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Why am I so worked up about the YouTube debate?

Because I want to win.

This is not an emotional issue for me. It is rather a business decision about whether or not the Republican Party will be able to compete effectively over the next twenty years or so. The media business has had to respond to the brutal realities of the digital world; in his most candid moments, the editor of the New York Times talks about the death of the print edition. Is anyone thinking about what GOP, Inc. looks like 10 or 15 years from now?

Zack Exley has long been the online bete-noire for the right. He’s had George W. Bush personally call him a “garbage man,” which of course, made him even bigger than he already was. He recounts how the Kerry campaign, which he was part of, planned to wage a conventional Democratic campaign in 2004, being outspent by the Bush machine by 2 to 1 or more. Until something incredible happened. Kerry became the nominee, and the money just started pouring in from the Internet, and it was enough to almost match the fearsome Ranger-Pioneer apparatus.

This is the scary part:

However, if any of the GOP campaign managers are expecting the same thing to happen when their guy emerges as the nominee, they’re setting themselves up for one big disappointment. What they need to realize is that the potential for online fundraising and mobilization that the Kerry campaign worked to maximize had been entirely created by the progressive movement at large: the blogs, MoveOn and other large and small online grassroots organizations and the campaigns of the other primary candidates, above all the Dean campaign.

As Joe Trippi noted the other night in Charleston: that online base-building process has not yet happened on the right. Walking away from the YouTube debate is just one more way that the Republican establishment is stubbornly refusing to get started.

Here’s that Trippi video I commented on earlier. The part that you campaign managers need to watch starts with about 2:33 left in the tape:

In 2004, the Democrats could have expected to be outspent by 2-to-1. In March 2008, it’s the Republicans who’ll have to brace for that fate. As Zack correctly notes, Democratic online fundraising has proven to be just as potent as Republican bundler programs AND Democrats now have bundlers of their own. (Sorry guys, but this was entirely preventable.)

This is the part where you’re wondering, what in the heck does YouTube have to do with money? If I go on YouTube, will I raise tens of millions? You have to be kidding right? I’m glad you asked.

At the end of the day, the issue is not YouTube. The YouTube debate snub is the symptom, not the disease. If Republicans fret about a simple debate format, which is really just the modern version of the 1992 townhall debate, how in the heck are we going to be make the really bold, gutsy decisions to transform our campaigns so we can raise over $100 million online and recruit millions — yes millions — of volunteers over the Internet?

If our campaign operatives believe the comfortable lie that 95% or more of the action is offline, we will never have the vision or the capacity or the incentive to change. We will never announce our candidacies online. We will never do a Sopranos video. We will never successfully inflict a Macaca moment on a vulnerable Democrat. We will never raise any real money online. We will never build the kind of organically grown lists of 2-3 million that MoveOn or the Kerry campaign or ONE built. We will never have the courage to empower our supporters to power us out the rough patches, as John McCain could easily have done two weeks ago.

We will instead be defensive and afraid of the new world, and that’s no way to win.

What’s the alternative? Simple. You start by setting what business writer Jim Collins calls “Big Hairy Audacious Goals” (BHAGs). And then you work tirelessly to meet them. You make the online campaigns matter, in the macro sense of everyone knows that’s where the action is, and that’s where the real decisions are being made. Online, audiences follow content. The progressive Internet was dead until — holy crap! — they were actually organizing, funding candidates, and outwitting the traditional engines of the left. There’s no reason that can’t be true for Republicans. They said we couldn’t do GOTV in rural and suburban areas — until we did it. They said we couldn’t recruit 1.4 million volunteers in 2004 — until we did it. And I’m optimistic that they’ll say we’ll never know how to use the Internet — until we do that too.

If you think this is about snowmen, you are sadly mistaken. These aren’t frivolities. These are the fundamentals. Without fundamentals, we die.

So, the answer is no, I don’t want to be arguing about a stupid debate format. I want to be talking about transformational change in the way we practice politics, and a wild overreaction to a little openness in a debate is what’s getting in the way of that. The campaign objections to this debate are like a group of astrophysicists quibbling over multiplication tables.

Or maybe some anonymous campaign aide is right and I do have a “narrow focus.” But that quote is revealing in itself. I can assure you that the Democrats don’t think of this stuff as a “narrow focus.” And if you win, you’ll get to learn that lesson the hard way in seven months.

IT’S FUNNY THAT MITT ROMNEY talks about “respectfulness.” Because I always assumed that was a two-way street. The Save the Debate coalition includes many grassroots supporters of the various candidates, but two I’d like to single out are Ann Marie Curling, of the Elect Romney in 2008 blog, and Josh Hersh, who just spent his summer working his heart out for Rudy Giuliani in Des Moines. They aren’t weirdos or recluses or pedophiles, but two of the strongest supporters of their candidates you’ll ever meet. If they were ever to get off the bus — not that they will — word would spread and hundreds more, many generations removed, would follow. That’s the kind of energy that super-volunteers like Ann Marie and Josh can bring to a campaign.

And, candidates, you are snubbing them too!

That’s what so sad about this whole debate. If your campaign’s best supporters feel alienated by your online efforts (or lack thereof), or feel like you’re not giving them the tools they need to evangelize on your behalf, isn’t the issue on your end, not theirs?

But isn’t this a macro problem, and it isn’t about the Internet or YouTube. It’s not just that they won’t listen to YouTube questions. It’s that they won’t listen on immigration. They won’t listen on spending. They won’t listen on standing strong for the troops. Rightly or wrongly, conservatives’ sense of betrayal in the second term is rooted in one key theme: they won’t listen. That’s the root cause of the anemic state of grassroots activism, online and off. They won’t listen.

Listening doesn’t mean pandering or bending to the will of your audience. It does mean engaging them in a meaningful dialog, telling people why you disagree, and respecting them. It means pugnaciously tearing into the other side with logic and facts. When George W. Bush has tried too hard to seem “Presidential” and “dignified” and “above the fray” his approval ratings almost always dropped. Why are our candidates seeking to repeat that mistake?

In fact, virtually the only sustained rise in Bush’s approval ratings not related to a terrorist attack or a war came during the 2004 campaign, the time when he appeared the least Presidential, the time when he tried hardest to appeal to us as a regular guy, the time he wasn’t afraid to confront — even ridicule — his opponents.

Take note, Governor Romney. Decorum is highly overrated. I don’t want a President who’s Presidential. I want a President who fights. Especially when we are at war.