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However, history is catching up with us and we are about to embark on a new and dramatic project…convincing Oprah Winfrey to run for President in 2008 as well as building an organization to help her win when she does.

In 2000, Willy, Gypsy and a friend named Paul Larsen started a Web based campaign to do something similar during that year's election campaign. Within a week of going live with their Web site, they had been featured on CNN and were being besieged by interview requests from other major media. In 2004, Patrick Crowe, a businessman in Kansas City, MO launched a similar campaign exclusively using more traditional media. He too was quickly deluged with media attention. He even wrote a book on the subject after the fact.

Oprah put a stop to both these efforts by issuing a General Sherman type denial of interest…"If nominated, I will not run. If elected, I will not serve." We were all reluctant to give up the task we had undertaken, but surrendered to the lady's wishes.

This year we have combined forces with Mr. Crowe. He is carrying out offline duties…public speaking, book tour, snail mailings, etc….while we tend to the Internet. The current state of our efforts is demonstrated by a Web site with the same name as this essay.

However, this essay is not intended just to show off what we are doing or simply to get Oprah elected president. We are also attempting to widen and deepen the use of the Internet as a political organizing tool. MoveOn.org and the 2004 presidential campaign of Howard Dean have already shown the way. Reaching a huge base of mostly Democrat voters, these two Internet efforts raised large sums of money and created connections to this group which have transcended the election campaigns that spawned them.

On the other hand, their success, though very widespread, was also very shallow. That is, Dean spent all the money, failed to get the nomination and then retreated to the safety of his current position as head of the Democrat party. MoveOn had a different problem. It was created to help the candidacy of John Kerry and, as such, is mainly a tool of the Democrat party. It is attempting to use its base to raise money and consciousness about various issues favored by the Democrat minority in congress. That is, it functions almost entirely as an anti-George-W-Bush organization. This is not to claim that particular issue isn't worthwhile…we have seldom had a more failed presidency than his…just that it only works until a Democrat is elected in his stead. After that, it will fade into the woodwork.

There is a more serious failing to both these efforts. They were and are centrally directed and controlled. That is, they completely fail to use the main Internet advantage over other media, its ability to form "communities." The only issues that are treated are those deemed worthy by the central leadership. The only "organization" is a periodic "broadcast"…in the form of spam email…of that leadership's desires of the moment. This spam is used to raise money, to lobby congress on various Democrat sponsored bills and whatever else lights their fires. There is a token effort to involve their single "community"…the mailing list of MoveOn members…in the form of bulletin boards, but there is little evidence that the wishes of the constituency seriously considered. As long as anything makes G.W. look bad, it's said to be good. Period. Anything else is ignored.

So, how are we any different? First of all, Oprah does not currently appear to want the job. We want her to want it. We believe that there are millions of others who also want her to want it. We see ourselves as nothing but catalysts to get the presidential draft going. We are creating a database of information about others like us who want her to want it...all collected voluntarily from those persons. Besides the usual demographic information…how they can be contacted…it also has information about what they are willing to do to get Oprah elected.

Right now, we are in the expansion phase of our effort. By necessity, we need to find people in each and every precinct in the country to develop a viable volunteer base of campaign workers. As the numbers increase, we will begin to devolve organizing tasks to other people, leaving the entire coordinating efforts at the state, municipal and finally, precinct levels to those others. The database…which is now centralized…can be farmed out to those local organizers for further development of the project. At the precinct level, people can actually meet one another. At every level, they can communicate with one another quickly on the Net.

In short, we will have succeeded if and only if we can work ourselves completely out of the job, making what we are doing no longer necessary. Why don't you join us? If nothing else, we will have energized that portion of the voting population...now over 50%...that finds voting for the conventional candidates to be a worthless exercise.

Talk to you later...

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