More Dean decompression  

The Gadflyer has an interview with Matthew Gross, a central figure on the innovative internet side of the Dean campaign (more about this here). He has several interesting insights, but this assessment of where the advantage in grassroots internet campaigning lies especially caught my eye:

They've learned from the Dean campaign and they're investing heavily in the Internet. My greatest fear is that while Democrats wring their hands about how much control to give over to the grassroots, the Right will simply pour money into the net and overtake us. Our advantage at the moment is strikingly fleeting.

Let's hope this is wrong. My understanding of the Dean campaign was that money didn't really motivate people's involvement through the internet, and that the kind of grassroots activities people were participating in online had more to do with the level of distributed control within the campaign, their policy of individual empowerment, and most importantly just the enthusiasm of individual volunteers. Money might buy advertisements (and that seems to be Kerry's approach), but it's not going to generate a movement like the Dean camapign did.

Not much related, but here's an article on what Dean's up to now. For some reason I find myself liking him more and more now that he lost... I hope he ends up with a powerful position in the administration and gets to strut his stuff.