In an effort to push for his budget bill, Barack Obama will officially begin to use his online grassroots support to influence legislation.
David Plouffe, campaign manager for Obama's presidential bid and an adviser to Organizing for America, called this effort the "first major engagement" of OFA in the legislative process, adding that the group will call on supporters "to help the President win the debate between those who marched in lockstep with the failed Bush economic policies and now have no new ideas versus the Obama agenda which will help us manage the short term economic crisis and puts us on the path to long term prosperity."
While many have been waiting for Obama to activate his email list and his grass roots network, Plouffe has been trying out a couple of test runs to see what will and will not work on this level. The organization tried to throw house parties for the stimulus; but this is on a whole other level.
In what way?
- Having volunteers canvass on the streets for support like for an election campaign.
That push begins will begin tomorrow with an email sent to their entire OFA list asking for volunteers to participate in a canvassing effort Saturday in which people will be asked to go door-to-door to urge their neighbors to sign a pledge in support of Obama's budget plan.
And probably the most important feature of the new push:
- Contact information for members of congress to support the budget
A new online tool in the effort will be unveiled tomorrow on the DNC/OFA website that will allow individuals to find their member of Congress and call their office to voice approval of Obama's ambitious budget proposal. Midweek, a follow-up message will be sent to the list to again ask volunteers to call the Hill -- the first time the OFA email list has been used to urge direct contact with Congress to support for legislation.
This is going to probably be the most effective part of the whole program. Think about it. Potentially 13 million people will have information they can used delivered to them in an email that they can call and learn how to influence congress. I don't think this has been attempted before on such a large scale. Even if they get only half of their list to do so, that is a lot more phone calls than congress is used to coming in from the left.
I have to say this is pretty ambitious in terms of a beginning for the organization and can probably be used as a tool to help get through to congress. But I believe it is only a start.
But it is one hell of one.