Mayor Michael Bloomberg used his first public appearance since announcing switching from the Republican Party to being an independent, a press conference celebrating the alleged success of his 311 program, to showcase his policy creativity to the media.

Bloomberg’s aware that his leaving the Republican Party would confirm to the media, his current constituents and potential presidential voters, that he’s pursuing an independent Presidential candidacy, despite saying wink, wink, I’m not running, and knew the world be watching his first appearance after making public his official political independence. This is why Bloomberg is using a press conference honoring 311, a program that he is particularly but unjustifiably proud of, as the location of his personal Presidential Debutante Ball.

Bloomberg hoped touting 311 success would perpetuate the myth that he’s a non-partisan problem solver. But the emperor has no clothes. 311 is useless.

Politics, politics, blah blah blah. Who cares? I am sick as a dog (or would that be a bitch) and I see no end to this nasty flu.

Which is why I ended up at MySpace. I lost the ability to blog in this haze of kids' flu formula (yes, I am a weenie) and albuterol. Trolling for "friends" on the biggest site on the planet seemed like the most sesible thing to do.

It seems though, there's no getting around this net-working-world if you don't have a MySpace. Heck, if Obama has one, then so should we.

I haven't checked if any of our local politicians has a MySpace profile. If you know of any, post the link to the pages in the comments pages.

I actually have been looking for the right coding recipe to customize the profile pages on our site to resemble the MySpace layout. I just haven't found an efficient way to do it.

Tack one more to the redesign To-Do list.

While I dream up a Daily Gotham MySpace, add me to your friends' list over there. Or I'll pout until my lips turn blue.

The New York Times had a deeply disturbing article in Sunday's Arts section. The article describes several exhibitions on Moses, and flowing from them, an effort to rehabilitate his name, which has since Robert Caro's The Power Broker never quite recovered.

“It could be that ‘The Power Broker’ was a reflection of its time: New York was in trouble and had been in decline for 15 years. Now, for a whole host of reasons, New York is entering a new time, a time of optimism, growth and revival that hasn’t been seen in half a century. And that causes us to look at our infrastructure.”

“A lot of big projects are on the table again, and it kind of suggests a Moses era without Moses,” added [Kenneth T. Jackson, a historian of New York City at Columbia who co-edited the exhibition catalog].

It's true enough that we have a new Moses era, but that requires us to precisely not forget his legacy. And that legacy is mixed. Robert Moses destroyed the South Bronx and built the Cross-Bronx Expressway. He built hundreds of playgrounds in Manhattan, only one of which – according to The Powerbroker, it was decorated with little brass monkeys playing – was north of 125th Street. Robert Moses segregated previously integrated neighborhoods. The parkways leading out to the open air, the ones he built while starving mass transit, feature pretty little bridges built so low that no buses can use them, cutting off the poor (read: the black) from this bounty. Robert Moses' racism permeates literally all he has done. Along the way, he engaged in staggering acts of corruption that would be impossible today, the best efforts of Joe Bruno and Efrain Gonzalez notwithstanding.

The lamestream media are predictably dismissive of today's announcement of a Presidential bid by John Edwards (or so it seems to me), perhaps because they've already decided that Hillary and Obama are the only games in town. My private theory to explain this is simple: journos are lazy, and 'Is the country ready for a black/female President?' stories are so simple they practically write themselves. Hence, they have more time to spend on expense reports and cocktail party chit-chat.

The real news, of course, is that Hillary labors under the widespread perception that she can't win/stands for nothing/will say whatever you want to hear/polarizes (one which I share), and that sheer politeness is all that is keeping the subterranean chatter about Obama's thin résumé quiet, for the moment.

By a simple process of elimination, that leaves Edwards as the guy to beat. Clark never quite caught on with the rank and file (for reasons which elude many), Kerry had his chance (and has that unfortunate foot-in-mouth problem), Gore seems sincere about not running, Vilsack is in fourth place in his native Iowa, and Mark Warner, ah, Mark Warner. Biden and Dodd are lovely Senators; Richardson may be laboring under too-high expectations.

So Time Magazine has named me, and you, and the guy in the next cube over, as person of the year. In fact, we beat out whatshisname, the President of Iran - and we're not even building nukes.

It's a story about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before. It's about the cosmic compendium of knowledge Wikipedia and the million-channel people's network YouTube and the online metropolis MySpace. It's about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes.

The tool that makes this possible is the World Wide Web. Not the Web that Tim Berners-Lee hacked together (15 years ago, according to Wikipedia) as a way for scientists to share research. It's not even the overhyped dotcom Web of the late 1990s. The new Web is a very different thing. It's a tool for bringing together the small contributions of millions of people and making them matter. Silicon Valley consultants call it Web 2.0, as if it were a new version of some old software. But it's really a revolution.

Money quote coming, wait for it...

One of the things I am really loving about this Progressive movement business is this: every other day, it seems, some new and exciting resource comes online, usually linked in some form with DailyKos. Last week, we saw the new Albany Project launch with the express intent of making miserable the life of Senator Roadblock, Joe Bruno.

Today, another Kos alumnus, BondDad, launches his own blog, here. Serious, wonky stuff about the capital markets and various other economic arcana. Check it out.

Blogger Lipris points to this article in the Times-Union; seems John Sweeney is having a hard time dealing with his defeat. Poignant, for want of a better word.

And lastly, if you want to go to tomorrow's Holiday Party, put on by DL21C and everyone else, you might see fit to RSVP, here. Come hang with Charlie Rangel. Good times.

The Democratic Party is an odd creature these days in New York. On the one hand, you have clubs (of which more later), party machines (especially in the outer boroughs), and traditional allied organizations such as labor unions, interest groups, and so on. On the other, there is a vast, independent and expanding universe of insurgent organizations and individuals, mainly web-based, some local, some statewide, some national, some a year old, some a decade. There are blogs (such as this one), think tanks, MeetUps. When you add all of them up, you're looking at a colossus, a force that has dominion in the third-largest state in the Union, capable of moving hundreds of millions of dollars, millions of voters, and tens of thousands of volunteers. As we've seen over the last few election cycles, the leverage of New York Democrats extends far beyond the state, with money, ideas and bodies flowing outward into adjoining states and far, far beyond.

Starting in January, the organization at the center of this multi-nodal universe, the NYSDC, will have two new heads: June O'Neill and Dave Pollak. I hear good things about the former and can attest to the latter being, from where I'm standing, a commendable choice.

The contrast with republicans, who have also chosen a new state chair, is stark. Their new old man, Joseph Mondello, is an exponent of old-line machine politics, having previously led the once-famed Nassau machine to wrack and ruin. As the recent election showed, republicans are in a death spiral in suburbs generally; but the question left unanswered in the Mondello appointment is whether the decline in Nassau had to be so far, so fast, and whether the gentleman who presided over it is really the right choice to lead the heap of ashes that is the New York State GOP. It seems to me that he's being given an opportunity to cast wider the nets of his failure. Mind you, I'd welcome that result – pass the popcorn.

Personal Democracy Forum asked the following:

As we approach the 2006 mid-terms and look ahead to 2008, the editors at Personal Democracy Forum are asking technologists, journalists, bloggers, and politicos to send us 200-word responses to the following questions:

Was the role of technology in politics different in 2006 than in 2004? How did new technology most affect Election 2006, and do you see any lessons for 2008?

Here's my response, included with comments by other technologists and political observers over at PDF:

It’s more than netroots activism. It’s more than neighborhood politics. Neighboroots is becoming and interesting trend : I find myself exchanging on almost a daily basis notes about what is happening here in my little slice of New York City with people who are in far along places like Oregon, Texas and Ohio.

The idea of neighboroots is simple : Many people are using the social networking practices they’ve developed online to expand their political engagement and strengthen relationships within their offline neighborhoods. So I have been able to share notes and ideas with bloggers and campaign volunteers in cities and towns across states such as California, Virginia and Connecticut.

These are not people involved in high profile national races. These are micro-targeted or hyper-local politics offline : City councils, school boards, state senates. Contrary to the trend of online activists or netroots to target national campaign or high profile races, neighboroots are hyperlocal, microniche politics that are being discussed and even provided with resources by online activists across the country. In most cases, these are the races abandoned by their local party machines. So finding others in similar situations is key to some of these activists. You can say that, as they are more engaged in localities, neighboroots activists also happen to be creating online neighborhoods or affinity groups through forums, blogs, wikis an email lists, in order to to exchange ideas and share resources.

So if there are many more local races these year too close to call, now you know why. Thank the activists who are growing the new political phenomenon, the neighboroots.

Say what you will about the New York state party, but they do seem to be opening their front door and peeking out their noses to see what's happening in the wider world. My guess is that someone there read Crashing the Gate, with its emphasis on technology and the grassroots.

The case in point is their newest electoral push using text messaging, which is (as far as I can tell) pretty much unique, for several reasons. Dubbed the New York Democrat Mobile Action Network, the system basically uses the technology behind flash mobs as an activism and information tool.

The way it works is this: you text 'NYDems' to the number 30644 on your mobile, receive a reply that asks for your email and ZIP code, and then proceed to receive targeted action alerts about races in your area. There's talk of refining the data beyond that to enable even more targeted selection, but the principle is pretty awesome, especially if you have a geeky side (which I do). What's especially sexy about this technology is that it's fast: say you're holding a press conference in your tight race against some antediluvian republican incumbent; just text out the action alert to the local network an hour or so before, and you'll have people there. The response rate on these things is amazing, with an immediacy unknown in other channels such as email blasts. People for the American Way used a similar technology during the Supreme Court fight, managing among other things to shut down the Capitol switchboard several times, which I hear sent Bill Frist into a tizzy.

I am worried about 2008. I am worried that people are deluding themselves about Hillary Clinton's electability as president. I am worried that Democrats will not win this year more seats in Congress or the Senate.

But what I am worried most of all is that progressive Democrats, those people who believe government ought to have a good does of "by the people for the people" decision making, socially responsible policies and libertarian values, are being swept aside in favor of the corporational-style of politics the Bushites have unleash on this country.

It is not that I don't like money. I do. I wish I had truck load of it to give it to the groups and people and organizations I believe are making a difference. So yes, I like money. It' just that I believe you cannot favor one part of the equation for another.

The New York contingency of the Democratic party has made the very deliberate decision to not have a grassroots media strategy. Incompetence aside, the Ferrer mayoral campaign shot themselves in the foot because they kept heeding the NY Capitol Hill's advice to stay away from bloggers.

I personally had set up 3 conference calls with bloggers from all around the country for Ferrer. I had worked up the troops and personally asked Markos, Armando and DavidNYC of DailyKos to lead the charge and put a good word for the candidate. I even was able to speak directly to Fernando Ferrer and ask him "do you want the bloggers behind you". He screamed, YES! Calls in the morning, I'm ready. And every single time Fernando Ferrer's communications people sabotaged the effort.

Ferrer, of course, lost.

Yes, yes, I know :

--Clinton will win her Senate seat.
--Spitzer will be the next governor of New York.

Come time to campaign for 2008, though, the seeds of discontent will have had time to bloom and flourish. Come time for the Democrats to call on the people who actually do the work of democracy on the streets of each county, each city and each neighborhood; they will find themselves scorned and outside of the loop of growing social networks blogs like this are building throughout the state.

That's why I am worried.

Democrats will not be able to win 2008 without the networks of social progressives and moderate Republicans that are popping out all over the political landscape via blogs. Democrats will not be able to win 2008 without showing they can take dissent and dish it out as well.

A certain congressman once told me : "We don't want to deal with the nastiness of blogs".

My reaction has always been : Dude, these are the people that want you to win.

Which is why I cannnot stress this enough to the people partying in Buffalo : Activists who take to blogs are not nasty because they hate you. They are pissed off because they think you're not listening. They are people like me who have no significant anmount of money to give but have words, have wit, have wisdom to spare; but more importantly, have influence over their own networks of voters.

Which is why you have to understand why we are tired of knocking on neighbors doors for candidates we do not feel passionate about.

Rage comes not of emotion. It comes from the personal understanding that the country is going to hell in a handbasket.

Whenever I hear of politicos talking about the scourge of bloggers, it makes me wonder about their definition of courage. I mean, wouldn't you rather deal with the wrath of the people who want you elected? Why would you want to shun them and instead go to bed with the people who want you dead? Because, honestly that is what the extremiststs that have taken hold of the Republican party want : they want us all to go to hell. Literally.

That Hillary Clinton, Eliot Spitzer, Chuck Schumer and others in the New York State Democratic Party cannot trust contentious bloggers like the people of The Daily Gotham tells a lot about where we are headed to for 2008.

That's why I am worried.

The Democrats are starting to pave their road to failure in Buffalo, New York. If things stay the course, they're going to loose the 2008 elections to a pet rock.