First of all, let me say that I am finding this early period in the Obama presidency every bit as fascinating to follow and be a part of as I did the election. In fact, it's more interesting because it's REAL STUFF .
Many of the blogs that I compulsively checked many times a day during the campaign have fallen to the bottom of my reading list, but Daily Kos has risen to the top because it the place where I not only can learn what's "really" going on from intelligent diarists, it is also the place where I find some clear vision on what to do to support Obama's agenda. So for me, it's working better than the many group meetings that we have been invited to either host or attend by David Plouffe.
Consider, for example, the wonderful facebook page "We Are the Change" started by Kos diarist Marta Evry. This has been a guidebook to my activism on the stimulus. Sure, I could have found some of the information elsewhere, but here it is all in one place, including some spectacular documents supporting the case for the stimulus.
Some "pundits" want instant gratification on the results of mobilizing us peons in Obama's army. According to Marc Ambinder:
"It's a bust!" That's what McClatchy's Franke Greve concludes about
Organizing for America's house meetings to generate support for the
Obama stimulus package.
Few supporters are
answering President Barack Obama's
call for nationwide
house-party gatherings this
weekend to build grass-roots
support for his economic stimulus plan.
A McClatchy survey of sign-up
rosters for a score of cities
across the country revealed only
34 committed attendees in Tacoma,
Wash., as of midafternoon Friday;
in Fort Worth, Texas, only 54,
and in Sacramento, Calif., just 78.
"Before the election, we would have
had 500 to 800," said Kim Mack, 46,
a Sacramento city-facility manager
who's hosted house parties for political
figures and causes since the mid-'90s."
Ambinder himself cautions that it's too soon to tell. I find Greve's opinions really galling. It takes time to organize 3 million people! Myself, I have gone to every meeting I could and about the biggest one had 35 people in it. I even sponsored one of my own, an early "Change is coming" meeting before Christmas. A group of 15 strangers came together around environmental issues and agreed to continue as a group, but on the chat site we created, we are still figuring out our role and trying not to duplicate everything that's already out there. (We have a tentative name: "TAG." It stands for "Turn America Green"). Our developing concept is that we will jump into local issues, helping groups with projects ad hoc,hoping to act like a tag team(i.e., TAG- you're it)for green efforts, all the while advocating for legislative change on a variety of issues related to green energy. Our site is quiet right now as everyone is focused on the stimulus.
What I'm trying to say is that like so many of us, I found that the Obama campaign whet my appetite for political activism, and I haven't lost the hunger. In fact it's growing. I am calling senators for the first time in more years than I'd care to admit, and it feels powerful! It feels like democracy! I desperately want to support Obama's agenda (and to disagree with it when appropriate), and I don't think anyone realizes how difficult it is to figure out the best way to do that. Why is there so little patience - either with Obama, or with ourselves as activists - in the commentaries on all the blogs, including Kos? Circling back to my original point, I feel that diaries like Kos are helping to move me forward. Perhaps the Obama team will never quite figure out how to organize the energies of this giant group in lock-step, but the netroots know how to do it. It will be interesting to see how the two "organizations" will interconnect when it comes to issues even broader and more complex than a campaign. I don't think anyone really knows how that's all going to work yet, but as today's recommended diary by FleetAdmiralJ pointed out, even Kos commentators and diarists are getting "undies in a bundle" a bit too early.