by Rob Kall,

OpEdNews.com

Shortly after starting my own, personal effort -- my website, OpEdNews.com  --to do something to take back the country from George Bush and his fellow nation-raping right wing sociopaths, I met the local democratic committee head. I invited her to take a look at the website.

But she couldn't she didn't use the internet. But she was excited about what I was doing, but she couldn't let her local grass roots people know about the meeting, except by phone, because.... she didn't use the internet.

I went to that meeting and gave a brief talk. Most of the people there did use the net. But they weren't the leader. The discussion was about using the old tried and true tools of the local politics-- a fund-raising brunch, poll watching,  setting up a table at a local shopping center to register voters.

There was not one mention of using the net-- no email, no websites (no, the local democratic committee didn't have one, and even the county site was skeletal,)  no listserves, nada. Don't get me wrong, the gal who is committee chair is a local treasure of political acumen, connections and commitment. But why not have it all?

I hadn't thought about that meeting, which occurred last spring, but, today, I received an email from someone at the state level of the democratic party. It was a missive about a close count for a judgeship.

I decided to write back letting him know about my site, with its 80,000 visitors a month (and growing) and offered to help, even though my site is really more nationally and internationally oriented (with people from 100 countries visiting it each month.)

I also mentioned that there are a decent number of other progressive, pro-democrat candidate websites that might also be interested in being helpful.

And that was when I thought of my local committeewoman and her lack of connection to the internet, quickly followed by the amazing job that moveon.org and the Dean campaign have done to change the landscape of politics as we know it. I thought of how the republicans are so effective at weaving together their media resources, with the help of all the big th ink tanks funded tens of millions of dollars.

And I realized that the democrats now have more resources than they know what to do with, more resources than they are using effectively, and more opportunities than they are taking advantage of.

The miracle of the Dean campaign is not magic. It's smart use and integration of the potential of the internet. I can assure you that the right wing is not missing a beat and is studying the Dean campaign and either already using the strategies or gearing up to use them, to add them to the resources they already manage effectively, like their echo chamber.

It is time for people who are democrats to take a look at the leadership of the democratic party at all levels. Leadership requires initiative and adaptation. When new technologies emerge that enable quantum leaps in efficacy, in growth, then leaders have the responsibility to use those tools. Failure to do so is a failure of leadership. Every state, every county should be learning from the Dean phenomenon. They should be building internet resources and strategies, creating websites, listserves, email databases, using meetup.com to communicate with local voters, raise funds and build the energy and momentum that must be built to take back the presidency and the congress from the right wing.

And they should be building their own local news and opinion websites, encouraging local contributions.

In addition, they should be tapping the energy and resources of the national progressive websites-- there are several dozen-- and exploring ways to work with them. We progressives have powerful echo chambers ready to be activated, amplified and empowered.

Moveon.org and the Dean campaign have given us a glimpse of the store of  energy and passion the progressives and the internet freindly members of the democratic party have, ready to be tapped. We're beginning to see some of the positive results. More organization is necessary. More visionary planning and strategizing must be done quickly to tap the tools of technology that have already been developed and the passion and energy waiting to be unleashed.

It is time for the old-time leaders to either do their job as leaders and tap the power of the future that moveon.org and the Dean campaign have unveiled... or to step aside and allow new leadership that can do the job.