The talk about grassroots organization may have been an overstatement or even a misrepresentation. Eli Saslow in the Washington Post has some ideas in his article Grass-Roots Battle Tests The Obama Movement. I have questions of my own: Was Obama's ground campaign effective because McCain was not all that attractive to the republican grassroots? Is the republican grassroots movement now energized and outfighting the left? From my vantage point these all seem to be true. I see no energy and no message to rally the left. Yet there seems to be evidence to the contrary. So what is happening? Maybe there is a real disconnect between grassroots activity and the gears of the government machine? Look below for more.
This little article is about Jeremy Bird. Bird joined Barack Obama's campaign as a top organizer in 2007. He is deputy director of Organizing for America, a national network of Obama supporters. Bird was reported to be off to a Town Hall meeting where he hoped to hoped to leave them confident, empowered and re-energized after a barrage of attacks by opponents.
Here's what Saslow's report claims:
The outcome of the health-care debate weighed partially on Bird's success, and on the effectiveness of Organizing for America (OFA) in general. When Bird was named deputy director of OFA last year, he became the vanguard of much more than 13 million e-mail addresses collected from supporters during Obama's campaign. He became one of the people most responsible for validating Obama's campaign ethos: that grass-roots support can power government and shape legislation.
It is a theory that now faces a defining test. Conservatives have waged an angry and effective battle against Obama's health-care legislation, and OFA has responded by asking its volunteers to visit congressional offices and flood town hall meetings in a massive show of support. This month, Obama sent an e-mail to OFA members: "This is the moment our movement was built for," he wrote.
Interesting picture, is it not? Is this the movement that elected Barak Obama? If so, that part which had extended into our heavily republican area has disappeared. Oh we all are still here. But we have all been reabsorbed into our previous milieus as democrats or independents. I managed to get a handful out to help me when I did what Bird was doing on the streets of our little town a week ago. The local democrats had passed a fairly strong statement supporting single payer. Their hearts did not seem to be into resisting the screamers from our town's right wing.
Some of us wrote diaries between the long hours we put in helping to elect Obama. We urged people to realize that the election was the beginning of something not the end. We tried to emphasize that the hard work would begin when Obama took office. Anyone remember that? I doubt it.
So here I sit, a 73 year old codger, remembering the movement I was part of when I returned home from my post-doc in Israel in 1965. It was, in my mind, electoral politics that killed that movement. Now we have a "movement" that began with electoral politics. I am not seeing the dedication and fervor that our movement had back then. I still believe electoral politics will never bring any real change in this country.