Jan Frel has a great post on the new democrats.org, in which she shares my early pessimism:

…I can’t find much here that’s different from the old Democrats.org, except that there’s the Democracy Bond — (read here monthly political subscriptions), but that isn’t great web design, just a marketing concept.

While the world waits for the organizing tools to arrive, how about a simple directory of links to the state parties — they often list their local events with some efficiency — with a subdirectory listing for contacts to county chairs? It would give at least some appearance that the Democrats are including the web in their 50-state strategy.

She also includes an email from the DNC’s Internet Director, Joe Rospars, which includes:

The ambition is to provide tools so that every person can organize in their precinct and make a meaningful political impact. Most organizations still don’t even try to embrace the idea of empowerment; they’re still completely closed off to people. Many that do tend to do empowerment for empowerment’s sake (asking for feedback that goes nowhere, asking people to take actions that don’t accomplish anything real, asking for money without explaining the content or the plan in a real way, never taking actions offline into the street or into the room where decisions are made).