The last two days have been unbelievable.
Last week, after Senator Obama went public with his decision regarding the new FISA legislation, most of us took the news with varying degrees of disappointment. A few people vowed they’d never lift a finger (or reach for their checkbook) ever again. Others expressed outrage, but recognized a conundrum: electing Barack Obama is probably every bit as important as electing John Kerry was in 2004. These people couldn’t fathom the idea of rebelling against the candidate or charting any course (of action or inaction) that would hurt his chances of victory. They got over their anger in a hurry. Finally, there were some who, inexplicably, seemed unbothered by the whole mess; to them the fact that people were decrying Obama’s decision seemed to be the real problem.
I’m not here to applaud or decry any of the aforementioned reactions; instead, I hope you’ll let me tell you about my own response and what it’s spawned.
When I first saw the news, I immediately turned to what has become a sort of touchstone in my life: the blogopsphere and internet. I’ve learned that whenever a difficult political situation arises, there are invariably people I can rely on to clear the cobwebs out of my head and inspire me to think more creatively as an activist.
So I surveyed the usual suspects – DailyKos, Huffington Post, FireDogLake, Hullabaloo, Atrios, Glenn Greenwald, Crooks and Liars, Talking Points Memo, Democratic Underground, Democrats.com, Down With Tyranny, Cliff Schecter, Raw Story, Political Animal, etc. I read what I could and then turned to a few email circles I participate in.
"I am in this race to tell the corporate lobbyists that their days of setting the agenda in Washington are over. I have done more than any other candidate in this race to take on lobbyists — and won. They have not funded my campaign, they will not run my White House, and they will not drown out the voices of the American people when I am president."
— Barack Obama, Speech in Des Moines, IA, November 10, 2007
Eventually, the idea struck. Barack Obama has provided us with great tools on his website. I didn’t know this first hand, but I had done plenty of reading about it... He has also called for a new way of leveraging technology – and everything I just mentioned above (you don’t think I wrote all of that for nothing, do you?) – to bring more people into the political process.
Check it out – this is from his issues page (pdf):
(1) SUNLIGHT BEFORE SIGNING: Too often bills are rushed through Congress and to the president before the public has the opportunity to review them. As president, Barack Obama will not sign any non-emergency bill without giving the American public an opportunity to review and comment on the White House website for five days. In addition to ensuring that the public has the ability to review legislation, the sunlight will help ensure that earmarks tucked into appropriations bills are exposed. And Obama will sign legislation in the light of day without attaching signing statements that undermine the legislative intent.
...
(2) 21ST CENTURY FIRESIDE CHATS: People who care deeply about issues in Washington but live outside the beltway rarely have the opportunity to question and interact with government agencies. Messages are filtered through the media, and many times the hard questions are not asked. Barack Obama will bring democracy and policy directly to the people by requiring his Cabinet officials to have periodic national broadband town hall meetings to discuss issues before their agencies. The Internet makes it possible to take our leaders directly to the people. If this is possible then it should also be mandatory.
In short, Barack Obama wants us to participate in our own governance.
So I thought to myself: if he wants us to participate in our government, why would he not want us to get involved right now? He is a Senator. He will be voting on an issue that means an awful lot to many of his most committed supporters.
And Barack Obama does not seem like the type of person that surrounds himself with yes-men. In fact, last December, he said this: "I don’t like having a lot of ‘yes’ people around me who are just telling me what I want to hear all the time."
So I considered the following:
- Barack Obama was a community organizer; he knows how important it is for a leader to have support for his policies.
- He’s made explicit pledges to promote increased citizen participation through the use of technologies.
- On his campaign website, he’s already provided us with the tools to get started.
So I sent an email to a bunch of friends suggesting that someone start a group on BarackObama.com that lets him know exactly how important to us his response to the proposed FISA legislation will be.
Today, 5 days later, that group will sign up its 10,000th member. It is already the second largest group on BarackObama.com, second only to an official Barack Obama group that the campaign put together as part of its Fight the Smears campaign.
In other words, ours is the largest grass-roots group on BarackObama.com. And the press – and the campaign – has noticed.
New York Times:
The entire episode shows the potential complications of an open site becoming an enabler of criticism from ardent supporters, let alone from opponents in disguise, so-called "concern trolls." But the campaign said it wouldn’t have it any other way.
In an e-mail message, Tommy Vietor, an Obama campaign spokesperson, wrote: "This campaign has an extraordinary group of committed supporters, and we greatly appreciate their willingness to share their time and ideas with us. We believe that an open dialogue is an important part of any campaign, and are happy that my.barackobama.com has become a vehicle for that conversation."
The group was conceived on a listserv for progressive, politically active people, said Mike Stark, an activist who is a law student at the University of Virginia. He wrote an initial e-mail to the group arguing: "Obama is getting mad props for social networking, why don’t we use social networking to let him know that he can’t keep elbowing his progressive base — the people who got him the nomination — away from the policy table?"
One of the recipients, who was already a member of my.barackobama.com, created the group. There were bumps in membership when various blogs wrote sympathetically, Mr. Stark said, but, "the biggest bump was from the members themselves." He called it "the networking effect."
The idea that the site would reject the sub-group never occurred to him, he said, because of Mr. Obama’s commitment to using the Internet to bring more transparency to government. "One of his key things is a five-day comment period before he signs noncritical legislation, and not all of that comment will be favorable," he said. "It’s a test run to see what his presidency might look like."
Wall Street Journal: http://blogs.wsj.com/...
The Web site allows supporters to rally online communities around their common geography, demographics and interests ("Barack the Youth Vote," "NC Barbershops for Change," "Deadliest Catch Fans for Obama," etc.) But one suddenly popular new group has used the forum to call out the candidate on his decision to support domestic-spying legislation that would relieve telecommunications companies from an onslaught of lawsuits for cooperating with the Bush administration’s former wiretapping program.
The group sprang up last Wednesday, amid criticism on the left from MoveOn.org and the American Civil Liberties Union that Obama was sliding to the center after pledging to take a stand on the issue. 500 supporters joined the group by Friday and membership grew tenfold over the weekend to more than 5,500 by Monday, making it the fifth largest group on the campaign’s networking page.
The Nation, 2:
While Obama's advisers may view this week's activism as inevitable liberal tensions in a general election -- an odd gloss, given the Fourth Amendment's bipartisan credentials -- the key dynamic is the development of a sophisticated network of activists. After all, they're not asking the candidate to be more liberal, they're asking him to hold strong on his own promise to oppose the spying legislation.
Even conservative bloggers are impressed that the Obama Campaign provides an open platform for supporters to organize against the candidate's position. "Rather than react in accordance with the practices of most campaigns by shutting and muffling dissent," observed the GOP blog The Next Right, "Obama is providing dissidents (many of whom are supporters of his) the opportunity to organize on his campaign web-site." The blog contrasted the approach to top-down campaigns on the right. "Can you imagine a Bush campaign reacting like this? I can't."
Netroots activists are imagining -- and demanding -- an even more receptive response from Obama.
EFF
Talking Points Memo, 2, 3
Wired’s Threat Level
Slash-Dot
Before I sign off, I’d like to take a moment to address something Noam Cohen wrote at the New York Times:
Mr. Stark said he was thinking beyond the FISA vote, which he concedes is all but lost. He said he planned to change the group’s name to Barack’s Better Angels, and linger at the site until the election as a meeting place for "progressives who won’t accept being pushed away from the table."
One of the members of the group emailed me to inquire about my motives given that I’m pretty much resigned to losing on the FISA issue. This is how I replied to his email:
I want to take this head-on... and I will in what I write this evening.
In the meantime, this will have to suffice: we all need to be realists if we are to have any chance of influencing the campaign (and the President) at all. Right now, he is throwing "the left" under the bus in a new way each and every day. This is not unprecedented; in fact, it would be unprecedented if the nominee did not "move to the center" after the primary process wound up.
That said, this is an unprecedented opportunity for progressives to unite and speak loudly with a clear voice: we want to be heard in the policy discussions. we are not doorstops or ATM machines... we aren't walking the precincts, answering the phones and beating back the smears for nothing; we are like any other valuable constituency group. In exchange for our commitment, money and volunteer hours, we want the kind of change that Barack has promised us.
But will we win the FISA issue?
Chances are slim.
That's just the real politick ugly truth.
But that doesn't mean the fight isn't worth fighting.
All of that is correct, but I was incomplete in my answer.
In the past, I’ve been one of the most vocal and aggressive critics of the Democratic Congress. Almost right out of the gate, they started hedging on their campaign promises and preparing us for the inevitable let-downs that they seemed to know were coming. I was having none of it, and I blogged my little fingers off decrying their betrayals.
And not a damned thing changed. Indeed, things just kept getting worse.
I’m no genius, but I’m pretty convinced that I know enough to recognize when something isn’t working.
Doing the blogosphere’s version of the cartoon scream where that little dangly thing in the back of your mouth wiggles from side to side... well, that simply hasn’t worked.
So this time, we will have well over 10,000 people organized by the end of the week. We’re working on strategies that will leverage that organization right now. I don’t know if it will be any more effective than virtual petulance, but I – and thousands and thousands of others – think it is worth doing.
And we’d love for you to come join us.