NOTE: Howard Dean will become chairman of the Democratic Party this weekend. Consider this an open letter to the new boss, from the bottom of the grassroots.

The year 2004 did not represent a “generational election” because people live longer than they used to. Thus, the Nixon Coalition was able to get the knees to jerk by turning 2004 into 1968. Democrats went along by nominating a man of the 60s.

Had this been a true generational election Vietnam would have been irrelevant, just as the New Deal was irrelevant to those marching in 1968, and the Spanish-American War was history to the hungry of 1932.

Will 2008 be the generational election? Maybe, but maybe not. In that year a person born in 1955, at the height of the “baby boom,” will be only 53. That’s still old enough to matter.

But a new generation is coming along, and that’s where Democrats should concentrate their attention.

The last generation had a name, Baby Boom. The new generation has a name, too.

The new generation is the Internet Generation.

To this generation the Internet is just as natural as TV was to us. Young people understand its metaphors and take them for granted. If you’re saying “www” you’re too old. Think texting, think e-dress (for address), and remember that India is a Skype call away. Also remember that all these tools will change, and change often, over time.

I should not be your analyst here. You need someone just out of college to tell you what is going on. And the issues of this generation have yet to fully emerge, although I can guess what some might be:

• Free access to information and to other people
• A global view (vs. a national view)
• Balance (of trade, of the budget, of payments, of power)
• Sustainability (2050 isn’t beyond the horizon)

You say, “not me,” but you don’t speak for the Baby Boomers. George W. Bush does. Karl Rove does. Baby Boomers are Republicans, always have been. Bill Clinton never won a majority, and Jimmy Carter barely scraped by against the man who pardoned Nixon and thought Poland was free. Those victories were aberrations. Don’t kid yourself. The Baby Boom is red. It’s narrowly red, but red nonetheless.

Every new generation rejects, not just the previous generation, but its issues and attitudes. Our parents emphasized thrift, and service, and gave us enormous freedom along with wealth. We have given our children wealth, entitlement, and the language of freedom without the reality.

All this has yet to crystallize around anything. But it will. And Democrats need to be ready when that happens, with institutions, and systems, and stands on issues that will resonate with the coming generation.

We already have many of the issues. Democrats believe in multilateralism. Democrats believe in environmentalism. Thanks to Howard Dean, Democrats again believe in balanced budgets.

But many Democrats associate the stand of technology industries, and copyright, with being “right” on technology. That’s wrong. Both the tech industries and the content they serve belong to the Boomers.

We need to stand for Open Source. I’m not talking about Linux or Windows here. I’m talking about an open source attitude, an open source politics, and an open source way of doing business.

It starts with our institutions. We need to build-in technological mechanisms for true two-way, massively parallel communication. Movable Type doesn’t provide that. Moveon.org doesn’t provide that, either. What happened in 2003 and 2004 was only a prelude, and it could be the end, if we think that voters only provide money, and manpower, to causes and strategies devised at the top.

Chairman Dean needs to assure that the DNC is always in session, 24-7. Technology is part of that. You need discussion systems that scale, that empower users to create their own threads, and that enable moderators to keep the signal-noise ratio high.

But you also need people. You need trained moderators at every level who will enable discussion, who will make sure every personal e-mail gets a personal response, and who will work closely with local officials to make sure concerns are dealt with. If I have a problem with a local Democratic official, I should be able to send one e-mail and have someone within the party looking into it. Not every dispute will be smoothed out, but the party will know who each politician’s enemies are by becoming part of the process.

That last paragraph defines an open source party. It must be open to incoming ideas, and open to dealing with them. This is in stark contrast to GOP politics of business interests and pressure groups, and in stark contrast to past Democratic politics based on interests and identity. We have to start dealing with people as unique individuals, scaling not just our technology but our human infrastructure as well.

As we do this, the issues that touch the Internet Generation will make themselves apparent, and so will the stands the party must take on them. Get the technology right, get the human infrastructure right, and everything else becomes a matter of simply working the plan.

I think Howard Dean has a Clue about this, but I don’t think he gets the whole picture. Neither Dean for America nor Democracy for America properly scaled. The people at the top of his organizations have never really been in touch with those at the bottom, because they didn’t have the human middleware necessary to make that happen, and they were prevented by the campaign laws from creating it.

This is the party-building exercise that I am certain will bring the Internet Generation to our side, because it’s in line with how the Internet Generation expects things to work. Young people want open systems, they want fast response, and they expect personal service.

It’s not too much to ask, even though it’s a lot to do.

Sooner started, sooner done.