Yesterday's Public Advocate election in NYC should be remembered.  It's important because of what didn't happen.  Andrew Raseij ran on a platform of "wireless for all."  Tom Friedman raved, the blogosphere went into paroxysms of joy.  One of us!  Someone with a clue was running for office!  Someone who knew all about tagging and Technorati and Flickr was going for mainstream appeal!

In the end, Raseij got only 5% of the vote.

How do we react to this unbelievable event? If we have an ounce of humility left, we realize that the clueful are out of touch.  People don't care (enough) about progressive wireless-based platforms.  People riding on the subway just want to get home and aren't thinking about the collective conversation.  The most transformative of transformations, the electronic excitement of our age, has not touched the hearts and minds of the voting public.

This is bad news for our collective online future.  If no one cares about openness, about connectedness, about interaction, it can all be quietly taken away. 

We have some choices to make.  We could keep going to conferences (boy, are there a lot of conferences).  We could keep recognizing the coolest of the cool A-list blogcasters, and we could really get into the people's video.  We could moan about how Skype doesn't have open APIs.

Or -- we could start working on true grassroots appreciation of the open internet and all it makes possible.  That's what I want to do. I supported Raseij and his campaign, and I bet his team has learned a lot about electioneering.

This election should be remembered.  The blogosphere couldn't sweep a new Public Advocate into office (trust me, it's a pretty obscure position), and we're not making progress on the Hill or at the FCC.  It's time to make a big public deal out of access to the open internet.