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No We Can't: Obama Muzzled His Supporters
Obama had millions of followers eager to fight for his agenda. But the president muzzled them - and he's paying the price
"Staff are replaceable. A mass of dedicated volunteers is not." — David Plouffe
As the polls were closing in Massachusetts on the evening of January 19th, turning Ted Kennedy's Senate seat over to the Republicans for the first time in half a century, David Plouffe was busy reminiscing about the glory days.
The president's former campaign manager was nowhere to be found at the sprawling war room of Organizing for America, the formidable grass-roots army he had forged during the 2008 campaign. Instead, Plouffe — who serves as a "supersenior adviser" to OFA and its only direct conduit to Obama — was across town at a forum hosted by the Progressive Book Club, where he pimped his memoir, The Audacity to Win: The Inside Story and Lessons of Barack Obama's Historic Victory.
It was a bitterly ironic way to mark the end of the president's first year in office. Together with David Axelrod, Plouffe was the brains of Obama's campaign, the man who transformed a shoestring organization into a high-tech juggernaut. After the 2008 election, Plouffe had taken OFA, previously known as Obama for America, and moved its entire operation into the Democratic National Committee. There, he argued, the people-powered revolution that Obama had created could serve as a permanent field campaign for the Democratic Party, capable of mobilizing millions of Americans to support the president's ambitious agenda. Fresh off the campaign, the group boasted 13 million e-mail supporters, 4 million donors, 2.5 million activists connected through the My.BarackObama social network and a phenomenal $18 million left in the bank. Even Republican strategists were staggered. "This would be the greatest political organization ever put together, if it works," said Ed Rollins, who was to Ronald Reagan what Plouffe is to Obama. "No one's ever had these kinds of resources."
Yet rather than heeding the lessons of Obama's historic victory, Plouffe and OFA permitted Martha Coakley to fumble away Kennedy's seat — destroying the 60-vote supermajority the Democrats need to pass major legislation. In December and early January, when it should have been gearing up the patented Obama turnout machine — targeting voters on college campuses, trumpeting the chance to make history by electing Massachusetts' first female senator — OFA was asking local activists to make phone calls to other states to shore up support for health care reform. "Our Massachusetts volunteers were calling into Pennsylvania or Ohio to recruit volunteers in support of the president's agenda," admits OFA director Mitch Stewart.
It wasn't until 10 days before the election, after OFA finally woke up to Coakley's cratering poll numbers, that the group sent out an urgent appeal to members, asking them to help turn out Massachusetts voters from phone banks across the country. But after having been sidelined by the White House for most of its first year, OFA discovered that most of its 13 million supporters had tuned out. Only 45,000 members responded to the last-minute call to arms.
In the final week, volunteers organized 1,000 phone banks and placed more than 2.3 million calls to Massachusetts. OFA also scrambled to place 50 staffers in the state to gin up a door-knocking operation. But it was too late: In a race decided by 110,000 votes, 850,000 of those who voted for Obama in Massachusetts failed to turn out for Coakley. "The relationship-building process we did with Obama for America," concedes Stewart, "is not something you can manufacture in three weeks."
The failure to reignite Obama's once indomitable field operation has left many of the president's former campaign staff shaking their heads. "How in the hell did we let that happen in Massachusetts?" asks Temo Figueroa, who served as Obama's national field director and is now a political consultant in Texas. "How in the hell did the White House not get Organizing for America seriously engaged in this until there was a week and a half to go?"
As a candidate swept into office by a grass-roots revolution of his own creation, Obama was poised to reinvent Washington politics, just as he had reinvented the modern political campaign. Obama and his team hadn't simply collected millions of e-mail addresses, they had networked activists, online and off — often down to the street level. By the end of the campaign, Obama's top foot soldiers were more than volunteers. They were seasoned organizers, habituated to the hard work of reaching out to neighbors and communicating Obama's vision for change.
As president, Obama promised to use technology to open up the halls of power and keep the American people involved. "If you want to know how I'll govern," he said, "just look at our campaign." His activists wouldn't just be cheerleaders; they would be partners in delivering on his mandate, serving as the most fearsome whip Washington had ever seen. "At the end of the campaign, we entered into an implied contract with Obama," says Marta Evry, who served as a regional field organizer in California for the campaign. "He was going to fight for change, and we were going to fight with him."
The problems started before Obama was even elected. While his top advisers worked for months to carefully plot out a transition to governing, their plan to institutionalize its campaign apparatus was as ill-considered as George Bush's invasion of Iraq. "There was absolutely no transition planning," says Micah Sifry, the co-founder of techPresident, a watchdog group that just published a special report on OFA's first year. In what Sifry decries as a case of "criminal political negligence," Obama's grass-roots network effectively went dark for two months after Election Day, failing to engage activists eager for their new marching orders. "The movement moment," he says, "was lost."
The blame, insiders say, rests squarely with Plouffe. "That was totally Plouffe's thing," a top member of the president's inner circle recalls of the transition planning. "It really was David."
By that point, at the end of the campaign, Plouffe had his eyes on the exit. He was gaunt, exhausted. His wife was about to give birth to their second child. He needed a break. "There was no question of my joining the administration," he recounts in his memoir. So Plouffe, in a truly bizarre call, decided to incorporate Obama for America as part of the Democratic National Committee. The move meant that the machinery of an insurgent candidate, one who had vowed to upend the Washington establishment, would now become part of that establishment, subject to the entrenched, partisan interests of the Democratic Party. It made about as much sense as moving Greenpeace into the headquarters of ExxonMobil.
Steve Hildebrand, Obama's deputy campaign manager, tried to dissuade Plouffe. "The DNC is a political entity," he says. "Senators who you are going to need to put significant pressure on to deliver change — like Ben Nelson of Nebraska, who was opposed to health care reform — are voting members of the DNC. It limited how aggressive you could be." Hildebrand pushed Plouffe to make "Obama 2.0" an independent nonprofit, similar to FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity, the right-wing instigators of the Tea Party uprising. Free from the party apparatus, Hildebrand argued, the group could raise unlimited funds and "put enough pressure on conservative Democrats to keep them in line."
But Plouffe was resolute. Obama was troubled by the prospect of big-dollar donors driving an independent nonprofit, and the DNC offered a ready infrastructure and fewer legal hurdles. "The president is a Democrat," says Stewart, a veteran of Obama's victory in Iowa who took over from Plouffe as OFA's director. "It would be very hard to explain why Obama's grass-roots field team is not housed with his party."
Plouffe checked out to write his memoir — but as a senior adviser, he continued to call many of the shots. In a muddy chain of command, Stewart officially reports to the head of the DNC, but in practice he takes many of his cues from Plouffe. "He has an incredible input on what we do and don't do," says Stewart.
The decision to shunt Organizing for America into the DNC had far-reaching consequences for the president's first year in office. For starters, it destroyed his hard-earned image as a new kind of politician, undercutting the post-partisan aura that Obama enjoyed after the election. "There were a lot of independents, and maybe even some Republicans, on his list of 13 million people," says Joe Trippi, who launched the digital age of politics as the campaign manager for Howard Dean in 2004. "They suddenly had to ask themselves, 'Do I really want to help build the Democratic Party?'"
In addition, with Plouffe providing less input in his inner circle, Obama began to pursue a more traditional, backroom approach to enacting his agenda. Rather than using OFA to engage millions of voters to turn up the heat on Congress, the president yoked his political fortunes to the unabashedly transactional style of politics advocated by his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel. Health care reform — the centerpiece of his agenda — was no longer about mobilizing supporters to convince their friends, families and neighbors in all 50 states. It was about convincing 60 senators in Washington. It became about deals.
"There were two ways for Barack Obama to twist arms on Capitol Hill," says Trippi. "You can get the best arm-bender in town to be your chief of staff — and I don't think there'd be many people who would deny that Rahm is a pretty good pick. Or the American people can be your arm-bender. What I don't understand is why the White House looked at it as an either/or proposition. You could have had both."
The shift in tactics left OFA sitting on the sidelines. A far cry from the audacious movement that rose to the challenge of electing America's first black president, the group has performed like a flaccid, second-rate MoveOn, a weak counterweight to the mass protests and energetic street antics of the Tea Baggers. Rather than turning out thousands of voters at rallies for the "public option" in health care reform, the White House instructed OFA to adopt a toothless, almost invisible approach: asking followers to sign a generic "statement of support." In July, when OFA ran ads asking voters to call their senators and urge them to vote for health care reform, the effort was quickly slapped down by party leaders. "It's a waste of money to have Democrats running ads against Democrats," fumed Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
Not only did the White House fail to crank up its own campaign machinery on behalf of health care, it also worked to silence other liberal groups. In a little-publicized effort, top administration officials met each week at the Capital Hilton with members of a coalition called the Common Purpose Project, which included leading activist groups like Change to Win, Rock the Vote and MoveOn. In August, when members of the coalition planned to run ads targeting conservative Democrats who opposed health care reform, Rahm Emanuel showed up in person to put a stop to the campaign. According to several participants, Emanuel yelled at the assembled activists, calling them "fucking retards" and telling them he wasn't going to let them derail his legislative winning streak. "We're 13-0 going into health care!" he screamed. "We're not going to be 13-1!"
Emanuel also locked down OFA: When liberal activists approached the group about targeting conservative Democrats, they were told, "We won't give you call lists. We can't go after Democrats — we're part of the DNC." It was exactly the danger that Hildebrand had warned about when Plouffe made OFA part of the party apparatus. In the end, the activists scrapped the organizing effort, leaving the president without a left flank in the health care debate.
"Instead of channeling the energy of the base, they've been squashing it," says Markos Moulitsas, founder of the influential online forum Daily Kos. "When special interests are represented by people like Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson, you've got to go after those people. Instead, you had OFA railing against Republican obstructionists, when the Republicans were irrelevant to the debate."
Given Emanuel's background as a legislative insider, it's not surprising that the White House shelved its activist base. "They don't give a crap about this e-mail list and don't think it's a very useful thing," a well-sourced former campaign staffer told tech-President. "They want to do stuff the delicate way — the horse-trading, backroom talks, one-to-one lobbying." The feeling inside the White House, the ex-staffer said, is that "unleashing a massive grass-roots army is only going to backfire on us."
What backfired, it turns out, was ceding populist outrage on health care to the far right. Because OFA failed to mobilize the American people to confront the insurance companies, it allowed industry-funded Republicans, like former House majority leader Dick Armey, to foment a revolt by the Tea Partiers, whose anger dominated the news. Stewart, the director of OFA, says the failure to anticipate last summer's town-hall ragefest was his. "Organizing for America did not properly plan for that first week of August," he says. "That was an error on my part." OFA scrambled to rally its troops, generating more than 300,000 calls to Congress on a single day. But the belated effort typified the group's first year. "It's always reactive and half-hearted," says Moulitsas. "The movement was built on the concept of big change — but they haven't gone after the things you need to do to enact change." Indeed, OFA's own numbers reveal a sharp drop-off in activist participation: All told, only 2.5 million of its 13 million followers took part in its health care campaign last year — and that's counting people who did nothing but sign the group's "statement of support."
"It didn't work — with an exclamation point at the end!" says Rollins, the former Reagan strategist. "They didn't keep the organization alive. They thought it was out there to use whenever they wanted to use it. But with constituents who feel like they've been part of a revolution — as ours did in '80 and '81 — you've got to feed them. You've got to make sure that they feel important." Instead, says Rollins, OFA "e-mailed them to death, but without any real steps to make them feel a part of the process, like they felt a part of the campaign."
In the wake of Coakley's loss, OFA has been silent on the health care front. "There hasn't been a single directive from OFA since Election Day in Massachusetts," observes Evry, the former campaign coordinator. "No 'Let's get those e-mails out there.' No 'Let's phone-bank.' No 'Let's target this politician.' Nothing." The failure to secure a bill through Emanuel's fuck-the-activists dealmaking has created a double whammy heading into this fall's midterm elections: no legislative victory on health care, coupled with widespread disillusionment among the party's base.
Acknowledging that it was blindsided in Massachusetts, the president has summoned Plouffe back to the White House to oversee campaign efforts. The move is an implicit admission that Plouffe's intermittent engagement was part of the problem. "They thought this was the Harry Potter school of organizing," says one insider. "Just wave your wand. But this shit isn't easy."
The good news is, OFA's last-minute blitz in Massachusetts underscored what it's still capable of. In just 10 days, the group generated more than twice as many calls on Coakley's behalf as they did in support of health care last year — an effort credited with helping to cut Republican Scott Brown's final margin of victory in half. Yet asked if the lesson from Massachusetts is that OFA should recommit itself to being a Democratic turnout machine this fall, Stewart is noncommittal. "We're still figuring it out," he says.
Privately, some party leaders complain that OFA isn't doing enough to campaign for vulnerable Democrats. The only true accomplishment from OFA's first year, they say, is the work it's done to build a national infrastructure for the president's 2012 re-election campaign. To reproduce the organizational structure developed by Obama for America in 2008, OFA has quietly deployed paid staff to all 50 states, building a network from state directors all the way down to a corps of supervolunteers, trained in organizing, who recruit an army of neighborhood team leaders. "There's a skeleton of a re-election campaign already set up — beyond a skeleton," says Figueroa, the campaign's former field director. "There's already meat to the bone in every state in the union. Three years away from the next election, that army is already being continually fed. If you're Barack Obama and his political operation, revving the engine, how is that not a good thing?"
The failures of the past year, however, have left a strong sense of betrayal among many who once were Obama's fiercest advocates. "After all the sweat and tears of the campaign," says the creator of a popular pro-Obama website, "we were owed the opportunity to fight for something." Adds another, "We thought we had earned an ownership stake in the future of our country through this campaign, but that ownership stake has been revoked."
Had Obama let his activists lead the charge and gone to the mat for health care reform, would the outcome have been any different? "I can't say that we would have health care reform," says Moulitsas. "But people wouldn't be so demoralized. We'd have an engaged base still willing to fight for that change. And I tell you what: We would not have lost Ted Kennedy's seat."
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99 Comments so far
Show AllYes, I did too!
What this article tells us (as though we didn't know!) is that Obummer is just another opportunist, sold to people like soap. An opportunist who doesn't give a good goddamn about anyone but himself.
And unless those of us who care about the situation shape up PDQ, it'll happen again and again and again and....
Most working people have lives. They don't (they should, but they don't) watch politics, in part because they haven't the time and in part because they don't believe anything they do can have any effect. And they're right, because *WE* don't provide them the information they need in time for them to use it.
People will do the right thing IFF they know what the right thing is! Not many people will continue swimming if they know there are sharks around.
Another scheming, stupid, arrogant article trying to ensure that people think that the democrats are our only hope.
If you were dating two people and both of them were blatantly using you for your money so that they could spend more time with their favorite whores, this article would try to convince you to stay with the one who said "nicer" things to you.
Besides, if you end up with gonorrhea, it will surely make you stronger.
There is no shortage of arrogant stupidity in this degenerate militaristic nation.
-"Plouffe had taken OFA, previously known as Obama for America, and moved its entire operation into the Democratic National Committee"
That is the "smoking gun" that cements the case that Obama never had any wish to change one iota of the Bush/Democrat/Republican policies.
If, If...Democrats believed, Obama was only pretending to be a Bush clone, in his voting record in the senate, this move to neutalize his netroots, once he became president, should have cleared up any remaining confusion among his "obamabots".
BO, the jig is up! More and more people are realizing they have been conned. That is what the Mass. voters said to me. Damn, I hate to write it! But if I was betting $ in Vegas, I would have to put my $ on the pistol, packin, mama from Alaska! Obomba, has not only let his army of misguided but well meaning volunteers down, but the most egregious thing: He has betrayed his people's struggle from slavery; to civil rights and MLK.
the only question is to what extent this betrayal of the base was planned. guess it isn't even much of a question anymore
Rahm Emanuel is an immature bully who probably would have fit well in the Bush Administration. I can see him working with the neo-cons to come up with lies to get us into Iraq. He is unprincipled - but probably represents Washington well. It is a city of unprincipled politicians who put the american public along with the rest of the world behind the needs of their wealthy and corporate sponsors. Obama has shown which side he goes with. "Change We Can Believe In" not!
Rahm Emanuel is an immature bully who probably would have fit well in the Bush Administration. I can see him working with the neo-cons to come up with lies to get us into Iraq. He is unprincipled - but probably represents Washington well. It is a city of unprincipled politicians who put the american public along with the rest of the world behind the needs of their wealthy and corporate sponsors. Obama has shown which side he goes with. "Change We Can Believe In" not!
Obama should be impeached and I'll sign a petition in a heartbeat. He is the biggest scam ever to hit this nation. I have even less respect for him than I do for GWB. At least Bush let everyone know what he is - a warmongering elitist of average intelligence. Obama totally duped those who voted for him by his "Yes We Can" bs. I am so done with him and I don't care what happens to him or the democratic party.
Let's be fair. The decider was an accomplished liar. Remember no nation building and compassionate conservatism.......now, where's the petition.
I'll sign too. Bring it on.
Article gets bogged down in a lot of insignificant details and misses some obvious facts about the so-called democratic process. Although I just sound like a bitter old socialist, it makes no significant difference if Brown won in Mass. or Rahm or anyone else.
The larger context is that in our system the only "choice" you have if the Ds screw you over is to vote R.
The author gets lost in the forest and can't see the trees.
"destroying the 60-vote supermajority the Democrats need to pass major legislation"
Most ridiculous statement that keeps being repeated. With the blue dogs and that mangy dog Lieberman, Democrats couldn't get 60 votes to pass anything worthwhile anyway. Stop blaming Coakley.
We have just had a "Plouffe, the magic dragon" moment.
agreed...
they couldn't pass major legislation with the help of a suppository...
Yup. It's the Constipated Congress.
"his agenda"????
And what exactly was that agenda, in light of the past year?
If you read between the lines this article really illustrates that the Dems are as much the problem as the R's. It's all about the big bucks and pocket greasing by the corporations. The only ultimate solution is to get the big corporations out of politics and likely we need a 3rd party candidate and many millions of people in the streets and voting their true conscience to pull it off.
To quote a friend: "If you were dating two people and both of them were blatantly using you for your money so that they could spend more time with their favorite whores, this article would try to convince you to stay with the one who said "nicer" things to you."
I wonder what a CD-readers poll seeking to know his approval rating would reveal.
How about that CD admin: Why not conduct several polls per week? The software's simmple enough.
The democrats are NOT the lesser of 2 evils. Sure, they have disappointed us when they've lost but, my God, they disappoint us even more when they win!
What this lesser of 2 evils does when elected is, through incompetence and perfidy, make the world safe for greater evil. Johnson gave us Nixon, Carter...Reagan, Clinton....Bush and, look out, Obama....Palin. The result has been a constant march to the right. Time to break this cycle if you believe in reform. Dump these bastards once and for all! This bunch has taken an historic opportunity for progress and pissed it all away in one year! Amazing.
"Obama had millions of followers eager to fight for his agenda"
_____________________________________________
This has already been covered in previous comments, but this seemingly-straightforward headline is spurious.
Apart from the fact that Brand Obama was masterfully sold in marketing-campaign terms, the genuine "Obamamania" paralleled (note past tense) the worst of adolescent "Beatlemania".
I don't want to go too far with the actual Beatlemania parallel, since "content" in the Beatles' case is artistic genius, whereas Obama's "agenda" is self-serving dreck.
But it's obvious that Obama's actual positions, values, and agenda were secondary to his "rock star" appeal as the Anti-Dubya and Historical Person of Color.
Ironically, for all the bloviating on the theme of "pragmatism" and "what works", Obama's agenda is strongly reminiscent of Professor Harold Hill's "Think System" in "The Music Man".
For those unfamiliar with this lovely musical, Harold Hill is a con man posing as a "music professor" who intends to swindle a small town by collecting funds for a "boy's band". Since he is a total fraud, he claims to be able to train the kids using the "Think System"-- if they "think" the right notes and concentrate hard, the playing will take care of itself!
The real "system" is Hill's scheme to bleed the unsuspecting citizens dry and flee with the ill-gotten gains. See the parallel?
So the putative eagerness of millions of devoted followers to fight for Obama's agenda is more properly understood as a cultish mix of "Beatlemania" and the "Think System".
Frankly, as in the heyday of Beatlemania, it didn't matter WHAT was coming out of the amplifiers on stage. Even though that was ostensibly the POINT of the "mania", participating in an ecstatic, orgasmic group celebration momentarily transcended the actual content.
And once the magic evaporated, and the thrill subsided, the scattered and dispersed fans are not sufficiently thrilled by the truly lame and awful music on Obama's newer albums. They were only "eager to fight" for a temporarily-charismatic Obama, not so much his ambiguous "agenda".
Obama proved to be more of a "Bay City Rollers" than "Beatles".
· Yr Obd't Servant
YOS: I said "the same" but not so well as thou, at 10:21 am.above Thanks!
Obedient Servant: I love your analogy -- using "The Music Man" to make your point! You are spot on!
"Frankly, as in the heyday of Beatlemania, it didn't matter WHAT was coming out of the amplifiers on stage. Even though that was ostensibly the POINT of the "mania", participating in an ecstatic, orgasmic group celebration momentarily transcended the actual content."
I have to comment -- about Beatlemania. I laughed as I read your post! When I was 14, my best friend's mother drove her and I to Saint Louis to see the Beatles at Busch Stadium -- on August 21, 1966. People were screaming -- it was, as you describe, "an ecstatic, orgasmic group celebration and transcended the content." However, for me, and my friend, the concert had its disappointing moments, with only two songs being done to our complete satisfaction, "Yesterday," sung by Paul; and a song sung by George. The worst, "Nowhere Man," literally, went nowhere. The music and the words were all scrambled!
Still, for two 14-year-old girls with "Beatle haircuts," from Red Oak, Iowa, we felt as if we, at that moment, had done it all! At the same time, even then, though, we had a contrary nature and weren't afraid to tell the truth about that night and what we heard.
Thanks for your provocative post!
A very insightful article that puts into context what I have felt about OFA since the beginning of the summer when the healthcare debate heated up.
While being told that this was about change and not about Obama, we were than supposed to call people to get them to support Obama's agenda.
The problem was/is, Obama's agenda is to vague and changing; figuring out Obama's agenda then and now is illusive. The only change we are getting is his agenda.
A common question among volunteers was, "How can we ask people to support his agenda if we don't know what it is?" Back then for example, Did he support the public option or would he let it go? What else does he say he supports and then easily gives it away in hopes of "bipartisanship."
With OFA under the umbrella of the DNC, it is very hard to contribute or volunteer knowing that the $$ and support goes to the likes of Blanche Lincoln or Ben Nelson.
HE'S PAYING THE PRICE ? He lives in the White house with the best health care on the planet and a to die for retirement plan. WTF does he care if no one likes him or he does not get reelected.
Don't forget the speaking fees, the book deals...
But Obama does care who likes him -- he wants Bush's base to like him -- the haves and the have mores. These are the people who will be silly enough to continue to read his books and listen to his "high-minded" drivel after he's kicked out of office.
Would anyone know what "13-0" Rahm was talking about?
I wondered that one myself... 13 victories? How does he figure THAT?
Talk about funny numbers.
Gary
"There are no dangerous thoughts; thinking itself is dangerous."
-- Hannah Arendt
As I was discussing with Sioux Rose in an earlier post, I believe he means political victories, in which he prevailed either through finesse or arm-twisting. The Sotomayor nomination was finesse; getting congress to pass another war supplemental bill by telling democrats that if they didn't vote for it they would "never hear from the White House again" was strong-arming. I can't really think of any other obvious "wins" but who knows how his twisted little mind counts the bodies. Cash for Clunkers? The GM bailout? That drop-in-the-bucket job stimulus? Is he going all the way back to the election itself? Would he count the Nobel prize even though he couldn't possibly have influenced that (or could he?). Or more likely, is he counting back room deals he made with powerful people to gain favors to manipulate other influential people? As I said, I for one would be interested to see his scorecard.
The $Empire$ doesn't care who wins or loses, as long as the agenda continues.
The Democrats HATE having the majority, being the "Party of the People" when they have to slam us in the gut on a daily basis. Can't we just try and feel their pain?
Their "members" are hanging out there for all to see - the full Monty! Can't have that. Get rid of that majority like its a hot potato. They need their excuse back: The so called "opposition party."
"The sky is falling, the sky is falling!" - the Dems said to us, while they quickly - before anyone caught on - stuffed our money into the pockets of the very rich. Now they can again use their excuse: "We don't have the votes!" and fixing it so it looks like they try.
Here's another scam: The Green Party is not viable! But does anyone ask: How can we make it viable?
I guess there's no hope for us frogs. The two-party has turned up the heat and we're just about to the the boiling point.
"Here's another scam: The Green Party is not viable! But does anyone ask: How can we make it viable?"
Form a coalition with liberal Dems.
No non-duopoly party is viable, the system is rigged and we don't have a genuine democratic process; see Chris Hedges article from last week.
Dickinson pours a lot of ink into the minutiae of organizing and politicking, like a sportscaster reporting plays and technique, without even acknowledging that both teams are targeting the same goal. Obama's abject failure is not an organizational problem; it's a serious integrity problem. Obama has destroyed his credibility and no amount of salesmanship or strategy can fix it at this point short of a radical change in direction. How likely is that? So much promise. What a crying shame.
Sioux Rose
DOUG: Perfectly stated! You nailed it. This is one reason why the influence of sports in the USA should never be ignored. The power of programming. Priceless.
His rude awakening is that the Republicans are unified in their rejection of him. There aren't any moderates he can pick up to pass his faux-Democratic, pro-corporate agenda. I shudder to see what the Republican noise machine does to him over the next two years.
At the rate things're going, so will the Democrats. There are signs of that already.
(Part 1)
This article considers that Obama, along with his strategizers, once elected, wasted the organizing capacity of the grassroots, and assumed a flawed "govern from the center strategy." I would agree, but wonder whether there is a critical mass inside Obama's circle that truly believes in the importance of the grassroots enough to include them (us) in the strategy of an Obama presidency. I think not.
Details aside, the absorbtion of OFA into the DNC has had disempowering results. The loss of MA shows that the DNC is confused about reality on the ground for voters and the American people in general. They keep calling me for money, and they ask for too little too late. I gave them $20 to close up the shop. I think that's the last I'll be giving this crowd.
I think MA is more than voters voting their pocketbooks. It seems to me that, fundamentally, Obama has been unable to frame the current economic crisis in an authentic way that most Americans can understand, because doing so would mean laying substantial responsibility at the feet of those who he feels he needs to get along with in order to govern at all.
And this may be putting it too mildly. His recent comments about CEOs making so much money is showing his true beliefs. Maybe he thinks he needs "the economy" more than he needs "the people". This judgment is a big mistake though, because the economy is going to continue to do all the terrible things that ordinary economists point out are inevitable now. The bottom 1/3 are in for a bad ride.
Having ignored the grassroots while governing, Obama faces an aggrieved populace. No amount of fake dressing-down of the banksters is going to change that. Anyone with 8th grade math skills can see that the total amount of the proposed tax on large banks is trivial, and was timed to reduce public dicontent, rather than change economic conditions on the ground.
It's hard to imagine that any politician will be able to speak the truth to what is bankrupting America: the continuing globalization of trade in combination with the squandering of 54% of Federal tax dollars every year on welfare for War Corporations. Add to that the structural inefficiency of medical care, which accounts for 17% of the economy when it should only be 9%, and that's about it.
The U.S. government exists to suck up money from the populace and redistribute it to warfare and healthcare corporations, and other favored entities which return the favors by funding reelection campaigns of congressmen and congresswomen who do their bidding. The finance rules have now been changed to institutionalize this.
(Part 2)
This election proves, as Nader said, that there is no substantial difference between democrats and republicans: each has its own corporate benefactors. Every four years they put on the dog and pony show. Ann Coulter and Al Sharpton do their bit parts. The theatrics are rehashed like a B-Grade version of "High School Musical". After the production, our elected reps all go out for a nightcap and ask each other "How did I do?" The press analyzes their performances, not content. Nielson and Pew polling tracks it all.
Republicans chicken-hawks intone about Democrat 'softness' as if anxious about life without Viagra. Democrats play to minority constituencies -- blacks, GLBT, earth-preservers, teacher and worker unions.
The way to make a personal difference in this confusing maelstrom of cultural myths and fictions, image-oriented leadership and financial Three-Card-Monte, is to start working completely outside the system to change the system.
Working outside the system is alot scarier because of all the benefits the system gives to those whom it absorbs and slowly neutralizes (like brie, fine Chardonnays and theatre tickets), but as the economy globalizes like a metastable Borg, national governments will be absorbed by it (and have already been).
To choose a different way, start with Code Pink, Saul Alinksy, Democracy Now and go from there. There's not likely to be a majority in Congress anytime soon to force structural changes needed for a just and sustainable world.
To be happy, start now and opt out of the world of violence, vengeance and vanity. Step outside the world which is crumbling by first taking back your mind from the oligarchs and warmakers.
Their strategy, as an entity obsessed with big guns, the hardness (or softness) of their penises and lobbyists, is to get you to become contentious and violent, like they are. Once that happens, they just pull the trigger and walk away blaming your for starting it. Since you're dead and they control the media, who's to argue? What "really happened" in Iraq is now a story which will be written by the highest bidder.
Our well-meaning opponents in this venture may behave in a contentious and violent manner (Bring it On!), but the welfare for warfare state has them in the grip of the Matrix which is jacked into the limbic system of their brains, which governs survival motivations and feelings. As such, they are not going to wake up without outside assistance.
It's up to us to be the soul force that wakes people up to another kind of reality which offers not abstractions like "freedom" (which we already have) but things like jobs, families, and community rituals at least as interesting as the SuperBowl. A beautiful vision and world, held correctly, will come a reality. The fact that I give no specifics as to how to accomplish this doesn't mean I don't have them, and that I am not acting on them right now. It means that, unlike Washington's and the DNC's view of the citizenry, I believe that people are creative and insightful, and can find ways to link up with like-minded individuals and act accordingly -- without oversight by DNC minders or Obama inner-circlers.
Let them worry a little bit about what's really going on.
Kip Leitner
Philadelphia, PA
If politicians treat what they do like a sports game it's because for them it is. A few really care about public service but for most it's a job, well paid, with perks [interns anyone], an element of celebrity [just look at how much attention we pay to them]. But the game they are playing is more like wrestling than football - rigged and scripted, bad guys and good guys [and women too these days]. A show put on to distract us while the real powers that be quietly get on with their evil schemes. Sure there's different cliques, with their own interests and they do compete among themselves.
Definitely time to wise up and drop out, work outside the system, as some have suggested. Maybe analogy should be to abandon ship, instead of arguing about the sanity, perfidy, whatever of the clowns on the bridge.
My suggestion for a way out of the voting dilemna - no difference between parties, no hope for third party candidates - is to vote for nobody. Use your write in power..none of the above. As part of a public boycott of sham elections, candidates that don't represent us. Keep it up till till there are free and fair elections. Someone earlier pointed out most people don't vote. It's not just apathy, it's a refusal to go through a meaningless ritual. And the way things have gone in recent elections the voting for the lesser of two evils hasn't done much good so what I'm proposing would at least be an honest expression of how we feel. You [the politicians] don't represent us and have forfeited your right to our allegiance and do not govern with our assent.
"OFA discovered that most of its 13 million supporters had tuned out. Only 45,000 members responded to the last-minute call to arms."
Maybe if Obama hadn't fucked over 12,955,000 of them in the last 12 months.....
Leaning too much on your Chief-of-Staff will make anyone a cripple. So it is now.
Perhaps the most lucid commentary of any I have encountered here at CD. At least in my own opinion. Thanks to one and all.
Mismanagement is the least of the problems for those who are working to preserve Obama's support base. When most of the Presidents pronouncements and policies consistently run counter to the expectations he raised with his apparently vacuous rhetoric during the campaign, his former supporters are left with no choice but to jump ship. If he had conducted himself as vigorously after the inauguration to work for the American people as he said he would before the election, he would enjoy widespread support even with no organization at all.
Easy answer to the author's quandry:
We don't want the same things.
It is a bridge some are just loathe to cross.
These "sweeping" ideas as little more than campaign soundbites suggest that anything other than the embrace of the current status quo that insures our decline, are little more than an impossible and naive dream.
Imagine if FDR had approached the world that way.
Cynicism would dictate that current experience demonstrates that even majorities of progressives have a record of capitulation--not a record of making a stand.