Democratic party officials are wondering who the sucker is at the table.

Look it up.

Quick background: Organizing for America apparently has no intention whatsoever about sharing its data or resources with the Democratic party (I’d say ‘the rest of the Democratic party,’ except that’s an open question right now).  Ed Morrissey focused on the topline revelation there – which is a pretty honking huge topline – so I’ll note this:

Several DNC members said in interviews that they weren’t told about Organizing for Action’s formation until it was publicly announced in January. They said that when they’d complained, they were chastised and told by national and state party leaders not to speak publicly. Most spoke to McClatchy only on the condition of anonymity in order to talk candidly about the internal party dispute.

I’m noting this because I presume that Barack Obama apologists will be arguing that OfA would like to coordinate with the rest of the Democratic party, but cannot because of the vagaries of political finance law.  That argument would make a whole lot more sense if not for the pesky detail that Democrats are terrified to criticize OfA on the record… which tells me that the desire to make the Democrats obey comes straight from the top*.  If the party can be chivvied into pushing Obama’s policies in 2013, it really doesn’t matter if they all get decimated again in 2014: Obama is not running for re-election and nobody expects activism from him in his last two years anyway.

Comes right down to it, Barack Obama doesn’t really need a win on anything this year; he just needs a Democratic party that’s ready to serve as living props for his legislative narrative.  Their gallant last stand will serve as a bittersweet coda to Obama’s second term; we’ll be enduring misty-eyed paeans from Obama enthusiasts on What Could Have Been for decades.  Shoot, I’ll probably die of old age before they do.

I can live with that, though.  Particularly since so far Barack Obama has been pure political death on annoying Democratic Congressmen.  Another high-pressure wash in 2014 will be quite, quite fun…

Moe Lane

*Whether ‘the top’ represents Barack Obama himself, or the people that tele-operated his two election campaigns, is left as an exercise to the reader.  Personally, I think that Obama runs the government himself, but allowed other people to run his campaigns for him.  This is largely because it’s the easiest way to explain why he’s so bad at the former, yet good at the latter…