Obama Power

Joshua Levy Associate Editor, techPresident.com
Last weekend, as I spent a late spring day walking around Brooklyn, I noticed a pattern: Obama volunteers seemed to be standing on every corner. They were holding clipboards and wearing buttons sporting that famously clean Obama logo with a new phrase attached: Vote for Change. That's the name of a new Obama initiative launched last week in which the campaign is scattering volunteers across all 50 states in an effort to register as many new (Democratic) voters as possible.

"So you're an Obama volunteer," I said to one man standing in front of the Brooklyn Museum. "No, I'm just registering voters," he responded. I pointed to his prominent Obama button. "Right now we're just interested in registering voters," he said.

While Vote for Change makes it clear that Obama is looking past Hillary Clinton to John McCain and the general election, it's also an example of how Obama's campaign has been taking on the tasks typically reserved for progressive activists or the Democratic party itself.

Obama has quickly become the most powerful Democrat in the country by constructing an organization that exists outside of the traditional Democratic structure. In a fantastic, linked-around-the-blogosphere post last week, OpenLeft blogger and progressive activist Matt Stoller counted the ways that Obama's campaign machine has eschewed the help of traditional Democratic groups to build his own network of supporters, fundraisers, organizers, and communications systems from the ground up:

From top to bottom, they have destroyed their opponents within the party, stolen out from under them their base, and persuaded a whole set of individuals from blog readers to people in the pews to ignore intermediaries and believe in Barack as a pure vessel of change... He's consolidating power within the party.

In addition, this week the Politico's Ben Smith reported that the Obama campaign is "steering the candidate's wealthy supporters away from independent Democratic groups," i.e., issue-oriented 527s that traditionally help frame electoral messages via TV ads and other communications tools (think Swift Boat Veterans for Truth or Robert Greenwald's Brave New Films), and toward the campaign itself. The move may be directed at certain media-centric 527s like David Brock's Media Matters and John Podesta's Center for American Progress, both of which could be perceived as too close to Hillary Clinton, though the Obama camp hasn't clarified its reasoning. In any case, it's unlikely that Obama wants to cut off all third-party funders. My guess is that the campaign is trying to control its positive, unifying message as tightly as possible, lest any mud get slung around by progressive partisans.

For whatever reasons, it's clear that Obama is busy building a parallel Democratic infrastructure and movement. Washington-based 527s and Democratic loyalists may end up crying foul, but progressives across the country will benefit from more money and influence than they've had in years. Are they making a Faustian deal or witnessing the birth of a new Democratic Party?

10:27 AM ET | 05-15-2008 | permalink