Obama's Army

[illinoisprogressive]

A very good article on how this election is like no other. the writer talks about how the landscape looks bleak to a point but, that many new milestones are also being written and this could turn out to be an innovative election to a degree.
He begins with the thought of the same old thing and the thought of another sequel:


The Possible Sequel:

For a while, the Democrats were making it easy to for me huddle by my cozy fireside of alienation. They took back Congress in 2006 and have capitulated ever since as the war in Iraq escalated and the Constitution continued its slide through the paper shredder. The polls and pundits scream that Sen. Hillary Clinton has a lock on the nomination and that nostalgia for the mediocre 1990s shall define our inevitable future.

Will the Democrats really nominate another Clinton and inadvertently cede to a Republican D.C.-outsider like Rudy Giuliani or Mitt Romney the moniker of the "change candidate"? Not since 1928 has there been a presidential contest in which a sitting president or vice-president did not seek his party's nomination. That makes Clinton, due to her association in voters' minds with the Clinton White House (an image the candidate herself promotes), the de facto "incumbent" of the 2008 election at the precise moment that the electorate wants "change."

Clinton has surrounded herself with the same tired White House gang. Corporate America's über-consultant and pollster Mark Penn calls the daily shots in the Clinton '08 campaign. (It was Penn who told ABC News this month that, in 2000, Al Gore "thought there was Clinton fatigue. I thought there was Clinton nostalgia but not fatigue.") Mandy Grunwald pulls down a $360,000 salary running the media show for her second client named Clinton. Terry McAuliffe is the senator's chief fundraiser, and the rest of the campaign staff is similarly dominated by old Clinton hands, most of whom sat out the past two presidential elections and are still wandering around in an Olympus of their own creation, seeking to relive the end of the past century. The first Clinton administration turned out to be eight years of dashed hopes with its largest "accomplishments" enduring as dubious zombie policies that continued to haunt us long after the Clintons had moved to Chappaqua. (Remember welfare reform and the squandering of the peace dividend?) NAFTA chased millions of Mexican farmers off their lands and northward across the border (providing grist for the xenophobes and radio talkers to persecute the migrant workers once they arrived) and has turned too many beautiful rivers and coasts down here into industrial cesspools during the past decade.


snip-
He then points to how the election came to be known as the Change election and how the word is used to define a Washington insider in using the word and a new comer, outsider in using the word.
Either way, the word Change is what is the keyword for this cycle:

The Change Election
Can I please go back to ignoring this campaign now? Ahem. Change + Experience. Change + the System. Change + Compromises. All those plus signs add up to a big minus, erasing the "Change" from the equation. (One of the funnier comments I heard after that speech was that Clinton's general-election message will likely be: "Democrat + Republican: With me you don't have to choose!")
After all, everybody who lived through the first Clinton administration has the experience to remember what capitulation after the promise of change looks like.
A day later, at a campaign rally in Manchester, Obama rolled out his upgraded message with a direct challenge to Clinton's technocratic doctrine of system management:
"s bad as George Bush has been, it's going to take more than a change of parties in the White House to truly turn this country around. George Bush and Dick Cheney may have turned divisive, special-interest politics into an art form, but they didn't invent it. It was there before they got to Washington, and if you and I don't stand up and challenge it, it will be there long after they leave." Citing "the conventional Washington thinking on foreign policy that led us to this tragic war in Iraq" (and reminding us again that his chief rival, Clinton, voted to authorize that war), Obama hammered: "We need to turn the page. There are those who tout their experience working the system in Washington-but the problem is that the system in Washington isn't working for us and hasn't for a long time. Think about it. We've been talking about the health-care crisis in this country for decades....
"I believe this election cannot be about who can play this game better. It has to be about who can put an end to the game-playing."

snip-

Then the writer takes us to how win or lose, Obama is rewriting how the election landscape will be changing. Both in fundraising and in how to organize around a campaign and how the old rules will no longer apply to campaigns in the future. Win or lose, Obama has made a lasting impact on campaigning, elections, and fundraising:

America's community organizer

Dean, a centrist governor who morphed into a maverick during his 2004 presidential campaign, had no background fighting from the outside and below. Dean didn't wear it well. It is Obama's history as a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago-and the application of that experience to organizing his campaign-that's making the 2008 cycle distinct from previous ones. Where Dean failed to convert his donor-activist base into effective organization, Obama is apparently writing the book on how to do it.
During a three-day training session of Obama volunteers-called Camp Obama-in New York this past month, the campaign's field director, Temo Figueroa, confronted the ghost of Dean's '04 crash head on.

snip-

Exley concluded: "These organizers could rewrite the rules of presidential politics, dramatically raise the profile of field organizing in the campaign world and help rebuild Democratic Party structure in states, such as California, that have been long forgotten to electoral field organizing."
Beyond the traditional role of field organization in getting out the vote, Camp Obama seems equally fixated on making sure its precinct-level organization is involved on the message level of the campaign in order to beat back the kinds of media attacks known, since the 2004 TV ads of Swift Boat Veterans against Kerry, as the "swift-boating" of the candidate.

for the full article:

http://ww2.sdcitybeat.com/cms/story/detail/?id=6230

[hedgehog]

1. Wow, just wow.

I have been telling people the part about the fundraising all along, but I had no inkling about the organization. Here's hoping it works! We need to get people involved in their governmnet again.

[papau]

2. Obama has 350,000 donors to Clinton's 250,000 - and in Iowa Obama has 50% more

field offices and indeed those offices are well staffed.

90 days in a couple of lifetimes in politics - no primary/caucus is "won" until until the votes are counted.

That said - I doubt that stories that imply Clinton is "bad" because she does not seem like a lot of change from Bill Clinton are going to move many votes - indeed I doubt the actual idea that folks are not fond of the Clinton years of prosperity and peace.

Obama may well win - but it will be by motivating, lighting up a room or hall by speaking of his vision of the future - at least that is my opinion.

[Colobo]

3. We are ready to take Obama to DC!

[sandnsea]

4. precinct level message organization

That is exactly what we need. It isn't enough to get out the vote, we also have to get out the phone calls and letters and local petitions. Until local people get the unfiltered truth, they won't be able to put pressure on their representatives to vote differently. Regardless of the primary outcome, I hope this local organizing makes a difference.

[madrchsod]

5. hillary is`t changing anything

every program she has brought up is a financial disaster for america. not one program has a chance in hell of rebuilding america`s military,our economy,and our future. there`s not enough money to do what she envisions without huge reforms in the tax structure and laws dealing with corporations and trade. the only reason i can think of is why barrack has`t dug himself into the hole like hillary has is that he understands it`s hard to change the structure from within.
big bold empty promises are hard for politicians to avoid and the one who offers the fewest is the one i`m supporting

[AtomicKitten]

6. Obama has a solid base that is wide and deep.

And after 2004, I no longer believe in inevitability.

Gobama.

[Colobo]

7. And after I saw Obama announce his candidacy in Chicago,

I believe in him.

[AtomicKitten]

8. He got my attention at the Democratic Convention in 2004.

Obama has something special.

[Colobo]

9. I was campaigning for Bush back then.

:(

[AtomicKitten]

11. Well, you got better!

Cheers! Glad you're on our side now!

[illinoisprogressive]

10. Katz, you were at this announcement in Chicago that Sunday??

I was in Springfield the day before. cold.