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  Reactions to Obama's Consolidation of the Party

  http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=5749
  1 day ago in Open Left · Authority: 1,708

  Yesterday, Ben Smith in the Politico confirmed the story I broke last week on Obama's consolidation of the party, and today, Jonathan Weisman and Michael Shear of the Washington Post added added more detail . I argued that Obama is both transforming Democratic politics through aggressive and hypercompetent web-based organizing on a scale we've never seen, and centralizing power around his campaign by cutting down outside groups. Smith adds to the story, and quotes Obama finance chair Penny Pritzker as asking big donors not to give to outside groups. Obama's been making noise for months about outside groups. 'Right now in Iowa you have candidates who are having millions of dollars spent on their behalf uh by other groups...These folks don't have to disclose where they are getting money from. It's completely the Wild West, these 527s and so forth. And that's something that's going to have to be controlled,' he added. Obama is musing about voluntarily capping donations at $1000. Is this unilateral disarmament? I don't think so. Chris Bowers riffed off my post with an interesting observation that hints at the motive here. I know this is all pretty vague, but it does sum up my basic sense about the coming Obama administration and Democratic Party. Overall, instead feeling like Blue Dogs, Joe Lieberman and media pundits are running the party, it should feel kind of like PIRG, but a bit more right-wing, academic and well-to-do. In other words, PIRG without seeming like DFHs run the show. That should be an upgrade from the 1990's, but expect quite a few times where progressives will need to take oppositional stances. In other words, Obama really may mean that he doesn't want outside groups in the race. He's a campaign finance reformer, he believes in campaign finance reform, and he's willing to stake his race on the idea of a transformed political environment. Big Tent Democrat's Reveling In The Demise of Their Relevance, Lambert's post, and Susie Madrak's Vision of the Future all assumed that I cheered on his consolidation of the party. My attitude is closer to Donna Darko: The organizing and mobilization scholar in me is totally impressed. But the conflict theorist and skeptic of authority in me is totally horrified. We can after all get ready for more situations like this. Here's Mike Connery, representing the millenial organizing groups: Sen. Obama probably has a bigger "youth" list than all the youth vote and youth policy organizations out there combined. What does he plan to do with it after election day - win or lose? How will he keep his Millennial Movement engaged in effective action beyond his election towards the accomplishment of real progressive policy goals? We have no idea because his campaign won't tell us. I also agree with Ian Welsh and his post 'The Obama Squeeze' My bottom line is simpler. Obama isn't John McCain, and that's all I really expected out of either Obama or Clinton. Anyone who expects much more, I predict, is going to be disillusioned. Within a year of Obama getting in power, progressives and liberals will feel about him the way they do today about Pelosi and Reid. Gil Smart, Matt Steinglass, Ed Cone, Jay Ackroyd over at Eschaton, Ezra Klein, Andrew Sullivan, CIO Insight, Witigonen, Cathie from Canada, and Chris Hayes all added a bit to the discussion, and Micah Sifry is going to dig deeper into Obama's network and its culture. Dana Blankenhorn at ZDNet makes what I think is a useful analogy. His sites are becoming Google-like in their power, and Google-like in their autonomy from the movements which spawned them. That's a great analogy, and I think it's quite possible the Obama campaign and administration is going to be placed into a Google-like center of immense political and administrative power. I'm not worried that Obama will lose the 2008 campaign because of these choices; with six macro-trends in Democrats' favor, we can look forward to trouncing the GOP. Mike Lux notes a possible concern. I worked in the Clinton White House when the progressive movement was terribly weak- single issue siloes, no grassroots energy, no effective communications, infrastructure, all the horror stories you've read about before. Even before the Republican congressional takeover in 1994, it made the White House weak as hell. The Obama machine is easily the most impressive candidate-driven organization in my lifetime, but it can all wash away if Obama starts to fumble and bog down, which is inevitable given the barriers to change. They need an outside infrastructure as much as we progressives on the outside do, and I hope they come to realize that sooner rather than later. It's Obama's party right now. It will be for at least a few years, if he wins.

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