I respectfully submit that you have choosen a worthy Goal and deliberatly left Strategies and Tactics open to participants. The majority of people who are most experienced and practiced in those areas spend their time distracted with the need to developed them in order to pursuade people like us to pull one lever or push one button and not the other. Now that the election is over and we are no longer distracted by the robo-calls, e-mail spam, outrageous junk mail and incessant political adds on TV, we should take stock of what is left for us to decide: basiclly nothing. We, meaning average people, are expected to go back to sleep and await the call to tell us who to vote for again in two years. If your reading this,
than you are not satisfied with this process. I credit Unity08 greatly for establishing a Goal of having the President be from one party and the Vice President from another.
Unfortunately, I think you are trying to impose civility on an uncivil system from the Top without properly considering that those of us who may want to make this change are basically on the bottom. We all understand that new media types have empowered us all beyond our previous capacity; but in every instance, each media type imposses it's own limitations: I would not have heard of Unity08 if you had not recieved some free time on Cable TV AND had access to follow up on the Internet. The fact that I have Cable TV, solicit emails from various candidates, review Newspapers and Magazines and listen to Talk Radio makes me, in the eyes of many, A Political Geek. I assure you, I am a concerned citizen with no important connections.
Allow me to disclose my inclinations. I consider myself a Casey Democrat, but I am loath to directly involve myself in any political campaign. I listen to talk radio, am as outraged by the words of Sean Hannity as he wants me to be, but would never call him because his tactics are so unfair. I watch Hardball, but disdain the way Chris Matthews takes one word or phase out of context to work someone over and then refuses to allow more than 30 seconds for a reply. Joe Scarborough seems reasonable to me. US News and Roling Stone are good magazines. I love C-SPAN. I, II & III.
So back to Strategies. You are righly focused on the Moderate Agenda and the need to get people from both parties to engage the people in promoting the common good. Now is the best time to promote it, but how many people remember this site exists,
and how long will common ground be persued before the '08 election campaign begins?
If you listen to Hannity, the hatred never stops. He refuses to take even a one day vacation from spewing hatred towards "Liberals." May I suggest one small strategy is for Cooler Headed Republicans to approach the Bosses of people like Sean and demand he be replaced with a rational person! I'm not asking them to shut down Talk Radio or even offer equal time. I'm just saying that, as Americans, we should not support or condone "Hate Speech", which is, in fact, his daily practice. Furthermore, you must realize you will never shut down what is tollerated as "Free Speech." In fact, you need to counter it. In the next few years, it will no doubt move on over to Cable TV en force, as well as into Youtube and whatever other technologies begin to be more dominant in our daily lives.
On to Tactics. Current.TV I'm sure many of you have heard of this combination of a cable channel and a web site that allows viewers to vote on and select content, presents all in tv content in 7 minute segments or less, and encourages viewers to develop their own segments and post them on the website where members decide which ones get aired. This is the kind of Power you need to reach voters and engage them in issues. You could begin by preparing segments for youtube. You can turn to the likes of Al Gore, who sits on the board of Google, and to Bill Gates or insiders who have access to MSNBC AND/ OR C-SPAN. Particularly at this time, I believe all of these people and more would be open and sympathetic to your goal, and welcome the opportunity to have 7 glorious minutes to tell their story, any political sory, for which they could expect nearly instant feedback. All with Unity08 in control!
Of course, the must be other stategies and tactics, and I would be delighted to have everyone's feedback. Especially since I don't know of any other rational place where such a suggestion at this would be considered at this time. Regardless of what you think about this suggestion, my training, which comes from various sources, tells me you cannot achieve any Goal, no matter how worthy, without developing sound strategies and workable tactics. Good Luck, sTeVe