What I really expected from Obama-- [View all]

[eridani]

--was that he would run his administration like he ran his campaign. When it came down to Obama or Clinton, it made no difference to me one way or the other on the issues. Both are confirmed corporatists. Obama was slightly better on the wars, and Clinton slightly better on health care. Both were mostly funded by the same corporate interests.

I made my choice to support Obama strictly on the grounds of his campaign organization. In our caucus state, the Clinton people came in and told local Dems that they'd better get behind the inevitable winner, or those wanting political careers would be made to pay. And she hired worthless pieces of shit like Mark Penn.

Obama, on the other hand, hired experienced organizers and used a lot of his early financial booty to set up software that people could use for self-organization. The paid people came in and mostly approved of what local people were already doing. They contacted local party leaders and PCOs, and listened to what we had to say.

The 2008 general election was THE canonical model for how elections should always be run. In past years, the "coordinated" campaign, supposedly working on state and national candidates concurrently, has always been totally uncoordinated chaos, featuring newbies who blew into town and did their own thing, totally ignoring what local party members were already doing. I don't know how many times I answered calls for door-knocking volunteers and wound up walking a precinct that already had literature hanging from all the doorknobs, put there by a local PCO.

In 2008, the people sent from the national organization immediately connected with the local party people. They asked us for lists of precincts with and without PCOs, and accepted our evaluation of just how likely any given PCO was to actually walk his or her precinct. My legislative district contains parts of 3 congressional districts and 5 cities, so I recommended subdivisions by geography which the coordinators immediately accepted. With a near-perfect blend of the online campaigning pioneered by Dean and tradtional personal outreach, there was this very rewarding sense of being on the same page as everyone else and getting something done right for a change.

Silly me. I expected that to carry over into Obama's administration. When OFA became Organizing for America, all that changed. No one wanted to hear what any of us local people had to say anymore. We were given the word from on high about priorities, and ignored when we wanted to suggest priorities of our own.

I knew that 2010 was going to be a disaster when the OFA people had meetings where they presented charts and graphs and lists of microconstituencies that benefited from particular programs. There was not even a single mention of values or messaging, whereas the 2008 campaign had been heavily values-based. I quit going to those meetings, and did as much canvassing as I had time for on my own, given that I was also organizing against the Catfood Commission. I got a lot of very good response to mobilizing people against that, from Democrats, Republicans and independents alike. Given that caucus states tend to have much stronger local party organizations, WA State resisted the red tide. Still, I could have done much more without the Obama-imposed distraction of the Catfood Commission.

And here we are at 2012 almost, and not a single word from OFA other than that "we have to educate people about Obama's accomplishments." Actually we shouldn't be doing anything of the sort, despite the fact that much useful stuff has gotten done. Why? BECAUSE THE GENERAL PUBLIC DOES NOT GIVE A BLOODY GODDAM ABOUT LAUNDRY LISTS! They care what is going on in their lives and about values, and no one can tell me what Obama's values are, except they seem to have something to do with government not being able to create jobs, regulations being bad and tax cuts being good.

The economy is still going straight to hell for the majority. This majority would still be strongly behind Obama if they felt he was on their side, no matter how bad things get. I don't feel that at all, and am working hard trying to convince all the 2008 PCO dropouts in my legislative district that we have to get more progressive people in locally and at the state level before we can change anything at the national level in any meaningful way. I'm having some success passing the word on what Republicans plan to do to Social Security and Medicare. I'm into politics for the long haul, but I'm part of a shrinking minority.