2010: Are Americans Ready to Confront Obama's Organizing Against America War Machine?

From Dienekes' Place and cross-posted here and here.
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There are some that are positively giddy over the prospects of the 2010 mid-terms, thinking that our country can turn back the tide of Marxism that has begun to sweep across America.

Hopefully, this post will serve as a warning to all those who believe in individual rights and free enterprise: The opposition is better armed, better organized, and has already begun its campaign to win 2010.

Like an advance scout reporting the movements of our foes, this post may better explain what America's adversaries are up to, before asking you: Are you ready for this fight? Can this nation be saved from the onslaught of Marxism?

First, unions are endorsing candidates far and wide for the mid-term elections. The reason unions are endorsing now is that, for many unions, once a candidate is endorsed, the unions can begin to spend their members' money and marshal their resources for those candidates.

Secondly, and most importantly, as this post [with emphasis added] from the Leftist publication Truthout explains, the war apparatus that is known as Organizing for America has already begun its campaign to diminish the risks to Democrats in the 2010 mid-term elections:

Congressional switchboards were bombarded on Tuesday with over 300,000 calls from supporters of Barack Obama's plan for health care reform....

The event was a part of a national call-in day billed as "time to deliver" by Obama's political arm, Organizing for America (OFA). OFA is the Obama campaign transformed into a political organization that is housed in the DNC in Washington, DC.

DNC Chairman and Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine said that OFA is the largest department in the Democratic National Committee, with staff in 48 states. Kaine said that when he assumed the chair of the DNC, OFA was not part of the DNC, but that now it is the heart of the organization.

In the past, incumbents had begun to raise money and set their agenda for re-election early in their terms of office. The difference here is that Obama is cranking up the ground game before his first year is over. He will already have a national field campaign in full gear before the off-term elections, a move that could help him avoid the usual losses the party in the White House usually suffers. OFA may also emerge as the most powerful voice in 2016. A candidate with access to OFA's organizational strength will have a huge leg up.

While there is a grassroots model in place, the agenda will come from the top.

While it would be ideal for the agenda to come from the grass roots, in this case, since the glue that holds the organization together is Barack Obama, from an effectiveness standpoint it makes sense for the organization to organize around his agenda. Many national organizations fizzle when the leader who formed them moves on. Case in point, has anyone heard from the Reform Party lately? Once Ross Perot was gone, there was brief life as they fought over the money the party had coming in matching funds, but once the money was gone, so was their momentum.

OFA Still Has Paid Staff in 48 States

Florida has seven paid staff statewide. OFA's Miami Dade Regional Field Director Brad Schenk described the model structure of the organization, which he said was the campaign's model in Iowa in 2007. Neighborhood groups would form and chose captains and team leaders, who would report to a community organizer responsible for multiple neighborhoods. The community organizer communicates with the field office. From there, information continues on up straight to the national office at the DNC in Washington.

The goal would be to have the neighborhood groups extremely well organized; they would have their own phone banks, canvas operations and events. The campaign would provide the neighborhood groups access to data from the 2008 campaign. This is extremely important. In the past, campaigns guarded their lists, but in this case, volunteers in the community will have access to data that will allow them to organize their neighborhoods. Picture the old Chicago model with block captains all over the country.

Schenk described the organization as progressive, but not radical. He said that while the organization will hold rallies, they would not pull off stunts that could make the organization look bad. When others argued that the "tea baggers" were succeeding, Schenk countered by saying that they were hurting, not helping, their cause, going on to say that they were "polarizing the Republican Party."

All of OFA's resources are currently focused on the health care fight and it is an issue that is easy to rally around. The true test will come when OFA is focusing on an issue or supporting a candidate that its supporters are not excited about. The organization has daily access to the Oval Office, it is in transition right now, working hard to reactivate the foot soldiers from the 2008 campaign. If Tuesday's effort is any indication, they are succeeding. The result could give Obama a more powerful political arm than even the two major political parties themselves.

So, tell me, fellow Spartans and Patriots, now that you know the odds America faces, are you ready for this fight, or will we let our nation fall?



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AN INSIDE LOOK AT OBAMA'S 'ORGANIZING AGAINST AMERICA'

Grass roots organizing--it's been the subject of ridicule, fear and loathing from the Right for having taken President Barack Obama from relative obscurity to the White House.

Now that President Obama's campaign machine has been converted to an ongoing war machine for the Left, the White House and the Democratic National Committee, Organizing for America has been dispatched by its Commander in Chief to take on the fight to nationalize America's health care.

To understand the war machine that brought America "change," "hope." and a huge (as in $9 trillion) deficit, it helps to know what it's like at the ground level.

Like a look from behind enemy lines on the Eastern Front, Sunday's Washington Post ran a story following one of Organizing Against America's generals which provides a good account life on the ground. Here are some excerpts:

The last three years had unfolded in an unrelenting series of what Jeremy Bird called Big Moments, and here began the latest on a sweltering afternoon earlier this month. Another rental car, another unfamiliar highway, another string of e-mails sent from his BlackBerry while driving 70 mph. Bird took a sip from his coffee and looked over at Dan Grandone, a co-worker riding in the passenger seat.

"I don't know about you, but I'm running on adrenaline right now," Bird said. "I love this feeling that we're on the verge of something crucial." ...

As deputy director of Organizing for America, a national network of Obama supporters, Bird was scheduled to speak with a group of volunteers who had been threatened at town halls, outshouted at local rallies and weakened by a general sense of post-campaign fatigue. With one 90-minute visit, Bird hoped to leave them confident, empowered and reenergized.

"We want these people to feel like they can control almost anything that happens in government," said Bird, who had traveled from his office at Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington to spend two days visiting volunteers across Wisconsin. "They should feel like there's no barrier between the regular people out in the states and the power players in D.C."

When Bird was named deputy director of OFA last year, he became the vanguard of much more than 13 million e-mail addresses collected from supporters during Obama's campaign. He became one of the people most responsible for validating Obama's campaign ethos: that grass-roots support can power government and shape legislation.

Since the organization sent an e-mail to its members asking for help on health care in May, more than 1.3 million have visited a phone bank, shared their personal health-care stories on the Internet or attended one of 12,000 local rallies. More than 150,000 people have given an average of $38 to OFA's health-care campaign. This month, Obama spent an hour providing OFA members with "bullet points" for the debate during an Internet video.

"Usually, when a campaign ends, everybody is exhausted and people just go their separate ways," Bird told the volunteers assembled in Racine. "But we knew from the beginning that this could be different."

Bird and other top Obama operatives had decided as much during the first days after the election, when they began conceptualizing OFA at a conference held in Chicago. They polled thousands of Obama volunteers through a sequence of surveys and conference calls and sought advice from David
Plouffe, the architect of Obama's campaign. By the time of Obama's inauguration, Bird and OFA Director Mitch Stewart had settled on a basic vision: OFA would get by with limited staff by relying on volunteers who would work as many as 30 hours a week to ensure grass-roots activity in each U.S. voting precinct.

Read entire article here