In cased you missed it, David Plouffe, the manager of the Obama campaign, recently introduced Mitch Stewart as the Executive Director of Organizing for America in a video discussion of the future of the Obama grassroots organization. Now housed under a separate department of the DNC, the Obama Administration will use Organizing for American as an attempt to mobilize supporters to pass President Obama’s agenda in Congress.
By all accounts, this has the potential to be as powerful of a force as it was during the election. The success of MyBarackObama.com is evidence that advocacy organizations of all stripes should not attempt to simply blast messages one way, but should engage with their members in multiple formats and encourage them to communicate with one another and organize themselves. In fact, some organizations whose members overlap could find that their members’ expectations will have increased after participating in Obama’s organization; people will want to be engaged and empowered, not just talked to.
However, it won’t likely be as smooth sailing as it was during the campaign. It’s much easier to try and organize around one single goal than it is to pass often complex pieces of legislation. Within the Obama community, there will be a number of disparate factions and interests that won’t always agree. Some “supporters” might even oppose certain goals of the Administration altogether.
Seven short months ago, when Obama came out in support of FISA during the campaign, more than 23,000 grassroots supporters joined the MyBarackObama group “Senator Obama Please Get FISA Right.” As President, there is a real chance that his own grassroots community will box him in and keep him honest when he suggests or supports legislation that some in the community do not agree with. It’s sometimes hard to disagree with a small but very vocal few.
Take the universal healthcare debate, for example. The community includes different groups with their own unique perspective- doctors, seniors, attorneys, parents with young children, etc. Each group will have strong opinions on the specifics of any comprehensive plan.
Going forward, there is a real challenge for the Organizing for America team to manage the internal debates which could spin out of control. Advocacy organizations could even fuel the fire by encouraging their members to advocate the interests of narrow organizations.
It will be interesting to see how internal debates are managed and mediated and how the future of such an expansive, motivated organization plays out on a far more complicated playing field.
True, campaigns are fun because they are so black and white, but policy is many shades of gray, and then you add in the fact that most people have an opinion but know little about the subject matter or its potential ramifications. Every law has nuances that help and harm groups, and even lawmakers don’t understand the full impact of the legislation they will be called (or pressured) to work on.