“I am humbled and honored that so many Americans have joined our cause. And to those who have not yet joined us, I ask you to go to johnkerry.com. Make yourselves heard, enlist with us. And if I am President, you will continue to be heard — because johnkerry.com will continue to be online everyday of a Kerry Presidency.”
– Senator John Kerry, at his win on February 3rd, 2004
Funny thing – this part of the speech started with a telephone call, an email and a chat with Andre Cherny found this paragraph inserted into the Senator’s acceptance speech.
The phone call was from Andrew Rasiej, an ardent Dean supporter who I had met through other connections in my social networks. He and I were talking about Kerry’s pending success – and he made a comment on how to attract the Dean supporters to Kerry. “Dean supporters feel they are going to have access to the Dean Administration, why not give it to them in the Kerry Administration?”
From that call, I walked in and crafted an email making the suggestion real — and asked Josh if I should mail it to Mary Beth or Michael Meehan. He suggested they might not be the best people to send it to — since it would be lost in the avalanche of communications the two of them were getting at that time. So, I decided to send it to Andrei Cherny – and then made a call to David Thorne, John Kerry’s brother-in-law.
On the phone call, I explained to David about how this would be a strong plus in the campaign – especially in terms of bringing access to everyone through this channel. I explained that this would be an excellent step in the right direction to bringing over the Dean supporters. He liked the idea – and would see what he could do to support it.
Next, I found my way upstairs to Andrei, who was in his closet with the TV on CNN – and him furiously typing away at the keyboard. I asked him if he had seen the email I sent, and he said sure, but what did it mean. Five minutes later, he got the gist – and said he would see what he could do.
Later that night, downstairs in the basement of the townhouse, we were watching the victory speech – and when he said that paragraph, I about leapt into the ceiling with the biggest grin on my face. Something about making a difference in a national way was so fulfilling – I smiled for hours on end – all the while watching the server load as the contributions continued to tick in…
