This Post Might Actually Say Something Positive About Our Readings

Too bad Howard Dean didn't have the OFA list.

This week we read Ari Melber's special report "Year One of Organizing for America: The Permanent Field Campaign in a Digital Age."  Much of it had me reminded of Matt Bai's book, and of the debate between Howard Dean and Rahm Emmanuel about how to best achieve the Democrat's goals of reclaiming the White House (or their party identity for that matter).  In fact, Emmanuel's bitter opposition to any strategy that includes public inclusion or mobilization on behalf of the party's agenda is referenced in Melber's report.  White House staffers say Rahm and the boys don't care about the OFA list.  Well...should they?

I think there does exist some potential in OFA, and in Obama's historic and vast list of super-supporters across the country, but I'm not sure it will help promote any administration's specific agenda.  And in fact, even if it could, I think its strengths should be exploited elsewhere.

What I would like to see is a strategic use of OFA to increase organizing on a local level.  I'd like to see the White House use the list to encourage supporters nationwide to keep a watchful eye on local and state issues, so as to promote, over the long term, what Robert Putnam calls "social capital."  He writes:

"Our political parties, once intimately coupled to capillaries of community life, have become evanescent confections of pollsters and media consultants and independent political entrepreneurs -- the very antithesis of social capital...The social capital approach, focusing on indirect effects of civic norms and networks, is a much-needed corrective to an exclusive emphasis on the formal institutions of government as an explanation for our social discontents.  If we are to make our political system more responsive, especially to those who lack connection to the top, we must nourish grassroots organization."

1- Some flowery syntax, Putnam.  Bravo.

2- I agree.  The point is that Dean had the right idea but the wrong tools at the wrong time. 

Rahm Emmanuel doesn't want to waste his time on canvassing the country and attempting to rebuild the Democratic party where it has long been squashed.  And that's fine.  Especially in his current role, his job is to achieve the administration's short-term policy agenda.  He doesn't have the time to wander around the country and try to convince hopelessly uneducated people that healthcare reform really will help them.  But somebody needs to be doing it.  And maybe that somebody should have a huge email list full of Obama super-supporters from across the country.

The truth is that healthcare reform was probably always going to be passed  behind closed doors and by people like Emmanuel with knowledge of strategy and political connections.  But if we don't find a way to fix the broken parts of the Democratic party, then progressives will be on the defensive for years to come as conservatives continue to dominate with their message machines and down-home, folksy, bullshit demeanors.

I think OFA would do best to organize progressives locally on behalf of issues that serve to promote the party in the long-term.  Education reform is an excellent opportunity for this.  Progressive activists should be directed and organized to take an interest in the educational systems in their counties and states, and to find ways to reform them so as to produce educated, thoughtful, and inspired students in the generations to come.  The Texas school-book debacle could have been a great case-study for this.  These are the kinds of things nationwide that progressives should be organizing around, in order to promote a long-term, progressive social capital that will eventually help ease the job the Rahm Emmanuels of the future.