Obama's grass-roots network is put to the test

Obama's grass-roots network is put to the test

www.latimes.com

A group that helped elect the president is being reshaped to push healthcare legislation.
By Peter Wallsten
August 10, 2009
Reporting from Washington -- To win the White House, Barack Obama and his political team built a vast grass-roots network of supporters and volunteers that came to be considered one of the most valuable assets in American politics. Their ambition after the election was to reshape the network, with its trained organizers and 13 million e-mail addresses, into a ground-level force to push the new president's policy goals.

But now, entering a crucial congressional re

(visit the link for the full news article)

This is a fairly balanced article (one of the few) regarding the ongoing countrywide town hall debates on the proposed health care bills currently being formulated by congress.

While many Media Outlets and Democratic Party Leaders and Officials, Representatives and the Administration are crying foul that Republican Groups and Corporate Special Interests are organizing some of the protests sweeping the town hall meetings the President himself has a 13 million strong grass roots organization of his own he has activated and called in to the fray, apparently according to this article before the fray even started.

Yet the article from the L.A. Times asserts all is not well within Obama’s grass roots organization and those participating in it are finding themselves hampered by defectors, poor advanced planning, a lack of concise organization and a much more determined opposition from republicans, corporate interests and independent voters and even Obama defectors.

I posted this article because it represents a more balanced view of both sides that exposes a similar desire to organize on both sides and control the flow and the scope of the debate on both sides, and to a certain extent how poor strategy and planning on the President’s part is adding to the ensuing chaos as determined and organized groups on both the left and the right square off looking to achieve victory in their individual quests to promote or defeat the health care initiatives.

Perhaps if both sides of the political divide could each accept their own culpability those in the middle with honest questions, those independents and people who switch parties from election to election based on how they like the candidate can then start asking the critical questions that will lead to critical answers so Americans can really decide for themselves without the political theatre that is clearly being staged by multiple heavily vested sides.


www.latimes.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

In Farmington, Mo., Obama backer Craig Hartel wonders why the movement has balked at pressuring centrist Democrats who are wavering on whether to support a public health insurance option that would compete with private insurers.

In Chester, Va., Beth Kimbriel often volunteers 40 hours a week to persuade locals to support Obama. But with critics of the healthcare plan so prominently grabbing headlines and spreading what she calls misinformation, Kimbriel finds that "it's difficult to be believed" when she lays out the president's position.

And in Cary, N.C., Murray Silverstone, inspired by the election and eager to pitch in on the healthcare fight, wonders why staffers didn't arrive in his area and begin trying to reconstruct the campaign system until five weeks ago.


"It wasn't clear to us why there was such a delay," said Silverstone, an astronomer who fits in volunteer work amid his research and college teaching.

These are a sampling of personal stories of members of Obama’s grass roots network compiled by the reporter.

One thing that strikes me as important to note that it is Obama’s network, and not simply a democratic network and not simply a pro health care bill network, but a pro if the President would like to see it happen we will go out and do our best as an organized group to make it happen for the President.

It’s not of course unusual for Presidents to have campaign networks but I am uncertain if any sitting President as retained his campaign network and grew his network while in office to function as a mechanism while in office to promote his policies door to door and in town halls and other public forums and ways?

One thing is for certain, it can truly not be said that the Democrats don’t have an organized response but the reality is they aren’t responding but taking the initiative to begin with.

Which begs the question which organizations stepped into the equation first? The President’s the Democrat’s the Republican’s or the Pharmaceutical and Health Care and Insurer’s organized groups.

Please keep in mind there really are a large number of non-affiliated people also showing up to these meetings with real concerns and skeptical about the proposed bills.

L.A. Times

Organizing for America's website displays hundreds of upcoming events, ranging from tiny house parties to solicitations to match the conservative presence at town hall meetings. With new online tools, supporters can tell their own healthcare stories to be distributed to lawmakers, and network members can monitor their colleagues' calls to Capitol Hill.

It is evident that the efforts to promote the bill are organized and with 12,000,000 members of Organizing for America divided between 50 states it's not hard to imagine that it wouldn't be difficult to pack town hall meetings with pro-health care people working directly for Obama.

Staffers have been hired so far in 42 states, said the group's deputy director, Jeremy Bird, and he expects to have paid workers in every state in a matter of weeks.

While many of the members are volunteers there is a growing number of paid workers as well.

This in essence makes Obama's organized efforts paid efforts as well at the orginizational and management level.

The fate of Obama's health and energy plans rests, in large measure, with wavering lawmakers within Obama's own party.

This is something that is likely quite true since it is a Democratic led House and Senate. Much of the grandstanding and worry taking place by the left seems to be based on a ground swell of popular protest discouraging Democrats from voting for the Health Care Initiative(s).

And some of those Democrats are unhappy at the prospect of being pressured by a group that is funded with party money and housed at the Democratic National Committee. They raised concerns at a pre-recess meeting of freshman lawmakers and Organizing for America officials.

It is not just the opposition to the Bill that is unhappy with some of Obama's grass roots orginizations tactics.