Tea partiers, townhall protesters, Texas secessionists--for the past few months, grassroots organizing has seemed to be mostly the domain of the right. And for a period this summer, they (okay, not the Texas secessionists, but the others) appeared to be successfully tugging the national debate in their direction. As conservative activists, organized by groups such as FreedomWorks and encouraged by the likes of Glenn Beck, poured into the streets, moderate senators began to waver on health care, President Obama's approval ratings dipped, and momentum for reform seemed to stall.
It wasn't supposed to be this way. The reason was Organizing for America. Last year, after winning the presidency, Obama decided to keep intact the backbone of his stunningly efficient, innovative campaign. Previous presidents had outsourced their activism to interest groups; Obama was going to create his own. OFA was supposed to be a new kind of permanent campaign: a grassroots network wielding some 13 million email addresses to mobilize former volunteers on behalf of the administration's agenda (and keep them engaged for 2012). "We've never had a political leader who has continued their organizing while in office like this at this scale," Tom Matzzie, former Washington director of MoveOn, told NPR in January.
As right-wing protesters dominated the news this summer, it would have seemed the perfect opportunity for Obama's much-touted organizers to drown out the conservatives with some coordinated agitation of their own. But they barely made a ripple. Where were they? And how could such a formidable grassroots operation--having just put Obama in office--fall quiet so quickly?
The morning after the election, some 10,000 organizers dialed into a conference call with President-elect Obama, who told them that they would be needed for fights to come. But within the Obama camp, there was disagreement about how, exactly, their services ought to be used. OFA could become a freestanding organization that would advocate independently for the president's agenda. Or it could be folded--along with its formidable fundraising potential--into the Democratic National Committee. Steve Hildebrand, Obama's deputy campaign manager, favored the independent option: It would allow the group to "pressure anybody who we would need to build a coalition of votes in the House and Senate," he told the Los Angeles Times in mid-November. David Plouffe, the campaign's mastermind, disagreed. He had won the election through a precisely directed field operation combined with iron message discipline, and wasn't about to give it up.
A few days before the inauguration, Obama announced, in effect, that Plouffe's view had prevailed: Organizing for America would be securely housed within the DNC. (Hildebrand returned to his consulting firm in Sioux Falls, and would later become vocally critical of the administration's incremental approach to issues such as gay rights. Plouffe stayed on as an adviser, and his firm raked in $376,000 this year from the DNC.) The bulk of the DNC's new hires have gone to support OFA, which takes up about half the square footage at party headquarters inside a putty brown stucco building south of the Capitol.
It got off to a sluggish start. "Just at the moment when the base would have been most interested in rolling up its sleeves and doing something, they were basically asked to wait, that someone else was going to decide what was going to happen, and, in the meantime, please buy this mug," says Micah Sifry, editor of techPresident.com, which has closely tracked the progress of Obama's online organizing since the 2008 primaries. "They built this very muscular organization and, for three to six months, let it lie relatively fallow."
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COMMENTS (6)
Does anyone believe the purpose of OFA revolved around bringing people out into the streets to protest those out in the streets protesting Obama? No, it was after those 13,000,000 email addresses of course. A wonderful motherlode for fundraising.
Or for garnering liberal magazine subscriptions?
Barack Hussein Obama is, well, a fraud. He is not a man "of the people, by the people, for the people." Not unless those people hang around with the Tim Geithners and the Larry Summers of the world.
All throughout the campaign I kept looking for the evidence that Obama had maintained close alliances with those he organized with "out in the hoods" of Chicago. I didn't find it. He faked his way through ... view full comment
Does anyone believe the purpose of OFA revolved around bringing people out into the streets to protest those out in the streets protesting Obama? No, it was after those 13,000,000 email addresses of course. A wonderful motherlode for fundraising.
Or for garnering liberal magazine subscriptions?
Barack Hussein Obama is, well, a fraud. He is not a man "of the people, by the people, for the people." Not unless those people hang around with the Tim Geithners and the Larry Summers of the world.
All throughout the campaign I kept looking for the evidence that Obama had maintained close alliances with those he organized with "out in the hoods" of Chicago. I didn't find it. He faked his way through the campaign and into the White House. And by that I mean he portrayed himself as someone truly dedicated to "changing the way Washington works" when he really had no intention whatsoever of doing any such thing.
I had friends who worked in this cyberspace generated operation and down on the ground [in and around Baltimore] they would point out over and again how far removed this effort was from the stuff that was going on in the 60s and 70s. I was a part of all that back then. Unfortunately I am not physically able to venture out of the house much [living as I am on disability] so I was not able to experience the gap myself. But everything I learned about it confirmed my friends anecdotal rendition.
Grassroots? Right.
So, naturally: "A few days before the inauguration, Obama announced, in effect, that Plouffe's view had prevailed: Organizing for America would be securely housed within the DNC."
Which means Rahm Emanuel and the DLC.
Of course! Bring it in inside the Democratic Party!! The party of the Blue Dogs; the party of Max Baucus, Chris Dodd, Chuck Schumer and all the rest of the revolving door types that run Congress. That run Wshington.
The OFA becomes, "an Internet version of the top-down political machines built by Richard Daley in Chicago or Boss Tweed in New York."
A fraud, in other words. Just like the man who inspired it all.
Marshall Ganz:
"It's much more an instrument of mobilizing the bottom to serve the top than organizing the bottom to participate in shaping the direction of the top,"
Try to imagine Ceasar Chavez and Barack Obama sitting down and discussing EFCA. About sums it all up, right?
But none of this really makes any sense unless you are finally willing to accept what is obvious: that the Democratic Party and the Republican Party really are tweedldee and tweedledum when it comes down to fundamental economic and foregn policy. If you are willing to accept the proposition that the "battles" between them here are largely tactical scrapes revolving around a shared strategic investment in Wall Street so much becomes ever more clearer. From the Wall Steet bailout and healthcare "reform" to Afghanistan and China, the Democrats and the Republicans are the same people. They just haggle over the means to achieve [basically] the same end: sustaining the Bilderberg world.
In the end, OFA is more or less controlled....top/down...by the fake populists behind the curtain.
Indeed, I'd like to thank Lydia DePillis for this post. It is by far the closest thing I have ever run across in TNR to calling this emperor stark naked. About the only thing one can readily admit to by way of embracing Obama is that McCain and Palin might have [MIGHT have] been even worse.
Again, at least with respect to the shared ruling class consensus that is economic and foreign policy in America.
george walton
d/a/j
This really is a timely article. I've been wondering for several months what happened to OFA. I think George is overreacting a bit above. The key problem described in the article is that Obama does not want to cause unnecessary rife within his own party on critical issues. (Without moderate Democrats there is no majority in the Senate.) That's reality. There is a real risk that an e-mail campaign from the White House would backfire. Nevertheless, I, too, am disappointed that in the end the OFA communication was nothing more than fundraising. It could have been and still can be much more. It would have interested me over the past months to hear directly from the White House -- in e-m ... view full comment
This really is a timely article. I've been wondering for several months what happened to OFA. I think George is overreacting a bit above. The key problem described in the article is that Obama does not want to cause unnecessary rife within his own party on critical issues. (Without moderate Democrats there is no majority in the Senate.) That's reality. There is a real risk that an e-mail campaign from the White House would backfire. Nevertheless, I, too, am disappointed that in the end the OFA communication was nothing more than fundraising. It could have been and still can be much more. It would have interested me over the past months to hear directly from the White House -- in e-mail format that I can read at my leisure -- what their observations are on current topics, what I might do (short of giving money that I don't have) to make a difference. Obama's team ran a brilliant campaign, but I expect more substance from this President. Still, what we have in Obama is still indescribably better than what we would have had with McCain/Palin or what we had in GWB. Let's not blur the distinction.
I think george is overreaching and gregja is underreaching. The progressive base is not going to get worked up about a stimulus package better than GWB would have proposed, but not good enough to really solve the problem. BO never pushed for such a package. Ditto for health care. It has become distressingly obvious that BO's highest goal is to find common ground/bipartisanship. If that means bad or incoherent policy, so be it. Yes, policy-wise for the times, BO is better than GWB -- and Chamberlain than Mussolini or Millard Fillmore than John C Calhoun. But critical times call for great leaders more willing to spend political capital and take more risks to try to reach greater goals ... view full comment
I think george is overreaching and gregja is underreaching. The progressive base is not going to get worked up about a stimulus package better than GWB would have proposed, but not good enough to really solve the problem. BO never pushed for such a package. Ditto for health care. It has become distressingly obvious that BO's highest goal is to find common ground/bipartisanship. If that means bad or incoherent policy, so be it. Yes, policy-wise for the times, BO is better than GWB -- and Chamberlain than Mussolini or Millard Fillmore than John C Calhoun. But critical times call for great leaders more willing to spend political capital and take more risks to try to reach greater goals than BO has so far exhibited. America's problems of a stagnant economy, extreme inequality of income distribution, health care costs and availability, quagmires in Iraq and Afghanistan are NOT going to go away by themselves -- or likely to be solved by any of BO's policies to date.
Axelrod paid the Obama activists. Without free financing, they are back to silence.
The pure democrats were not part of the game plan.
The pure democrats should organize, and coin intellectual inventions to wake up the society.
A little sanity would do a lots of good.
Axelrod paid the Obama activists. Without free financing, they are back to silence.
The pure democrats were not part of the game plan.
The pure democrats should organize, and coin intellectual inventions to wake up the society.
A little sanity would do a lots of good.
Please note:
I have a genetic disorder: Hyperbolia.
I always overreact. Like a political cartoon. And like a political cartoon, my aim is to both stir things up and entertain. My two heroes are Herblock and Maureen Dowd.
That says it all, right?
Nobody seems to "get" me here in TNR. Maybe it's because I don't either.
gw
Please note:
I have a genetic disorder: Hyperbolia.
I always overreact. Like a political cartoon. And like a political cartoon, my aim is to both stir things up and entertain. My two heroes are Herblock and Maureen Dowd.
That says it all, right?
Nobody seems to "get" me here in TNR. Maybe it's because I don't either.
gw
greg:
Still, what we have in Obama is still indescribably better than what we would have had with McCain/Palin or what we had in GWB. Let's not blur the distinction.
george:
I agree with you wholeheartedly with respect to social issues: abortion, stem cell research, gender roles, race relations, gay rights, immigration, separation of church and state etc.
Also, with respect to the selection of Supreme Court nominees and other judicial appointments.
Only regarding gun control and the death penality are they virtual as one now.
And for this reason alone the Democrats should be and must be embraced each election clycle. Even a con man like Obama.
And even with respect to economic and foreign policy th ... view full comment
greg:
Still, what we have in Obama is still indescribably better than what we would have had with McCain/Palin or what we had in GWB. Let's not blur the distinction.
george:
I agree with you wholeheartedly with respect to social issues: abortion, stem cell research, gender roles, race relations, gay rights, immigration, separation of church and state etc.
Also, with respect to the selection of Supreme Court nominees and other judicial appointments.
Only regarding gun control and the death penality are they virtual as one now.
And for this reason alone the Democrats should be and must be embraced each election clycle. Even a con man like Obama.
And even with respect to economic and foreign policy there are folks in the Democratic party far to left of the DLC types who run it now.
But for those in here who play up this "liberal democrats" vs. "conservative republican" bullshit regarding Wall Street, K Street, healthcare, Afghanistan etc, I don't buy it. It's largely a sham that many in the mainstream media are more than willing to go along with. Sadly, more as an act of ommission rather than commission. They all read each other's narratives and the narratives are all ultimately rooted in the relationship between the media and the big corporations that pay the bills through advertising.
Even PBS. Charlie Rose, like the CEO of Goldman Sachs, is a member of Bilderberg. Enough said.
george walton