If you can't articulate a credible strategy to position the Net as the difference-maker in the election, your Internet strategy will be subsumed into a sub-optimal analog strategy. The best you'll hope for is "integration" -- sending an Internet "ambassador" to the offline meetings where the real decisions are made, forcing the Internet square peg into the round hole of fundraising opaqueness and centralized control of all volunteer activity.
McCain's online people have this vision, but I'm afraid it won't make a difference until a new guard assumes the positions of campaign manager, chief strategist, and principal media consultant. There has to be complete buy-in, because these ideas represent a somewhat radical departure from the campaigns of the past.
We saw in the primaries how Hillary's people -- though they were Democrats advantaged by a favorable environment -- were not able to make this jump. The Democratic establishment is in many ways more hostile to the Internet than the Republican establishment because they're the ones who've felt its wrath most directly.
Agree all around.
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