( – promoted by odum)

If it’s campaign season, regular GMD (and Kos) readers know what to expect:  a slow trickle of candidate diaries, designed to establish at least a baseline of credibility with the netroots community.  This first contact is followed, as often as not, by an Act Blue link.  And only a fool could miss the message:  the online community is a place to go fishing for volunteers or money, or both, but no serious politico would otherwise spend too much of his or her time in the blogosphere.

I like to think my campaign for the State Senate from Chittenden County is fundamentally different, for a fistful of reasons.

One, along with old-timers like Odum and Cathy Resmer and Bill Simmon and J.D. and Ntodd and Julie Waters and Maggie Gundersen and Christian Avard and Jack and Haik and others, I helped to stake out the cyber-boundaries of the Vermont blogosphere, such as it is.  It still isn’t anything like the maze of sites associated with California or New York, but the Vermont blogosphere has a distinct character and a solid history now because of the efforts of the group I mention above, and a whole cast of others I don’t have time to mention.  And it’s a point of pride with me to be ranked among that group.  

So when I come to the blogosphere with this diary, I like to think I come not as a first-time visitor, but as an honest to God stake-holder, one who’s pulled his weight in the community from the beginning.

Two, I’ve always thought that a political blogosphere without a three-dimensional component was an exercise in play-acting – fun but essentially frivolous.  Unless netroots sites can reliably convert digital passion into real-world results, they’re playing directly into the stereotypes with which they’re typically dismissed.  

For that reason, I’ve always made it a personal mission to bring netroots types together in real-time and actual space.  GMD and Vermont Daily Briefing have teamed up to present the yearly Hamburger Summit because it’s endless fun, yes, but also because we all believe in the importance of people coming together, talking things over, and hashing things out.  

And when VDB has co-sponsored a genuine campaign event – like the string of events we staged in support of the Obama campaign – it has always been with an eye toward heightening the impact and the relevence of the netroots.

Three, the issues near and dear to my heart have not been added to my list to appeal to online readers and bloggers.  They are near and dear to my heart because I’ve discussed them online for years at this point, because I’ve been forced to test them on a daily basis against the arguments of those who vehemently disagree, because I learned about many of them originally on sites like GMD, or Daily Kos, or iBrattleboro, or Huffington Post.

Take net neutrality.  The prospect of an internet divided by high- and low-speed delivery is not a theoretical problem for me, but a pressing threat.  My own site, VDB, would likely be squeezed out of the market for readers if it loaded three or four times more slowly than CNN’s or Politico’s online sites.  And to my mind the move to destroy the existing level playing field of the net is emblematic of the over-reaching of corporate America.  

Take another example:  our state’s pervasive digital divide.  Why don’t we have universal digital access within Vermont’s borders?  Because for eight years we’ve had a Governor who has openly ceded control of our digital infrastructure to large corporations interested in easy access to relatively deep pockets.  

One more example:  Louisiana-based Entergy’s methodical attempts to evade their clear corporate responsibility for clean-up of the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant in Vernon.  Again, you have a rapacious corporation backed by a biddable Governor; again, you have the people of the state facing a direct predictable threat, in this case the prospect of a $1 billion clean-up.  

It is the netroots community that has educated the state about the dangers and the subtle deceptions, and I’m proud to have come to this issue originally through the advocacy of others in the on-line community.  It’s an issue I’ve made my own, and one I’ve worked hard for years now, trying to make sure that the traditional media understands one fact above all others: when the truth lies either in Entergy’s press releases or in the collective assessment of the Vermont online community, only a fool or a scoundrel bets on Rob Williams.  

Experts like Arnie Gundersen predicted the infamous collapse of the water tower, and online sites like GMD and VDB disseminated the news, and the images, and the issue has never been the same.

Those are some of my credentials, and some of my issues.  But there’s one last way  in which my campaign, and this diary, are different:  I’m not here at GMD to ask for your money, and I’m not here to ask for your vote.  Yet.  

I’m writing to invite you to a party, the kick-off party for my State Senate campaign:  Tuesday the 29th of September, 6-9, at Nectars in downtown Burlington.  That’s it.  

Really, that’s it.

And I could have just posted the invitation at VDB, and called it a day.  Most of you would have seen it, and made up your own minds whether to make the drive.  But I wanted you to know that it matters to me that you know you’re invited.  I wanted you all to know that in my campaign there is now and always will be a place of honor at the table for every blogger, front-pager, reader, citizen-journalist, lurker or digital fellow traveler out there in cyberspace.  

I’ve always believed in bringing the blogosphere together in real-time and real space, and this kick-off will be no different.  Make no mistake:  at a certain point, I will come to you, hat in hand, and ask for your help putting together votes and volunteers and donations.  But for now, I’m asking only that you come and party, in an excellent bar, in a lovely city, with people who share your view of the world and how to change it for the better.

Doesn’t get any easier than that.