The Obama campaign is now famous for its success with everything from fundraising (they raised half a billion dollars during the campaign) to organization — which outpaced the GOP’s famous three-day plan. Much of that success was predicated on bottom-up strategy influence, grassroots organization and personal committments.
But how do you transfer that unprecedented success to an even more important job — running (and, more specifically transitioning to running) the entire country?
I dunno — ask the organizers. And that’s exactly what the Obama campaign is doing. Making sure no one is left out, the transition team has organized five full days of conference calls with its top field organizers to help brainstorm strategies and tactics for “where to go from here.”
Talk about putting your mouth where your money is. Here’s part of the email sent to organizers:
YOU are the reason we have and will continue to change the world.
As a part of the transition process, we are completing a thorough analysis of the campaign and are seeking your input on where we should go from here. In order to do this, we are setting up a series of one hour conference calls starting this Friday, November 21st through Tuesday, November 25th.
I know a field organizer, and he is very enthusiastic about this move. It’s not just because he gets to kinda-sorta help influence parts of the president’s strategy (maybe). It’s that the field organizers were always the closest to the peple, to the American public — and they know what the public wants from the president, and how the president can frame his discussion for them.
Once again, the Obama team is showing its organizational prowess by doing something unique — listening to the organization.
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One thing the Obama campaign is not doing is asking their volunteers to take part in their local Democratic party political structure. At a time when these energetic volunteers could do a lot to get precincts organized and get more Dems elected down-ballot, they are not being asked to do anything of the sort.
I think that part of the reason why the Dems did as well as they did in 2006 and 2008 is because Gov Howard Dean said in 2004: If you want to take back your country, you must first take back your party. Obama won in part because of dedicated Democratic party volunteers worked hard to create a party structure that was conducive to Obama’s strategy.
But now that he has won the election and is the titular head of the party, he doesn’t seem to be very interested in getting his volunteers active in the party. If he doesn’t ask his volunteers to get active in their local Democratic parties, his campaign was nothing more than a “personality cult”.
Dare I suggest that we give him some time? he is kind of busy right now selecting his Administration. But your idea is a sound one and hopefully this will be a mandate from him & the Dem party. I, for one, have taken a lead on getting involved locally.