In 2009, a fateful decision was made to entrust Obama for America to the Democratic Party. It was an enormous gift from Barack Obama to the Democrats. Obama for America was driven by the core belief that what unites us as Americans is stronger than what separates and divides us.
Then President-Elect Obama made this statement in launching OFA:
As President, I will need the help of all Americans to meet the challenges that lie ahead. That's why I'm asking people like you who fought for change during the campaign to continue fighting for change in your communities. Since the election hundreds of thousands of you have shared your ideas about how this movement should move forward, and we've listened carefully....
Volunteers, grass roots leaders and ordinary citizens will continue to drive our organization, helping us bring about the changes we proposed during the campaign: a solution to our economic crisis, an end to the war in Iraq, affordable healthcare for all and new sources of energy to power our economy and protect our environment.
But in reality, OFA turned into a top-down propaganda machine of the Democratic National Committee.
Obama's 2008 campaign was about bringing in new voters around a common vision, reaching out to disgruntled Republicans, independents, and new voters who could see what was possible and who worked tirelessly to bring change to Washington.
Rather than trusting the ground-up change that Barack Obama exemplified, promised, and delivered in 2008, the DNC (under Tim Kaine's leadership) used OFA as a tool to distribute talking points, raise money for the central office of the DNC, and empower the DNC.
I believe the results on Tuesday proved that this was a failure, not of volunteers, but of vision.
To be sure, huge numbers of OFA phone calls and contacts were made. The numbers were astonishing indeed - over 10 million calls made in just 5 days, and huge numbers of door knocks over the final weekend.
But in my extensive experience as an OFA neighborhood team leader and volunteer over the past two years, I saw first-hand that the Organizing for America model lacked the key ingredients that made Obama's movement for change a movement, and not just a program.
Let me give you a few examples:
- On Tuesday, I signed on to make calls when I had some spare time. But I ended up getting sent to Utah, making calls into the Salt Lake City area to support Utah's Democratic candidates for governor, senator, and Jim Matheson in UT-2. Now, don't get me wrong, but Matheson in no way embodies my core values and the calls I made were definitely an act of charity, because in no way did Matheson or Utah have anything to do with my local community concerns.
- During the healthcare debate, I repeatedly told my state director (who, by the way, empathized completely with my concerns) that I felt the commitment to "lower costs, cover more Americans, and improve quality" was weak tea. I supported President Obama's 2008 campaign because I agreed with him that the problem wasn't that people didn't want healthcare, but that they couldn't afford it. I thought mandates without a public option were unacceptable. And I felt that we gave away too much ground to the hospital industry, drug companies, and insurance lobby. I wanted more focus on health care, not health insurance.
And what's more, most of the people I talked to agreed with me! They could see the good points I was making. So, ultimately, I ended up having to choose between my conscience and reason and accepting the authority/direction/guidance of my OFA director. This undermined my trust, and it was the opposite of change from the ground up.
This wasn't so much about compromise (which I don't mind) as it was about feeling co-opted by an organization that claimed it cared about me and what I thought. Rather than feeling like a leader, I felt like a servant or slave to the goals of OFA.
I should mention, in fairness, that I felt by the end of the debate (Lieberman backing out of his own 2006 plan to extend and open up Medicare for those 55 and over, Nelson's Cornhusker Kickback, etc.) that it was better for us to pass what we could than to not pass anything at all. I think there is wisdom in the "half a loaf" strategy that Vicki Kennedy advocated on behalf of her late husband. When David Plouffe, Vicki Kennedy, and others made their case, I was moved by it enough to get back on board for the final push. But by that time, too much time had been wasted, too much momentum had been lost, and too many feelings were trampled.
- In the end, 3 of the 5 Democrats in the US House (Tanner, Gordon, and Davis) abandoned ship on President Obama and Speaker Pelosi. I heard the following from a prominent OFA organizer in our state yesterday:
For me, this was a race about authenticity and having the courage to do the right thing - not what's politically expedient. Lincoln [Davis, TN-4] lost me at health care reform.
OFA "worked" in the sense that unmotivated volunteers didn't put in the necessary effort to carry conservadems over the line. But by limiting the choices of OFA volunteers, and by failing to connect OFA to the elected officials, candidates, and causes they cared about most, the OFA model lacked the necessary personalization to effect change.
Back in late 2007, I got passionately involved in the Iowa caucuses. I care about Iowa because it's where my grandfather (a former Republican committee chairman) lived, farmed, and helped to fund a Christian education for myself and my cousins and siblings. Grandpa was a man who, with just an 8th-grade education, was able to successfully operate a business during the 1940s, 50s, 60s, and 70s, and ultimately put his three sons and daughter through college. Two of my uncles became college professors.
I got involved in Iowa because I have deep roots in Iowa. I became part of the grassroots movement and I have never looked back since. Identity politics would frame me as a White Southern Evangelical, highly-educated ... but the reality is that I'm a Midwesterner, transplanted to the South, and my world and life is not what you might imagine for a traditional Southerner.
And that's true of all of us. We can't be pigeonholed. We're not easily defined by demographic categories. And the genius of the Barack Obama social network is that it allows people to organize and mobilize around shared interests, common concerns, and personally-defined characteristics.
We need to get back to that. We need to return to the grassroots, to communities driven by personal empowerment and not identity politics or demographic slice-and-dice politics. The complaints about low turnout from African-Americans, or the "youth vote", completely miss the point. They didn't stay home because of their skin color or their age. They stayed home because they didn't feel that the debate represented their concerns, interests, or aspirations.
As we move toward 2012, my top priority is to take back the Obama for America campaign from the political class in Washington, move it back to Chicago, and start registering voters and listening to my neighbors. That's what it was always meant to be. That's what it needs to become once again. And that is how we'll win the next time around.