Make The Ask, Obama
by Matt Stoller, Tue Feb 13, 2007 at 08:09:00 AM EST
Zack Exley has written about this when he talks about internet organizing and Obama. And today Atrios touches on it as well.
First, that it's incredibly earlier for this much coverage of the Democratic primary. Back in May of 2003 there was no sense that the primary campaigns were unfolding. The narrative of the campaigns did not dominate television news and political coverage generally. And it's only February.Second, it's sort of weird that no one seems to have learned the lesson that there is a way to tap into the world of small donors and create a campaign that way. This isn't limited to presidential campaigns either, frankly.
I'm not saying that people can just abandon those tasty $2300 checks, just that they can reduce reliance on them and the time it takes to collect them if they get creative about reaching out to the masses. I've been to a couple big ticket elite fundraisers, and they're really kind of awful. A lot of rich people have a major sense of entitlement, and tend think they're geniuses, so candidates really have to pander to them.
Moveon gets people to do this not because they are savvy with technology, but because they ask. Any good organizer will tell you that it's critical for people in a campaign or movement to have things to do that directly contribute to a real goal. If they have things to do, they are happy. If they don't, they go and find other things to do that aren't related to you.
Obama has a national megaphone. He could ask people to do stuff. Anything, really. He could ask for 1,000,000 people to call Congress in February to ask for a withdrawal from Iraq. He could ask for 1,000,000 to call Congress and ask for universal health care. As long as he were routing this through a system that was transparent and showed that other people were doing this it would work. He could even ask his supporters to register two million new Democratic primary voters, to rewrite the electoral map. And as long as someone on his campaign was counting and making it transparent, it would work.
Obama knows this. He practically wrote this in his latest book. People will organize themselves. And if you give them things to do, they will become your activists, your donors, and your pushback on the smears that are coming.
Obama just needs to ask, which he didn't do in his announcement speech. There's a perceived risk here, that it won't happen and he'll get embarrassed. Going to high dollar fundraisers doesn't carry this perceived perceived risk, though it's impossible to beat Hillary solely through the establishment. Obama knows there's a hunger out here for change, and that if we have leadership we will follow. Does he trust the American people enough to make the ask, and change the country?
Tags: 2008, Barack Obama, president (all tags)
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