MoveOn Grows Up

For instance, MoveOn was repudiated by Republicans and Democrats alike in September 2007 when the group ran an anti-war print ad in the New York Times that questioned the integrity of Gen. David Petraeus, the commander in Iraq. "General Petraeus or General Betray Us?" read the ad. Republicans introduced resolutions condemning the ad that easily passed in both the House and Senate.

Pariser defended it at the time. But now, more than a year later, he says he "would have worded the ad differently."

"MoveOn is still evolving, still maturing, still learning what its boundaries are," says Tad Devine, a longtime Democratic consultant. "But make no mistake about it: This election might be decided by a few votes in a few states. . . . Having those hundreds of thousands of people communicating with each other through e-mails, energizing the base, can make the difference."

Beyond Hitting 'Fwd:'

On Aug. 29, just hours after the Alaska governor became the first Republican woman on a national ticket, MoveOn sent an e-mail to its members titled "Who is Sarah Palin?"

"Yesterday was John McCain's 72nd birthday. If elected, he'd be the oldest president ever inaugurated," read the e-mail. "And after months of slamming Barack Obama for 'inexperience,' here's who John McCain has chosen to be one heartbeat away from the presidency."

That became one of the most forwarded e-mails in MoveOn's history, Pariser says. (The group can count how many people click on the link in the e-mail.)

Two weeks later, on Sept. 10, MoveOn sent another e-mail, this one titled "Disgusting."

"John McCain and Sarah Palin are repeatedly deceiving, manipulating, and flat-out lying. And polls are showing that some of those lies are convincing voters," the e-mail began. "Palin says she opposed the 'Bridge to Nowhere' -- when in fact she fully supported it. McCain says Obama wants sex-ed for kindergartners -- when he voted for a bill to protect them from sexual predators."

That e-mail raised $1.2 million within 24 hours, Pariser says, the most a MoveOn e-mail has raised in a single day.

"In a way, Palin's selection was yet another wake-up call, another reminder of just how high the stakes are," says Pariser. "A lot of people have said that she's energized the evangelical base. Well, she's energized the liberal base, too. Our energy level went way, way up."

The challenge for a maturing organization is to move beyond forwarding e-mails and facilitating online donations. Can MoveOn persuade independents and Republicans to cross party lines? Is it increasing voter turnout in swing states? How can it avoid being reduced to parody? A recent headline in the Onion, for instance, read "Obama Deletes Another Unread MoveOn.org E-Mail."

Those are the questions in the minds of critics such as Clay Shirky, author of "Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations." Sending an e-mail to your congressional representative is so easy that it has "become effectively meaningless," writes Shirky.

Shortly after the book came out, Pariser asked Shirky to lunch. On the day of the meeting, Shirky Twittered: "I'm going to lunch with MoveOn. If I don't Tweet again in two hours, they had me killed."

"Eli sees MoveOn as a community-organizing platform that happens to run e-mail campaigns," says Shirky, recalling the conversation. "I'm inclined to think of them as a message and fundraising organization that does some community organizing. They do some, but they can do so much more."

In the past five years, Pariser has beefed up the group's offline strategy. In addition to airing pro-Obama TV ads, the group will spend about $5 million in field efforts this cycle.

MoveOn collaborates with political scientists at Yale who are studying the impact of its canvassing and get-out-the-vote efforts in 2004 and 2006. In 2004, about 70,000 members went door to door in 12 states trying to increase voter turnout. This year, Pariser estimates that about 200,000 will have gotten involved by Election Day in more than a dozen states.

MoveOn is also holding hundreds of "Call for Change" house parties, at which members call voters in swing states. On a recent Sunday night, MoveOn members made half a million phone calls in two hours. They urged supporters to volunteer for the Obama campaign -- and, in classic MoveOn style, posted photos on Flickr of themselves talking on their phones.

The Communications Hub

"I give it a 55-45, with Obama winning," Pariser says from behind his standing desk in his home office. Thomas Jefferson and Donald Rumseld, he notes, had standing desks. "I somehow picked up that trivia."

He got up at 6:20 a.m. on this late September day, went to back-to-back meetings in the afternoon ("with other online advocacy groups," he says, repeatedly declining to elaborate), then hurried home, which is a cramped two-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn where he sometimes has to jiggle the toilet handle to make sure the water stops running. He lives with his wife, Lindsay, a human resources manager for a construction firm. They married in June.

"When I told people that MoveOn turned 10 today, many said, 'What? Ten years ? It feels like it was yesterday,' " says Pariser.

"But to me, it feels like it's been decades since 2001 when I first started getting involved. That was such a different world. In 2001, online organizing wasn't really on anyone's radar. There was no YouTube. No Facebook. No group of liberal bloggers, no Net roots. And Bush? Bush was absolutely ascendant. . . . The Democrats were in absolute disarray."

"Don't get me wrong -- a lot can change between now and November 4th. Obama can lose," Pariser says. "But here's the thing: Independent of the Obama campaign, in our own lives, through our own networks, we're doing everything we can to win this election. Back in 2001, people felt alone, like there was nothing you could do to get involved. Not anymore. People are finding each other. People are communicating. People are pumped up.

"What happens in our in-boxes doesn't just stay there."