Which apparently is news to the New York Times. What it is not news to is anybody who happens to be on Barry Obama’s OfA mailing list: the tone of the begging emails has gotten steadily less ‘hope and change’ and steadily more ‘hope you’ll spare some change.’ Hard to tell that from the usual ‘give us money or the universe will end’ that you get from these kinds of email solicitations, but these days the Obama campaign seems particularly eager to get as many individual donors as possible. Which makes sense, given that said campaign is essentially trying to bluff the country into thinking that their man-god is just as popular in 2011 as he was in 2008…
Tag: ofa
#rsrh Davey [Weprin]* running from Bob Turner AND Barack Obama?
That takes skill.
This is the NY-09 special election, which is starting to freak Democrats out in precisely the manner that past NY special elections freaked Republicans out, and for the same reason: watching a campaign slide slooooooooowly off of the beam, despite your best efforts, has a certain ‘cosmic terror’ feel to it. Anyway, you already knew that [Weprin]* ducked and ran from a debate last week; but what you may not have heard is that [Weprin]* is trying to disassociate himself from the President*. Apparently, Obama’s not doing all that great in NY-09 these days.
Via Jammie Wearing Fool, who also notes that [Weprin]* is more than happy to take Organizing for America’s help. Just as long as they stay at the back of the bus, of course.
Moe Lane
*He’s also allegedly trying to get people into Bob Turner’s campaign… which the[Weprin]* campaign denied in one of the most perfunctory and subdued denials in recent NY political history.
[*Oops! Fixed.]
Obama’s bad fundraising quarter.
Yes, I can read. I can count and use a spreadsheet, too. That’s why I’m saying it was a bad quarter.
Executive summary: Obama for America’s (OfA) reported fundraising total for the second quarter is significantly less than what it needed to be in order to hit OfA’s stated ultimate fundraising goals for 2012 – as in, one half to one-third of what they need. And OfA is (grimly) aware of this, which is why they significantly downplayed their fundraising totals in their latest video, despite the fact that in raw terms the amount raised by OfA (47 million) looked highly respectable. Which they were: just not respectable enough.
First off, all numbers here assume a raw total of forty seven million, which is what is being reported in the media* as Obama for America’s take (as the below should make clear the DNC’s numbers should not be taken into consideration when assessing the President’s fundraising goal**). Now that this has been noted… OK, let’s walk through some numbers, here. Below the fold is a chart showing the amount of money that Obama for America raised in the 2008 election cycle. The links are all to official reports filed with the Federal Elections Commission, so I certainly hope that they’re accurate: Continue reading Obama’s bad fundraising quarter.
TIME, Marshall Ganz, Barack Obama, and 2012.
The Platonic Ideal of Burying the Lede.
(Fair warning: while the original H/T is via RCP, there are a lot of links to Left-publications and sites in this post. This was essentially unavoidable)
It was the funniest thing: I was flipping through this Michael Scherer article on the resumption of the Obama 2012 campaign (short version: “Getting re-elected is hard!” Particularly when the Democrats have to run on an actual record, instead of the record that they breezily assured people was waiting just over the electoral horizon*), when I came across this passage:
Some on the left have argued that the President dropped the ball by failing to keep his network of supporters engaged and by following his transformational campaign with a transactional governing style. “Fighting to make something happen is different than sitting back and trying to mediate something,” says Marshall Ganz, a supporter turned critic of Obama, who teaches at Harvard. “People can’t organize around that.”
I don’t know why that triggered something in my head; it just seemed a bit… off, somehow. Maybe it was because whoever this Ganz guy was, it was enough to make David Axelrod bristle in the next paragraph. Which means that Scherer must have gotten that Ganz quote first. Which meant that Marshall Ganz may have been important.
So I decided to look Marshall Ganz up. Continue reading TIME, Marshall Ganz, Barack Obama, and 2012.
#rsrh Time for another Organizing for America story!
You know the one: it’s the one where we get told about how OfA is… organizing itself for America. The group’s getting itself together, rebuilding and getting ready for the titanic struggle of 2012!
…Which is not to be distinguished from the titanic struggle of 2009-2010, which utterly failed to stop the GOP from taking the New Jersey governorship, the Massachusetts Senator’s seat, and pretty much the entire state of Virginia. Or the other titanic struggle of 2009-2010, which utterly failed to convince the American people that health care rationing was a good thing. And, wait, there’s that third titanic struggle of 2009-2010, which utterly failed to keep the Republican party from retaking the House of Representatives, literally decimating the Senate Democratic caucus, and cleaning up in state legislatures across the country.
Heck of a lot of titanic struggles there, really. Fortunately, they all had happy endings.
You know, I had a point to all of this; really, I did. At least, I had one besides ‘genial mockery.’ But I’m blessed if I can figure out what it is, at this point.
Moe Lane
#rsrh PotUS disses OfA members, four seconds in.
Not to pile onto the President – yes, it is amazing that I manage to avoid random lightning strikes, isn’t it – but I have a bit of advice to the Second Stage Lensman currently slumming as American chief of state: when your organization has gone through considerable time and trouble to create an email list which attempts to give its members the (illusory) feeling that they are part of a politically activist Gideon’s Band… do not insult said members’ intelligence by implying that they default to being unaware of when the State of the Union address is.
Yes, yes, I know: if the administration thought that the average OfA member was capable of tuning in to watch the President on Tuesday without being reminded of it first, the administration would never have sent out the email in the first place. But there’s subtle. And then there’s unsubtle. And then there’s “As some of you know…”
Sheesh. A simple “As you know…” and I wouldn’t have been able to do this post. Real elementary goofball error there, Team Barry.
Moe Lane
PS: No, there’s no semantic content in the rest of the remarks. Was there supposed to be? – Seriously, I think that it’s unfair to ding the President for that; it’s like dinging the sky for not being plaid.
#rsrh OfA scared about House Obamacare repeal.
To the point where they’re spamming their members* with dire, last-minute pleas to call up their Members of Congress and tell them that a pork-laden monstrosity that hasn’t had majority support for the last year or so is actually quite popular, really, no fooling.
I feel that I should point out several things to Organizing for Obama America:
- Two Republicans lost re-election last year. Both of them were in heavily-Democratic districts; one had never voted for or against Obamacare, and the other had voted both for and against Obamacare.
- Every other Republican voted against Obamacare, and every one of those Republicans who ran for re-election kept his or her seat.
- The Democratic party supported Obamacare last year. The Democratic party got eviscerated in the midterms last year. Those two facts are not unrelated.
- Virtually every Republican who ran last year ran on the concept of repealing Obamacare. The Republican party picked up a net 63 seats. Those two facts are not unrelated, either.
- All of this suggests that the House Republicans currently in office are not really worried about OfA, what it thinks, and whether or not OfA approves of the GOP’s plan to keep pushing repeal of the bloated monstrosity that is Obamacare.
- It’s nice to see that OfA is worried about House Republicans, though.
Continue reading #rsrh OfA scared about House Obamacare repeal.
Democrats start clearing out OfA deadwood.
Well, that didn’t take long. I mean, when I wrote this post indicating that Tim Kaine’s retention as DNC chair meant that the Democratic leadership had decided to concentrate solely on the President’s re-election*, I did not expect that I would receive some sort of confirmation of this within minutes. But, thanks to Doug Heye, I see this report that the DNC is laying off… selected… Organizing for America staffers. Which ones? Well, Roll Call didn’t give specifics, but it’s fairly clear that the firings reflect the final abandonment of Howard Dean’s Fifty-State Strategy: they’re removing field staffers, which means that the leadership is writing off entire states. Smart move for a Presidential campaign that’s starting kinda-sorta on the rocks; dumb move for a political party that wants to avoid regional status.
Organizing for America has, of course, always been a tool for the President. It was clear even before the 2010 election that it was permitted to persist after the 2008 election in order to further the President’s chances in the 2012 election, and not to further the interests of the national Democratic party – a charge angrily denied by the same press hack who is now gamely trying to explain away the layoffs – and it should be noted that the Roll Call article is noting that this was only the ‘first wave’ of layoffs. Which means: expect more people getting fired, and expect non-Presidential Democratic resources be reserved for Democratic candidates running for office in states that Obama did win in 2008 but might lose in 2010. Everybody else in the Democratic party is simply going to have to make do with less.
For the sake of the Lightworker.
#rsrh Democrats Co-opt Stewart/Colbert Infotainment Event.
(Via Hot Air Headlines) Well, they always had planned to do that (which wasn’t exactly the best-kept secret in the world), but now it’s kind of obvious. This is, in fact, turning into the Great Democratic Hope of 2010: the goal is to convert that potent, potent force known as the ‘youth vote’ into a mighty hammer of civic engagement that will keep in office… the political party that is responsible for roughly one in five of them currently being out of work.
But OfA is planning a phone bank for right afterward! Personally, I’d have waited an hour or two to give all those volunteering livers a chance to metabolize the ethyl alcohol that will undoubtedly be consumed on Saturday, but don’t mind me, grasshoppers.
Moe Lane
Shocker: IL-08 Pledge-hater also OfA drone.
A follow-up to yesterday’s post on the Pledge scandal in IL-08: it turns out that the League of Women Voters moderator (one Kathy Tate-Bradish) just happened to be a hardcore OfA member and Obama supporter. Everybody shocked, raise your hands… no, me neither. Admit it: you didn’t even think that she was anything except a typical Democratic elitist, right? And, oddly enough, you were clearly right to think that.
Also, guess what? The local LWV grand poobah thinks that the whole thing was a Republican plot. I don’t know what’s funnier: that the Democrats think that we’re plotting against them, or that they’re conceding that making Democrats recite the Pledge of Allegiance is a successful slam against their political party…
Moe Lane (crosspost)
PS: Joe Walsh for IL-08.