I have riffed before about the new leadership and skills that are going to be required to operate in self-organizing campaigns. I am particularly interested not in comparing these to the general public but to the current leadership in the nonprofit sector both seem to attract the same crowds and both fail because of the lack of diversity and dispersion.
Who are the internet activists ? the people widely known as "Deaniacs" ? who joined the Dean campaign as it slowly grew from asterisk status in early 2003 polls to the frontrunner position at the beginning of 2004? A new Pew survey provides the first detailed look at the cyber-soldiers of this pioneering campaign. An internet survey with a random sample of 11,568 activists drawn from the online database of those who had contributed money or otherwise worked on behalf of Gov. Dean provides insight into who they are, why they joined, how they reacted to Dean's loss and President Bush's reelection, and what they think about the future of the Democratic Party
Add this to the read list. I also think that the "cutting edge" drove some of these dynamics. As tools and methods for self-organizing lower the barriers to participation the higher thresholds for educational and time to commit will also come down eventually increasing diversity of participants.
