Last Thursday I spoke at the Progressive Politics and Technology Roundtable in Washington DC, hosted by the wonderful Farai Chideya, founder of Pop & Politics.com, and organized by the visionary Ann Yoders of the Bronx Cash Register Consulting Company. I took advantage of the occasion to offer a "modest proposal" for a Revolution in the Progressive Movement.

Another Liberal Blog (a.k. a. vawolf at MyDD) was intrigued enough to transcribe my comments, and lamented the shortage of time that prevented me from delivering my full speech. So here it is in full...

Revolution in the Progressive Movement: TV is our Enemy
November 18, 2004
Bob Fertik
http://democrats.com/revolution

Many of us here are recovering from what happened two weeks ago. But we have no time to lose; we must move from mourning to action.

So let me offer this proposal here tonight:

It's time for a revolution in the progressive movement - a revolution in technology, strategy, and vision.

Here it is in a nutshell:

First we need to take mostly everything we do as a movement and move it on to the Internet. Fundraising, member communication, local organizing - the whole 9 yards. I know most of you here tonight are with me on this.

But let me go one step further: we need to work together to build a massive e-mail list of 100 million Americans who support us on the issues.

In Florida, 52% voted for Bush. But that was dwarfed by the 71% who voted to raise the minimum wage.

Let's extrapolate nationally. 115 million votes were cast for President. At 71%, that means 82 million Americans would vote to increase the minimum wage.

What could the progressive movement achieve if we had two-thirds of their e-mail addresses?

Let's go even further. Since Election Day, Bush has claimed a fraudulent "mandate" to privatize Social Security and eliminate the progressive income tax. 50 million Americans lack health insurance, and Bush's neglect will make things worse.

I believe 150 million Americans would oppose Bush's policies, if they understood the end results.

What could the progressive movement achieve if we had just two-thirds of their e-mail addresses - 100 million?

100 million e-mail addresses is an ambitious goal. But it is a goal we can achieve, if we make up our minds to do it - and invest some serious dollars.

Moveon has 2.5 million e-mail addresses. How much did they spend collecting each name? Zero.

John Kerry and the DNC built a comparably large list. How much did they spend? Peanuts - the cost of a few 30 second TV ads.

Think about it: this year, progressives and Democrats raised hundreds of millions of dollars. I repeat: hundreds of millions.

A small chunk of that was well spent - a small amount on the Internet, a larger amount paying organizers to go door-to-door registering voters, educating them on the issues, and getting them out to vote.

But the bulk of that money was utterly and completely wasted on TV.

It's time to get real: TV is our enemy.

Every dollar we spend on TV goes into the pockets of General Electric, Disney, Viacom, Time-Warner, and FOX - or rightwing chains like Sinclair.

They gladly take our hard-earned money and laugh all the way to Congress, where they bribe our Representatives to expand their corporate monopolies and silence our progressive views.

They've been playing us for suckers for 40 years. Is it any wonder we keep losing the political game?

I've been involved in the progressive movement since 1977, the year the amazing Fannie Lou Hamer of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party died. Fannie Lou's most famous quote was: "I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired."

Are you sick and tired too?

Let's make a decision here today.

As progressives, let's decide not to spend one more penny on TV or direct mail. From now on, let's put every penny into a Manhattan Project effort to build an e-mail list of 100 million Americans who agree with us on the issues.

Here's the bottom line: E-mail lists are power.

When we can press "send" and reach tens of millions of voters on an issue we all care about, we will have clout.

When we can generate millions of letters and phone calls to Congress, we will win legislative fights.

When we can mobilize thousands of voters in all 435 Congressional Districts, we will hold our Representatives accountable.

And when we can recruit progressive candidates and start their campaigns with lists of half of their constituents who support progressive issues, our candidates will win.

As Joe Trippi wrote in his great book: The Revolution Will Not be Televised.

The future of progressive politics is e-mail, not TV.

If we work together, I know we can build a list of 100 million Americans who support us on the issues.

Who will help start this revolution?

FAQ:

1. Is this about spam? Absolutely not - I'm talking about opt-in e-mail, not spam. I propose using paid Internet advertising to find people who agree with us on the issues and are willing to sign up for our e-mail lists. Blogads (which we're all familiar with) are one good way to do this, and there are other ad networks like that. The Kerry campaign was very successful running Flash ads on sites like the NY Times - I'm sure many of you saw them, including the clever one with the stack of bills. But they were only interested in using those ads to raise money - not building their e-mail list. This kind of Internet advertising costs money, but it is a drop in the bucket compared to the hundreds of millions that were wasted on TV.

2. How many voters use the Internet? I have never seen a study with that exact data (if you have, post it below). The Pew Internet & American Life Project comes the closest in its research. Here is an interesting analysis of the Demographics of Internet Users. Nearly 2/3 of Americans use the Internet. The least usage is among Americans over 65, which is no surprise. But 60% of Americans 50-64 use the Net, so as that cohort crosses 65, the over-65 numbers will increase dramatically. I believe Internet usage is significantly higher among the 2/3 of eligible adults who vote than the 1/3 who don't, but I haven't seen hard numbers on that either.

3. What about less affluent Americans, who tend to be Democrats? Looking at ethnicity, Hispanic use is 59%, close to the 67% for whites. Black use is only 43%, so continuing efforts must be made to close the "digital divide." I believe the cost of computing is becoming an ever-decreasing issue, since computers are now as cheap as TV's - which are found in virtually every American home. For Internet access, $10/month is a lot cheaper than cable TV or a cellphone, and free wireless networks are spreading. (Speaking of cellphones, I would amend my proposal to include SMS messaging as well as e-mail - I think RockTheVote did a great job pioneering political communications via SMS.)

4. Can progressive groups of various kinds (candidates, party committees, PACs, c4's, c3's, 527's, for-profits, etc) collaborate on building a massive list? Absolutely. Clearly the database would need a "home" - a massive server with the ultimate degrees of security and privacy. The "home" would act as a vendor to participating groups, charging them fees for services (database management and e-mail delivery). But a well-run "home" would save the groups money, because they wouldn't need as much expensive in-house capability. There are a number of companies that already provide this kind of service - including Democrats.com - so all that's needed is a decision by the larger listowners to move in this direction, and a solicitation of competitive bids. Of course, persuading the listowners to devote their resources to e-mail listbuilding is the heart of the challenge, and it's a fundamental question of money, strategy, and vision - that's why I'm calling it a Revolution.

5. What about the TV consultants who are getting rich under the status quo - won't they fight this to the death? Absoutely! But you can't have a Revolution without shedding a little blood. There are a few dozen of them, and millions of us. This fall, they were entirely discredited by their unimaginitive ads. If they want to pick a fight, I have 3 little words: Bring It On. If they are smart and want to survive as consulting firms, they will have to adapt by switching their expertise from broadcast advertising to Internet advertising.

6. Why focus on e-mail, as opposed to all of the other Internet activities? Here's the simple answer: all the other activities are thriving. I include blogging, forums, zines, newsletters, petitions, mobilizations, music, video, Flash, etc. Activists who are inspired (or driven) into these activities need support, but they have learned to put a Paypal button on their site - just like street artists who put a hat on the ground. If we had a huge e-mail list, we could tell our audience about the best of these efforts, and those Paypal accounts would swell.

7. The progressive movement is so disorganized - who could bring the whole movement together? Here are several ways we could do this:

• Elect Howard Dean the next chair of the DNC, and ask him to make this his mission
• Get me hired by George Soros, Peter Lewis, Steven Bing, and/or Herb & Marion Sandler, who together contributed nearly $70 million to beat Bush. With folks like these backing this effort, I'm sure we could be very "persuasive" with the leaders of the groups they funded.
• Vote with our credit cards. All of the Democratic and progressive groups depend on our contributions. We could organize a "rent strike" - put our contributions in escrow until the groups agree to join the Revolution.
• Organize. Put up a web site and make a fuss - something we've all learned to do brilliantly for peanuts!