The next intraparty controversy is going to be over the Democrats’ decision to spend $50 million getting out the vote of those whose only vote ever was for Barack Obama in 2008. This is not what Rahm Emanuel would do. It is what David Plouffe is doing. Organizing for America, the grassroots, progressive wing of the Democratic National Committee, is getting all the love and attention they could want, and we should be ecstatic. But don’t expect any love or approval from the white blogosphere, who will interpret this as an abandonment of traditional progressive groups.
This will unite the James Carville wing of the party with Jane Hamsher wing.
“I have zero confidence that they’re heading in the right direction here,” says one longtime Democratic organizer who didn’t want to be quoted by name criticizing his party’s major midterm election initiative. Added another: “I think they’re going to come in for a very rude awakening. It’s going to be brutal.”
If that turns out to be the case, the doubters say, Democrats will wake up the morning of Nov. 3 wishing they had spent that $50 million on more traditional methods, like television ads, for reaching their base and persuading independents.
The real community organizers are being mobilized.
The party plans to embark on a massive new program this fall to register college students, including many who volunteered for Obama as high school students but were too young to vote.
It is working barbershops and beauty salons in African American communities, and organizing events around the World Cup to reach out to Latinos. Every Wednesday in California, party organizers and volunteers attend naturalization ceremonies.
People like to talk lazily about ‘transformation.’ This strategy is transformative because it does the opposite of taking the black and latino and youth vote for granted. If you want progressive policies, you have to start with a progressive coalition. The Democratic Party has to come to believe in the power of their progressive constituency. If they learn that they win elections by mobilizing the marginalized and powerless, they will evolve to reflect that new reality. They will no longer go chasing the voter in the middle to the exclusion of everyone else.
This confirms my belief in Obama’s core convictions, and it’s precisely the opposite of what online progressives would advise. That’s because this strategy echews traditional progressive organizations in favor of Obama’s true base.
Very nice. OFA has done a lot to bring people of color into the fold (and has kept them in the fold). Good on OFA.
Certainly a better investment than the $10 million for Halter – 😉
This is very, very encouraging.
very exciting
Right on schedule, at DailyKos:
Gee, I wonder whom they think ‘the base’ is?
why, themselves, of course.
I saw that too. Actually, it is “in order to”. In order to turn out the base. Who exactly do you think these folks will be talking to? Independents? Republicans? Don’t bet on it. Who do you think is on those carefully kept canvass lists from 2008?
Turn out 2008 first-time voters to turn out the base and a new round of first-time voters.
Reason number eleventy-one and counting why the site is no longer one of the primary conduits through which I perceive politics (or current events) anymore. It has been taken over by factionalism, you hardly ever see a true action diary worth a damn or a community willing to congratulate each other on accomplishments anymore. Instead it is all about assigning blame or taking taking credit.
Oh well, it brought me here, 538.com, Benen, Plum line, The Field and a lot more than that so I can’t fault the time I spent there.
Because television ads are much more direct, engaging and inclusive than actually getting up off your ass, walking from neighborhood to neighborhood, knocking on doors and actually talking to first-time or unregistered voters to let them know they can make a difference in the direction of their country. For serious. We all know how much of an epic fail it was for Obama and OFA in 2008, amirite?
That “longtime Democratic organizer who didn’t want to be quoted by name” is obviously some paid political consultant who’s fee-fees are hurt because OFA won’t be lining his pockets by throwing all their cash at the TV.
Exactly. And the invisible army does nothing for blog traffic, either.
That “longtime Democratic organizer”? My bets are that it’s Lanny Davis (or Mark Penn).
yeah, this is good.
I blame Obama. Wait… damn it.
Oh that’s the plan to turn out the vote. That’s a good and can even help in some unlikely states and districts.
As for Hamsher and Carville. I didn’t know that Jane Hamsher was a wing of the Democratic Party or had any allegiance to the Democratic Party. I see her as a trans-party progressive libertarian, which runs as close to being an oxymoron as possible without quite falling into the clutches of the Republican libertarian fronts. It also makes her position positively maddening to committed Democrats.
And Mr. Mary Matalin. He is a consultant and now wannabe politician. His family is about as transparty as you can get. Once senses a drive to go for the opportunity.
I can understand why these folks might be disappointed.
One of the things about Obama that I have been watching is that his first priority seems to be transforming the process. He and the Congressional leadership have forced the openness about what is going on in Congress that has riled-up progressives so riled up. And now he is going around the national media and directly to communities.
This is the first time in a while that I’ve had confidence in a Democratic plan.
The only downside I’m seeing is that OFA is being used to help re-elect Blue Dogs & New Dems who have obstructed and watered down so much of this President’s agenda.
Is that a strategy to change and improve the country? Maybe. It will probably work, too. If they’re lucky, Democrats could keep both houses and then get back to fucking the people who voted for them for the people who gave them money. That’s how it goes, right?
OFA may be working in some districts to elect Blue Dogs, but then they (the Blue Dogs) owe the President for their re-election. Remember that among Democrats, it is the Blue Dogs who are most in danger of being ousted by a real Republican.
This is a good long term strategy for increasing the democratic base, but frankly is likely to lead to a lower turnout in this year’s election.
We should be making long term investments in voter turnout as well as short term efforts to get voters to the polls this year.
It will lead to the right kind of turnout and give us the leg-up for the 2012 presidential.
Sounds like a plan. Something of a move back toward the Dean vision? The chatter has been about how the Dems won’t get the Obama voters out to the voting booth for this election. It’s a given that the party has to address the problem. It won’t matter what Obama and the Dems do if they can’t get those who benefit from their policies out to vote. The constituencies they’re going after are also the ones who will respond best to exposes of Republican racism, corruption, and obsession with destroying every effort that steers resources away from CEOs and banksters and toward the rest of America.
It also makes sense, though, that knocking on doors and GOTV is only half the battle. Obama’s base came out because they believed in the change he promised. That’s going to be a much harder sell at this point. The excitement his campaign generated was partly about him becoming the first Black president. That combined powerfully with a feeling that he was going to lead a transformation of society. The “yes we can” stuff won’t do the trick this time around (or in 012).
Obama and the party are going to have to do a much better job than they have so far of telegraphing what they’ve accomplished, why it matters to real people, and how it contrasts with Republican goals. They’re also going to have to find concrete ways to re-ignite the excitement about the future. I don’t see anything right now with the power to do that. Healthcare is done, there are no radical economic reforms on the agenda, and international affairs just don’t get hearts racing unless they involve “patriotic wars”. I think Obama’s best, maybe only, shot at rekindling the enthusiasm is a visionary, comprehensive, and detailed energy initiative, probably one centered on the Gulf first but applied to a War on Fossil nationwide. There’s no point in denying that this is a real gamble, but one with high enough stakes to make it credible and inspiring.
That said, Boo, I don’t get why you have to make every OFA/Obama strategic move into a preemptive race/class war within the party. “it’s precisely the opposite of what online progressives would advise. That’s because this strategy echews traditional progressive organizations in favor of Obama’s true base” doesn’t make any sense at all. What is being taken away from those groups? I don’t recall the DNC ever paying for ads or anything else for MoveOn or DKos — quite the reverse — so what is it they’re supposed to be losing? You’re getting as bad as the outfits you complain about. But happy Daddy Day anyhow.
The answer, Dave, is that there is vocal and influential representation for progressives online, but that representation is skewed ridiculously towards the white academic community. Almost every major blogger other than Markos is white and has an advanced degree. And the general tenor of this contingent has been hostile to Obama ever since he chose to use OFA instead of the traditional progressive organizations that a lot of these bloggers either work for or have worked for or hope to work for in the future. They complained endlessly about how Obama was ignoring the netroots and blowing off progressives all through the campaign. But he was building the most dominant, progressive organization of our lifetimes right under these bloggers noses.
Blacks, Latinos, young voters, and a lot of unwired white progressives (meaning, not politically active online) went out and beat the pants off Mark Penn, James Carville, and Lanny Davis.
And, ever since Obama was elected, these same white, highly educated bloggers have been bitching about how Obama is ignoring his base and blowing off progressives, but you go look at the black progressive blogosphere and see what they’re saying. It isn’t the same at all. And guess who makes up a bigger piece of the progressive movement? How many members of the Progressive Caucus are white?
I’m tired of the skewed view the progressive blogosphere is providing the national press. That’s why Charles Blow writes bullshit like this:
That’s total horseshit, but you wouldn’t know it reading the heavy-hitting progressive blogs.
When I see posts like this, it seems that you’re agreeing with me about who “the base” is, yet you’ve disagreed before when I said that the blogs always say Obama’s ignoring “the base” in assuming that they are, in fact, his base.
Either way, whatever disagreements those were, and quite possibly were there only because of misinterpretations, this post is excellent.
There are two bases, maybe we could even talk about three bases.
The first group, by definition, are people’s whose vote you can take for granted. When we talk about mobilizing the base, we’re not talking about them.
The second group is who we normally mean when we talk about mobilizing the base. This could be union workers. It could mean young unmarried women. It could mean racial groups that have traditionally low turnout. In any case, they’re Democrats who can’t be bothered to vote unless someone nudges them.
The last group is Obama’s unique base of first-time voters and voters who crossed over to vote for him. This is the group that the OFA wants to mobilize, and they are more progressive than the party as a whole or than the set of occasional voters. That’s because they are younger, more tolerant on social issues, and more racially diverse.
If we want to win an election the old fashioned way, we work on group two while we appeal to the middle of the road voter. But to change the structure of the electorate in a progressive direction, we have to get Obama’s base out, and we have to expand that base.
The typical denizen of the progressive blogosphere belongs to the first category. They always vote and always vote Democratic. Their vote can be taken for granted, which is why they get so little love and they complain so damn much.
I don’t think it can be taken for granted. It, among other forces, cost Gore the WH. I still think you overreact by attributing too much power to ground-level organizing. It’s absolutely essential to any progressive hopes for long-run success, but there has to be something to organize around. So tell us, what’s the message these organizers are going to be retailing about Obama’s/Dem’s accomplishments that will bring back the excitement level we saw in the campaign?
We’re in agreement about the esthetics of the leftysphere, at least. The amor propio has become suffocating. But that’s just gossipy shit. There is still a credible case to be made that Obama has let us down in a number of areas. You can agree or disagree that that’s true, but it’s a respectable contention given recent history.
Anyway, I’m quite happy with the new Dem emphasis. I just think it’s extremely self-defeating to put it up as an either/or.
Well, it’s interesting.
Obama has disappointed me in a number of areas, some of which I am quite passionate about. But I’d give him an A-minus despite my disappointments. Part of that is just that I recognize the flaws that we have as a society and a culture, part of it is a recognition of what the structural obstacles are, and part of it is purely by way of comparison to other presidents and other potential presidents.
I think it’s well known that I have a pretty low opinion of Bill Clinton. But he’s the best president we’ve had in my lifetime. Our presidents have been terrible. And even the people who lost who might have been better presidents, were seriously flawed individuals. I don’t think Mondale/Ferraro or Dukakis/Bentsen or Gore/Lieberman would have formed good administrations. First of all, that’s the worst lineup of veepees I can imagine.
We all know LBJ screwed us with Vietnam, and I’ve always thought JFK was badly overrated. I personally think Eisenhower was the third best president we had in the 20th-Century, after the two Roosevelts. And Teddy was a warmonger.
So, my starting position is that anything significantly better than Clinton and Eisenhower is pretty much the best we’ve done since FDR.
Maybe the most important thing is who Obama is as a person and how his integrity stacks up against people like Clinton and Gore. It’s also nice to have a northern Democratic president for the first time since JFK, and an urban president for the first time since JFK. It’s nice to have someone representing us that was doing the same job as me (six years ago) 16 years before he became president.
But personal affinity and low expectations only explain so much.
There was a moment during the primaries when Obama addressed his staff in Chicago. It was right after Clinton finally conceded. He told them that they now had no choice but to win because the alternative was unthinkable. That is still true. And anything that goes too far off track and loses sight of that basic truth…is going to irritate me and potentially earn my wrath.
So, what do I tell Obama’s supporters from 2008? I tell them you elected the third or fourth best president in the last 110 years. That’s he’s had the most productive first Congress of any president since LBJ passed the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, and Medicare. And that the alternative is unthinkable and far worse that what Bush and Cheney gave us. If you have some disappointments, that’s fine, but understand the context and get out there and work.
This is worth posting on the front page, Booman.
Turning out black folks and young people who had never voted was McGovern’s – really Gary Hart’s – strategic hail Mary of how McGovern was supposed to win in 1972. I guess it could be thought of as an expansive, personnel-intensive opposite direction from Bob Shrum’s narrower go-after-existing-swing-voters-with-capital-intensive-TV-buys approach. Obama actually made this happen in 2008, and keeping OFA as a stay-behind organization was an excellent strategic initiative.
I worry that the black folks and especially the young folks that turned out in 2008 might be discouraged by Democrats’ modest achievements. This is a crucial long-term cohort to hang onto, and getting second-timers involved again should help keep them involved for the long-term – assuming Democrats have delivered something the new people value.
You have to understand the cultural context – ours (Black folk) is a hierarchical culture, we respect our elders and those placed in authority over us until such time as they prove abusive to the authority that has been vested in them. Even then we tend to just deal with it – Black pastors (Baptists) tend to serve their congregations for life; their White counterparts average 18 months. The GOTV messaging for Black 1st time Obama voters is fairly simple: “Your president needs you, and what he needs is for you to vote in a Congress that will pass his agenda.” It’s a smart plan and it will work, at least in this target demographic.
I wish this was on Slashdot so I could rate it “insightful”. Very interesting take.
I sometimes can’t help the feeling that the problem some of the online activists have with the OFA is that they are not leading it.