Netroots vs. Grassroots: Part II

In Part I of my post on this subject, I asked two questions that I found relevant after reading Kirsten Powers' description of the divide between the netroots and the grassroots of the Left. How will the "Netroots of the Right" be described 4 years from now? And can the grassroots of the Republican Party ever merge successfully with the future netroots of the conservative movement? I particularly enjoyed a response from "davidfarrar" who says we should have a long term, "beyond GOTV," plan to attract people to the netroots of the Right in order to give added value to the grassroots of the Right, and further mentions that the Georgia GOP is starting to do this.

Jason Horowitz of the New York Observer wrote a long story on the recent Netroots Nation convention in Austin. He confirmed the divide between the institutional Democratic leadership and the bloggers when "the bloggers in the crowd were asked to act like grown-ups and limit their grievance-airing to an allotted ten-second boo-hiss session before [Nancy] Pelosi took the stage." Ed Madej, a blogger with DailyKOS, had an interesting historical observation about the netroots of the Left:

"The first YearlyKos, it was like 'Holy Heck, we can actually organize ourselves, this is astonishing,'" said Madej, 55, using the convention's original name. "The second year, the candidates came and we realized we had a voice in picking the nominee." This third year, he said, had a less rollicking mood, as the bloggers, now "cautiously optimistic" that Barack Obama would win the White House, began to contemplate the burden of power. As Madej put it, "How do we govern with a Democratic majority?"

The uncertain prospect of venturing into the unknown landscape of the netroots having an impact on policy-making after the election did not stop bloggers from figuring out how to move forward on that subject, as Horowitz explains:

"The bloggers were content to focus on their workshops and panels, including "Taking the Populist Uprising to the States," "Insanely Useful Tools You Can Use to Keep Track of Congress and State Lawmakers" and "Time for Acton: How the Netroots Can Lead on Health Care Reform." They ate their lunches out of cardboard clamshells and debated whether Obama's site was sufficiently democratic and whether they had any real impact in determining his policy platform."

So it's clear that the Left still has no idea how to successfully merge the grassroots with the netroots, partly because, as Powers explained in her article, that the netroots of the Left "embraces partisanship and confrontation" over debating what policies can move the country in the right direction. 

This morning, I attended a presentation by Greg Casey, President of CEO of BIPAC, an organization that has successfully created grassroots networks across business community in several states, to fight everything from anti-development legislation to anti-free market ballot initiatives, and to share information about policies, short-term and long-term, that affect business. In mentioning several observations, he pointed out two shifts:

• There has been a communications revolution where more people are going to new media to find political information rather than the old media.
• There has also been a shift in our economy, from a domestic industrial one to a global digital one.

Yes, these are obvious points. But he followed that by saying that over 55% of employees look to their employers for political and policy information. That's surprising because one might think that in engaging the middle class, especially in economically turbulent times, there might be a backlash towards "big companies" and "big bosses" that make millions of dollars, leaving the middle class laborers to gather the crumbs. But Casey pointed out that over 70% of American workers consider themselves "investors in the economy", through their job directly or the benefits from their job (401Ks, etc.) indirectly.

So Casey and BIPAC made it the mission to engage employers in political issues through their employers. It's no longer sufficient for businesses to just create a PAC to donate to candidate, pay dues to a trade organization to lobby on their behalf, or to leave other industry-specific items alone because "it's not their fight." Casey mentioned that it's hard for leaders in the business community, who are usually center-right (especially on fiscal issues), to get together to divise a grassroots strategy with employers and their families because they're busy running their businesses.

But it's become clear that in these new media and new economy revolutions that money can no longer buy good economic policies. The Left, and those who embrace socialist tendencies, have had time to organize their grassroots strategy and their netroots strategy, but separately. Casey mentioned that in 1939, a poll was taken to ask whether or not it was a good idea to "tax the rich to redistribute to the poor", and even during the turbulent times of the 1930s, only 35% of Americans responded positively. He further explained that this year was the first year where more people responded positively to that question than people who responded negatively. [I still have to find sources for these statistics.] But if these numbers are true, it's pretty scary.

One last thing that Casey pointed out was the fact that there were 13 million voters who voted for the first time in the 2004 election, and neither party, Republican or Democrat, decided to target or identify what their motivation was. Everybody knows what happened in the 2006 election, and yet the Democrats thought that their win was a repudiation of the war in Iraq. What folks don't realize, Casey said, is that the number one issue for the voter, who voted for the first time in 2004, casting their ballot in 2006, was jobs and the economy, which of course is the number one issue today.

So based on this, can the grassroots of the right successfully merge with the future of the netroots of the right? Absolutely, as long as we emphasize policy, especially policy that can focus on the Sam's Club voter, over partisanship. Does partisanship have it's place? Sure. But there are a list of things we have to do in the long term that can be successfully done with a merging of netroots and grassroots tools:

• Start identifying voters, new and old, and their motivation for voting (the Obama and Mark Begich campaigns are cold-calling folks in Alaska, not asking for their votes, but asking them what issue is most important to them)
• Invite voters to participate and involve themselves online, and through those tools, invite them to participate on the ground (Soren has a great post on this subject)
• Reach out to not only the business community, but to other stakeholders (no matter how big or small), that share our values and principles, so that we can share our tools to add value to their outreach programs
• Reach out to these stakeholders via state, county and local party organizations, because it would be efficient and  helpful in building a farm team

Thoughts?