Remember the lovely red, white and blue "O" of the Obama campaigns? His Obama for America theme? The innovative use of the internet, and the database of supporters? It was kind of neat, wasn't it?
Well, it stuck around for the second campaign, becoming Organizing for America in the process, and continuing to use that amazing database, and the frequency of emails also continued.
Now it's Organizing for Action, still using the same red, white and blue "O" and it's been getting on my nerves for a long time now.
I began to notice that the emails were more often than not repeats of what Obama was trying to get done, focusing on the good stuff while working to get a . "Tell Barack you've got his back!" I began to delete them without reading after a while, and now have begun to have a visceral reaction to them.
What is it that bothers me so much about this organization? Only recently have I begun to put that together. It boils down to this - after the campaigning ends you need to do something else. After the campaigning ends, the agenda has to change.
Once you get into office, the agenda has to change from our having Barack's back to making sure that Barack has ours. Cheerleading has no place in post-election politics.
I think we must fight the vicious racist attacks against Obama, and to call it what it is. I certainly have fought this recalcitrant Congress for its determination not to do what the country needs. But we also must fight Obama when necessary. For me it started when the DOJ kept using the Official Secrets Act to prevent victims of our "war on terror" from having their day in court. The need for Obama to stand up to Congress continues, but we also must fight against the government's policies that criminalize whistleblowers and the press for bringing wrongdoing to light; we owe even Obama's recent capitulation on bulk collection of our communications data to Edward Snowden, who is still in exile without a passport, with world governments afraid of retaliation for offering him asylum. We need to fight KXL and other anti-environment policies, our immigation deportation policies - and whatever else may be uncovered.
Once we win elections, Obama's logo "O" has no place on the letterhead of any political activist group. He becomes the government and we need to include him in our vigilance.
If OFA changes its logo, I might take another look.