Next Wednesday night, President Obama will give what's been described as the most important speech of his career. Not because health care reform hangs in the balance. Not because of policy. But because Wednesday night will be about promises kept or promises broken. Because Wednesday night, we will know the emotional truth.
First, a little background. I was something called an RFO (regional field organizer) for the Obama campaign during the general election. I helped organize and run literally hundreds of phone banks in my congressional district (CA-36) and sent thousands of volunteers to Nevada to register voters. From August, 2008 to Election Day we recruited 1,500 volunteers who made over half a million phone calls to swing states all over the country.
For five months, I gave up my "day job" as a film editor on theatrical films and network dramas to work on the campaign. About that job; Essentially, it can be boiled down to this: I manipulate sound, images and language to create the desired emotional response in a viewer. Give me a couple of close ups of people's faces, a wide shot, an explosion and the right piece of music and I can make you angry, sad, or laugh - depending on how I manipulate those elements.
My point is this: Republicans understand - have always understood - this very, very well. They'll take a set of facts and figures, find the emotional truth inside all that information they want to push and go for it.
Presto-chango, end of life counseling becomes "death panels", reducing fraud and inefficiencies in Medicare become "pulling the plug on grandma".
One of the great joys for me in working on the Obama campaign was being involved with people who understood this concept very, very well. Although I had no part in the messaging of the campaign myself, I watched with great appreciation how the campaign tapped into the emotions of it's volunteers. They took a demoralized activist base beaten down by 8 years of quasi-fascist rule and lifted us up with three simple words and one simple concept - "Respect, empower, and include" and "CHANGE".
Day after day, they used these concepts, ritualized them, repeated them, made them into a mantra. They created the emotional truth around which the campaign drew it's power.
To this day I still tear up when I remember how, at the end of Camp Obama, our facilitator told everyone in the room to close their eyes and envision Obama and his family on January 20 - to envision Michelle and her girls as they stood to watch their father take the oath of office. And I can tell you, when I was there on the Mall and watched it happen for real, it was all I could do not to break down.
But whatever alchemy created this understanding during the campaign has all but vanished in the last few months. I know so many OFA staff and volunteers who do everything they can to keep this spirit alive, but it's not really coming from Obama anymore. The arguments for health care, even the pledges OFA asks constituents to sign - contain not one whiff of emotional truth. Even the health care horror stories collected by OFA have been stripped of their emotion, filed away to be trotted out in mild DNC ads or handed over to congressional members. These stories need to be used, repeated, and ritualized for the entire country - they need to become our nation's emotional truth.
That is not happening. Instead the administration is pushing policy arguments, lists of ideas, pieces of paper. And they shrivel and die next to Sarah Palin's Baby Trig and the reptile fear of people clinging desperately to whatever they have left after a brutal recession.
So here we are. What now?
Well, if Obama really does punt on the public option, it will be a disaster for him and for us. And not because of policy. No, this will be our Waterloo moment because emotional truth and actual truth will collide.
Those of us who feel the most passionately about this, the "left of the left" if you will (although, I live in Venice, there are people here who equate me with George Bush, honest to god), will see a President who did not respect, empower and include them. We will feel that we have no more voice in this administration than we did the last.
That will be our emotional truth.
Worse, Republicans will see that bullying, being disruptive, and tapping into people's worst fears and instincts works, and will use it on each and every piece of legislation the White House tries to pass for the next 3 years. It's happening on climate change legislation now. Combine that with a disillusioned, disempowered activist left and I'm seeing damage to the Democratic Party well past the 2010 election cycle.
So on Wednesday night, the only thing I'm going to be watching for is the narrative our Story-Teller-In-Chief brings to the American people. I will be watching for the emotional truth.
That is what the fight over the public option is all about - it is not about policy. It's a proxy for the implied contract we entered into when we helped get Obama elected. We expected Change, we expected to be respected, empowered and included, we expected him to fight, and we expected to join him in that fight.
Wednesday night will be a promise kept or a promise broken. Either way, it will be our moment of truth.
THE ASK (you knew there had to be an "ask", didn't you?)
If you were a staffer on the campaign, volunteered on the campaign, or even if you just donated to the campaign, please sign this petition to make your voice heard.
Kid Oakland has an amazing diaryon how to turn emotion into action. Read it. Do it.
Crossposted at firedoglake.com
UPDATE
First of all, thanks for sending this to the rec list at all, but TOP of the rec list? Holy cow.
Anyway, I seemed to have touched a nerve here. I wish I had the time to respond to each and every one of you, but I'm out of town visiting my elderly parents, doing a bit of 'case management'. My time at the computer will have to be short.
Let me see if I can address some of your concerns here.
First of all, I'm a realist. Second of all, I don't consider myself a "progressive" in the classic sense of the word. I'm not a "purist" on single payer, I'm fairly fiscally conservative, I have family in the military I love, hell, I have Republicans in the family I still talk to. "Left of the Left" I'm not.
I don't expect Obama to meet every expectation hoisted upon him and I don't expect him to bend to every whim. But he set the bar awfully high for himself, and for us. We entered into an implied contract - you (Obama) work like hell, we work like hell, and together we bring this thing home.
So no, I don't expect to get everything we ask for, but I do expect us to leave everything on the road before we give up. We did that in November, we are capable of doing it now.
But it's not happening.
Before I give you an example, I want to be very clear about one thing, because there's understandable sensitivity around this issue - our OFA vols and staff in California have been remarkable, tireless and entirely committed to the cause. End of story. I say this without qualification.
However, they're fighting with one hand tied behind their backs because of the DNC.
Back in June I formulated a plan to call the constituents of Blue Dog Dems in California, and ask them to call their reps to support health care reform. But I couldn't get lists from OFA, and by extension the DNC, because that wasn't part of the game plan at the time. No one wanted to "go after" anyone on our own "team". So I ended up having to get lists from a third party for our phone banks.
We made over 10,000 calls to Blue Dog constituents. 75% of the voters we contacted committed to call their congress member. And we did this six weeks before OFA strategy changed and started issuing call lists for Blue Dog districts.
This is but one example. I have more. I'm sure many of you do as well. But that's all water under the bridge now. What's important is what happens going forward.
I'm rooting for Obama, I really am.