I appreciate your point, Erin Hill, but I think you’re painting our party with too broad of a stroke. Folks like me, Matt Lira, and Patrick Ruffini really do get that the core challenge isn’t in the software or email acquisition (anyone can buy up big, worthless email lists or process recurring donations), but in grassroots organizing. In fact, I’m staking my entire business on real grassroots organizing as the core of every campaign.

Our challenge in the GOP is that—even now—too many of our campaigns are run by campaign managers or general consultants who still don’t get it. That puts people like us in a position where we want to do the right thing—to build, engage, and activate a community—but are marginalized within the campaign’s larger “media” strategy.

But that’s changing, and fast.

I got my start in politics with Howard Dean’s “Generation Dean” team in 2003. (Yes, I changed parties.) I remember the “Dean Bat” online fundraising campaigns, and when ActBlue got started. You’re 100% right that ActBlue’s success (and the Democratic Party’s success more generally) with small-dollar online fundraising is fundamentally an outgrowth of digital & field organizing at a grassroots level. And you’re also right that Republicans have (so far) largely failed to grok that.

My goal in the next few cycles is to bring that same mindset to my own party so that maybe, just maybe, our campaigns could be a battle of ideas—not tactics—again.