1.  We have to get them elected first.  Don't put the cart before the horse.

2.  I think a lot of people here already know this, so I didn't want to bore them mindless with background stuff, but I am already pretty seriously active in politics year round.  I got involved in the Dean campaign, yadda yadda yadda...  Now I'm part of a local Democracy For America organization which is (by no fault of mine) highly organized and active, at all levels of electoral politics.  We recruit, vet, train, endorse, adopt "socially progressive, fiscally responsible, ethically ... ethical" candidates, some of our members even run for office themselves, which is the case in the campaign I am currently working on.  Most of the campaigns we work on are local - everything from Metropolitan Water Reclamation Commissioner to Congress-critter.  The fact is, if these people win and suddenly become abhorrent, we wont work to re-elect them, and they know it.  We don't spend a lot of time on races that don't need our help (and hence would not be very accountable to us), with the exception of the Presidential elections.  And this is something most of us are working on independently.

I have no idea what Hamsher's group is going to do.  Obama has a notorious reputation of using grassroots progressives to get elected and then kicking them to the curb once he no longer needs them.  I probably should not be saying that right now - but it is a fact.  And from what I can tell, he is not running as a progressive, but a populist.  People should not be supporting Obama because they believe he is some progressive champion, or expect him to magically become one once he is elected.  Not going to happen, people.  I am ok with that.  After 8 years of Bush and the Christian Right, I am ok with a mainstream Dem leader who is not always going to go as far as I'd like him to.   In fact, after eight years of policies guided by a fringe ideological minority, I am down with some unsexy pragmatism.  I think we have some real problems that need addressed before we can start getting huffy.  

Anyway, I do most of my work at the local level.  I support these online initiatives, but feel like I can have a greater impact doing what I do now.  It's also infinitely more rewarding than the MoveOn genre of politics.  

3.  This diary was supposed to be about the experience of working on a campaign, NOT about bloggers and youtube and netroots and such.  I'm more interested in that, and I thought it would be interesting to the reader here - because I don't even know if you have anything comparable in Europe.

"Pretending that you already know the answer when you don't is not actually very helpful." ~Migeru.