegates he
needs to win. They would like the campaign to be over before the voters
of California, New York, Texas and nearly every other big state have
spoken..

..We intend to make this campaign a choice. We alone of the remaining
challengers to John Kerry are geared to the long haul—we’ve raised
nearly $2 million in the week after Iowa, over $600,000 in the 48 hours
since New Hampshire. No candidate—not even Kerry, who mortgaged his
house and tapped his personal fortune to funnel $7 million into his
campaign —will have sufficient funds to advertise in all, or even most,
of the big states that fall on March 2 and beyond. At that point paid
advertising becomes much less of a factor.

And we alone of the remaining challengers offer a clear choice to
Kerry. Howard Dean is no Johnny Come Lately to the message of change—he
has actually delivered change in Vermont. Howard Dean has the courage
and conviction to stand up for what’s right, even when it’s not
politically popular, as opposed to the cautiousness, compromise and
convenience that has characterized John Kerry’s 19 years in the Senate..

..Has such a strategy ever worked before?No. It’s never been tried.

But prior to this year, no candidate had ever raised $46 million
dollars, mostly from ordinary Americans giving $100 each. Prior to this
year no candidate for President had ever inspired the kind of
grass-roots activity that has been this campaign’s hallmark. Prior to
this year no candidate for President had so clearly revitalized his
party, allowed it to reclaim its voice, and shifted the agenda so
clearly to a call for change.