Joe Trippi invited me in as a guest speaker at the seminar he leads at the JFK School of Government at Harvard. Man, that was fun, although I apparently depressed several students judging by the number of them who were googling for some variation of noose “how to tie”. You know you’re being depressing when, in response to a question about the world in twenty years, you use the phrase “surface dwellers.”

I began with 15 minute informal talk about the miserable shape our democracy is in. But, I said, during the Dean months, I felt something different. I think we call it “hope.” It came not from Dean or his policies. It came from the connection to other Deaniacs and the sense that it was in our power to make a difference together. The sense that democracy is ours and that it sounds like people talking with one another – that’s what I loved about the Dean campaign.

I get some of that from the blogosphere. It’s one place where the spark still lives.

Then I shut up and we had an interesting discussion about how realistic the Internet hope for democracy is. Trippi is less pessimistic than I am.

At the end, I asked for a show of hands: Who thinks Kerry will win, and who thinks Bush will? It was 50-50.

Categories: Uncategorized dw