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Joe Trippi wrote the following column which appears in today’s Wall Street Journal. Please comment and let us know what you think.

Only the Grassroots Can Save The Democratic Party

By Joe Trippi

The staggering defeat of the Democratic Party, and its ever-accelerating death spiral weren’t obvious from the election results. Two factors masked the extent of the party’s trouble. Without the innovation of Internet-driven small-donor fund-raising and a corresponding surge in support from the nation’s youngest voters, John Kerry would have suffered a dramatically larger electoral defeat. And the true magnitude of the Democrats abject failure at the polls in 2004 would have been more clearly revealed.

Mr. Kerry raised nearly half of his campaign war chest over the Internet. He was so successful at online fund-raising that he actually outspent the Bush campaign in this election. But it was the outsider campaign of Howard Dean, reviled by most of the Democratic establishment, which pioneered the use of the Internet to raise millions in small contributions; Mr. Kerry was just the beneficiary as the party nominee.

And it was the risk-taking and aggressive Dean Campaign that forced the risk-averse Kerry campaign to opt out of the public financing system.
Had that decision not been forced on Mr. Kerry, he would have been badly outspent by George Bush; he would not have been competitive at all throughout the long summer of 2004.

Mr. Kerry’s lead among young voters hid just how bad Election Day really was for Democrats. In the 2000 election, voters between the ages of 18 and 29 split their votes evenly; nine million each for Mr. Bush and Al Gore. But in 2004, two million more voters in this age group turned out to vote. And while Mr. Bush won the same nine million votes, 11 million voted for Mr.
Kerry. But when we set aside his two million new younger voters, the true disaster of 2004 is revealed. In 2000, Mr. Gore and Ralph Nader won a combined total of 54 million votes. This year Mr. Kerry and Mr. Nader got 53 million (ignoring the two million new young voters).

It turns out that Mr. Kerry was a weaker candidate than Mr. Gore. Mr. Kerry lost so much ground among women, Hispanics, and other key groups, that the millions in Internet money, the most Herculean get-out-the-vote effort in party history, and the largest turnout of young voters in over a decade, could not save him. Had the young voters stayed home, the sea of red on the electoral map would have grown to include at least Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and New Hampshire-perhaps one or two more.

Meanwhile, Mr. Bush, received 50 million votes in 2000, and 59 million in 2004. He added nine million votes. That is because Karl Rove had a plan and the Bush campaign stuck to it. There is no doubt that they executed it brilliantly. But the problem for Democrats is not Mr. Rove; it is that they’re doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result. That’s the definition of insanity.

* Since the Democratic Leadership Council, with its mantra of “moderate, moderate, moderate,” took hold in Washington, the Democratic Party has been in decline at just about every level of government. Forget the Kerry loss.
Today the number of Democrats in the House is the lowest it’s been since 1928. Democrats are on the brink of becoming a permanent minority party. Can the oldest democratic institution on earth wake from its stupor? Here are some steps to pull out of the nose-dive:

* Democrats can’t keep ignoring their base. Running to the middle and then asking our base at the end of the campaign to make sure to vote is not a plan. It sure hasn’t worked. And to those who say talking to your base doesn’t work-Read the Rove 2004 playbook!

* Democrats must reconnect with the energy of our grass roots. One of the failures of the DLC was that its ideas never helped us build a grass-roots donor base. As a result Democrats held a lead over Republicans in only one fundraising category before this election cycle: contributions over one million dollars. That shows how far the party had strayed from grassroots fundraising before the Dean campaign. We must build a base of at least seven million small donors by 2006. With the Internet it’s possible. But it can’t just be about the money, it also has to be about ideas.

* The one thing we learned in the Dean campaign was that the 30 or so people in Burlington, Vt., were not as smart as the 650,000 Americans who were part of our campaign. Instead of a DLC in Washington, Democrats should be holding Democratic Grassroots Councils in every county. Democratic National Committee members in each state, along with the state party, should host and moderate these meetings to help develop ideas that come from the people, instead of the experts in Washington.

* A party that ignores the needs of state and local parties is doomed. We must begin to invest aggressively in states we continually write off in national elections. If we don’t, the decline of the Democratic Party in these states will continue until we are non-existent. It’s already occurring in many southern states.

* In a world in which companies like Wal-Mart pay substandard wages with no real benefits, our party has got to find innovative ways to support organized labor’s growth. A declining union membership is not good for the country, it’s not good for working people, and it certainly is not good for the Democratic Party.

* The Democratic Party has to be the vehicle that empowers the American people to change our failed political system. We all know the damn thing is broken. Democrats should lead the way by placing stricter money restrictions on candidates than the toothless Federal Election Commission does. A party funded by contributions from the people can do this. A corrupted and corroded party cannot. The Democratic Party shouldn’t wait for campaign-finance reform-it should be campaign-finance reform.

* Finally, What is the purpose the Democratic Party strives for today? What are our goals for the nation? You couldn’t tell from the 2004 election. The fact is, very few good ideas come from the middle. Ideas in the middle tend to be mediocre. Political consultants have become adept at keeping their candidates in that safe zone. But the time has come to develop bold ideas and to challenge people to sacrifice for the common good. Experts will tell you that you can’t ask the American people to sacrifice individually for the common good. Those experts are wrong-it’s just been so long since anyone has asked them.

Mr. Trippi, who managed Howard Dean’s presidential campaign, is a fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School and an MSNBC commentator.

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MSNBC has a great team of reporters trying to keep you informed — but they can’t be where you are.

During the last week of this year’s election MSNBC tried something different. We started to take reports from Citizen Journalists and MSNBC posted real reports from citizens across the country on our blogs, and talked about many of your reports on the air. It was an experiment that worked. 4,000— yes four thousand— Citizen Journalists filed stories and helped MSNBC cover the election from every angle, including yours. Those “CJ” reports collected over 500,000 hits on our site.

This week we are going to make Citizen Journalist a regular part of MSNBC’s coverage of events large and small. We will put most of the stories you file up on our Citizen Journalist Blog, and take the best reports and talk about them on the air.

I said many times that MSNBC has a great team of reporters trying to keep you informed— but they can’t be where you are— and they can’t see the things you see.

Consider one or more of these as your “official assignment”:

Assignment 1: The war in Iraq.

When reporting, you might want to ask, “How does the fighting in Fallujah affect, if at all, my hometown? Are former neighbors of yours now fighting in Iraq? How has their deployment affected their families/ my family? What have you seen? How have you and others been responding to the Iraq war? Does Bush’s re-election change peoples’ attitude toward the situation in Iraq?

Assignment 2: Travel safety and security.

While on your travels for the upcoming holidays, what have you observed about our nations roads and ports? Did you feel safe when you walked through your airport? Many states are still on high terror alert levels, and security is always a concern.

Assignment 3: Your Thanksgiving visit home.

We’ve been reading a lot of e-mails from viewers about how many impromptu political discussions have bubbled up in dinner conversations amongst friends and family. This holiday may be no different. Are you living in a blue state traveling home to a red one? Was there a difference in culture or atmosphere between the place you live now, and the place you once called home? Are your previously apathetic parents/siblings/cousins now actively involved in the political process?

So over the Thanksgiving Holiday we hope you will join our growing group of Citizen Journalists and file your story. It can be a real piece of news, a story you think we’ve missed at MSNBC, or you can simply tell us what you are thankful for in this season of Thanksgiving.

Some people send in stories, others who are handy with a camera, have sent in pictures that help to tell the story visually— but let your creativity go— if you have a knack for animation have at it and send it in!

We are all experts at something, so if you see a story you know something about or can add something in terms of helping people better understand the story or better understand why something is happening. Send us your insight.

The Internet is empowering individuals to share information, news, and insight in a way that no other medium has empowered the individual in the past. At MSNBC we want to continue an experiment in Citizen Journalism that we started a few weeks ago and embrace the change the Internet can bring to the way we report things— and that experiment starts with you.

So sign-up today, start breaking the news, telling your story, or take the picture that helps make the story clear to the MSNBC community.

And I’ll do my best to get the best stories on the air to MSNBC’s viewers.

Can bottom-up Citizen Journalism add something meaningful to the way a story is reported? I think so, and MSNBC is willing to experiment with it and see if we can make it happen right here.

That’s something I am thankful for as we near the Thanksgiving Holiday.

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During this year’s election, MSNBC tried something different. We accepted real reports from Citizen Journalists. MSNBC posted these reports from everyday folks across the country on our blogs, and talked about many reports on the air. It was an experiment that worked. With over 4,000 stories received and 500,000 hits on our site, Citizen Journalists helped MSNBC cover the election from every angle.

We want to continue this experiment. At MSNBC, we embrace the change the Internet can bring to the way we report things — and that experiment starts with you. So, we are giving Citizen Journalists a regular home for coverage on events large and small. We will post some stories you file up on our Citizen Journalist blog, and take the best reports and put them on the air.

MSNBC has a great team of reporters trying to keep you informed — but they can’t always be where you are — and they can’t see the things you see.

Send us your insight. Be creative. Become a Citizen Journalist to start telling your story to the MSNBC community. So over the Thanksgiving Holiday we hope you will join our growing group of Citizen Journalists and file your story.

Check out my column on this and join me in the experiment. You do your job and I’ll do my best to get stories on the air to MSNBC’s viewers.

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Joe Trippi will be on MSNBC’s Hardball with Chris Matthews tonight at 7:00PM ET to discuss the future of the Democratic Party with other panelists, Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown and former Presidential Candidate Rev. Al Sharpton.

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Five or six months ago, not even thinking that November 5th would be just a few days after our elections, I agreed to a couple of meetings and talks in Europe about how to get more people engaged in the political process— both in terms of campaigns but also in terms of governance.

When I landed in Oslo, Norway I promised myself that I would not try the Lutefisk, a Norwegian delicacy that consists of dried fish, remoistened by soaking it in lye, and then extracting the lye so you are not poisoned when you eat the fish. I let my guard down and tried the Lutefisk and imagine I had the same look on my face as the average Norwegian had when I was asked, “What happened in your elections? How did Bush win?”

The questions were the same everywhere I went.

But now I am back and I haven’t eaten any Lutefisk in over a week, but the news these days is like Lutefisk only the lye hasn’t been leached out of it.

It turns out John Kerry has $15 million dollars left in his campaing coffers. No way that money would have made a difference in Ohio! What were they thinking? Were they saving the money to buy new drapes for the Oval Office?

Then there are the Republicans in Congress who have wasted no time in changing the rules so that a member charged with a felony can still serve in the House Leadership.

Many of you will remember that it was the Republicans in 1994 who (in an effort to clean up the House) instituted the rule that required anyone in the House Leadership to step down when charged with a felony. Now that it appears that one of their leaders (Tom DeLay) may be on his way to a felony indictment the Republicans have changed that rule. How does the saying go? Oh yeah…. “Power corrupts.”

The interesting thing is how the Republicans defend their change of heart saying, “Any District Attorney can for political reasons indict a leader in the House and he would have to step down”. While this is true— it is also true that for 10 years since the rule was passed no such District Attorney has done any such thing. Tom DeLay on the other hand may now be charged with a felony and still serve in the House Leadership— so much for Republican promises to clean up the House.

Finally the Democratic Party seems to be in complete denial that it needs to reform itself from the bottom-up. Forget about putting anyone in the chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee who is carrying water for any of the potential 2008 nominees. Forget about putting anyone in as Chair of the Party who is a figurehead, a symbol, or a placeholder. What the Party needs is someone who is committed to building a vibrant, energized party from the grassroots up to make gains in the House and Senate in 2006, and who will continue to build a party of ideas so that whoever wins the 2008 nomination is leading a modernized Party that can win the Presidency.

In other words— stop the gamesmanship, and the politics as usual— and put some outside the box thinking in place to build a new party from within.

Why do the Norwegians take a perfectly good and moist fish, dry it, and then soak it in lye to moisten it again— then leach the lye out so you can eat something that even the Norwegians admit you have to acquire a taste for?

And why has the Democratic Party taken on the definition of insanity— doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result?

Both remain a mystery to me.

What I know is that now is the time to embrace real reform within the Democratic Party, and now is the time for grassroots Democrats to demand that reform.

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When the blogosphere got hold of exit polls throughout Election Day it sent them into their own personal nirvana. These same exit polls sunk the Bush campaign into a deep depression.

Eight hours later when the world found out that these exit polls were a load of bunk it was no surprise that the blogosphere sank into depression while the Bush campaign was hit with waves of ecstasy.

If these exit polls were so wildly off their mark why do we continue using them to analyze Tuesday’s election?

Case in point…

On Election night we were treated to comment after comment lambasting the youth vote. They said it hadn’t increased it’s percentage of the vote… that these young votes hadn’t materialized… that every election cycle we talk about them turning out in droves but nothing happens.

We should not be using the same exit polls that predicted a Kerry Electoral College landslide as our guide to understanding which voters turned out Tuesday night.

David King writes today in the Boston Globe:

“Start with the numbers. According to Professor William Galston at the University of Maryland, at least 20.9 million Americans under 30 voted on Tuesday. That is an increase of 4.6 million voters from 2000. Four years ago, just 42.3 percent of young people voted. This year more than 51.6 percent did.”

“Young people were especially active in battleground states, with turnout at 64.4 percent of eligible voters. Furthermore, these estimates understate things, because college kids are more likely than other groups (except the military) to vote by absentee ballot. Surveys of college students around the country, done in the weeks before the election, found 42 percent of students planning to vote absentee. Exit polls completely miss these young voters who numbered, this year, close to 3 million.”

Young Americans are awake like never before and studies show the earlier a voter becomes an active voter the more likely they are to be active voters throughout their life.

Politicians beware. A generational giant has been awakened.

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Once you’ve voted be sure to tune in to MSNBC for Election Day news and results.

Joe will be on throughout the day and evening LIVE from the Blogger Cafe at Rockefeller Center in New York City.

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