Cross-posted from Future Majority.
More speculation is emerging about the future direction of what's come to be known as "Obama for America 2.0." A new piece out in yesterday's LA Times - mostly quoting anonymous sources - reveals the latest rumors about the organization's scope and purpose.
While most nonprofits are struggling to raise money - and many good orgs may drop like flies before we hit the end of this economic crisis - the proposed budget for OFA 2.0 could well be $75 million used to support hundreds of field staffers in every state:
Though the plan still is emerging, one source with knowledge of the internal discussion said the organization could have an annual budget of $75 million in privately raised funds. Another said it would deploy hundreds of paid staff members -- possibly one for every congressional district in certain politically important states and even more in larger battlegrounds such as Florida, Ohio, Colorado, Virginia and North Carolina.
The full-time staff is likely to consist primarily of the presidential campaign workers, many in their 20s, who served as the local points of contact for the campaign's vast network of neighborhood volunteers. As part of the new organization, these workers probably would focus on similar campaign-style tasks, such as arranging phone banks, distributing signs, recruiting more helpers, buying coffee and doughnuts for house meetings and reporting voter contact data to senior officials.
"The only way to keep this thing going is to have boots on the ground," said a strategist familiar with the plan who spoke on condition of anonymity because campaign officials have not granted permission to talk about it.
Such an operation would effectively be running it's own 50 State Strategy. Like the 50 State Stategy, it would run out of the DNC, only instead of working to take out Republican incumbents and expand the map for Democrats, the organization would instead be targeting Democrats and pressuring them to support Obama's legislative priorities:
Though the campaign-style organizing network would be operated through the Democratic National Committee, the new service organization is envisioned as a separate nonprofit. Obama recently appointed his friend Gov. Tim Kaine of Virginia as chairman of the DNC and his campaign battleground states director, Jennifer O'Malley Dillon, as executive director.
Some top Obama organizers, such as former deputy campaign manager Steve Hildebrand, had argued that the grass-roots machinery should be kept separate from the DNC to avoid alienating Republicans and independents who were inspired by Obama but could be turned off by a close association with the Democratic Party. But those organizers are not part of the inner circle drafting the plan.
A centralized system run from the DNC would mark a break from the Democratic tradition of relying more on muscular state and local party organizations. It would more closely mirror the Republican structure created under President Bush, whose political guru Karl Rove engineered the 2004 reelection campaign from his post at the White House using a central GOP database.
One key difference, however, is that the Republicans used their network to target Democrats and win elections, whereas the Obama system will be used at least in part to influence members of the president's own party.
For example, Democratic lawmakers in Republican-leaning districts might resist voting for an Obama-backed global warming bill. In that case, the White House or DNC could use the new network for phone campaigns, demonstrations or lobbying trips to push lawmakers to stick with Obama.
"You can pretty much target the list to people who haven't always voted with Democrats," said a House Democratic leadership aide familiar with the plan.
This aide said the pressure could actually help Democrats in those districts. They could either point to a groundswell of support for the Obama policy as a reason to vote for it -- or, alternatively, they could choose to score points with conservatives by bucking the activists.
"It could give them cover either way," the aide said.
In a move that will surely appeal to many Millennials, OFA 2.0 also plans to start an independent nonprofit dedicated to national service:
In what would be another unprecedented step, Obama's political staff is deciding whether to create a service organization that would use the vast corps of its grass-roots campaign supporters. As described by one source knowledgeable with the discussions, this nonprofit arm would be used to help victims of natural disasters, but would do so under the Obama umbrella while continuing to build the overall network's massive e-mail database.
The prospect of a president being able to guide a service or relief agency outside the framework of his government is a unique development.
Not everyone is happy with this situation, though. Certainly not the Democrats who might become targets, and not the state parties, who see a danger in allowing the Democratic Party infrastructure to become too wrapped up in one individual:
"The party needs to be rooted not just around one individual, but it needs to have a grass-roots base that can survive the times and even endure past whoever may be in office," said Jerry Meek, chairman of the North Carolina Democratic Party. "Obama brings a lot to the table, but, on the other hand, state parties exist for more than serving the objectives of the president and are in the business to elect county commissioners, school board members and members of the legislature."
I have to say that I agree with Meeks. If true, this plan for the future of the Obama political operation is something of a double-edged sword. It might allow for fantastic legislative accomplishments (assuming you agree with all of Obama's policy prescriptions), but it could leave a seriously weakened party structure in its wake once Obama is no longer in charge. And if it weakens the state parties without committing resources downballot, it could actually cause the Democratic Party to atrophy at the local level.
There's still no word as to what role Students for Barack Obama would play in this OFA 2.0 model, nor how they would (or would not) work with the College Democrats of America if both groups were operating out of the DNC simultaneously. That too is an important question given the importance of young voters this election and the fact that Obama remains an anomaly among Democratic candidates. Will his work engaging young people be integrated into the structure of the Democratic National Party (and state parties), or will it merely be used as a weapon to target other Democrats?
For now, at least, this is all still just conjecture, and I dare say we don't really know anything until an official decision is announced.