Obama Gets It. Sadly, Hillary Fails To Understand Political Activism & How Movements Succeed

[KittyWampus]

Hillary Clinton wrote her senior thesis at Wellesley College on a legendary organizer, Saul Alinsky. But her understanding of grassroots activism and political movements is solely intellectual. Sadly, she and her husband drank the Power Kool-aid years ago and ended up forgetting that political power yields the most fruit when leaders give it back to the people to do for themselves.

Barack Obama, on the other hand, spent three years as a community organizer in Chicago. Because he has first hand experience in what it takes to get people not just active but EDUCATED AND TRAINED IN POLITICAL ACTIVISM, he is the candidate who has succeeded in the Democratic primary and the one who can help reinvigorate the Democratic Party after decades of malign neglect by the DNC and party leadership.

Where Clinton runs an autocratic, top-down, old school campaign that relies on endorsements from elected Democrats and expects them to do the heavy lifting, Obama's camp went across the country and organized groups of dedicated grassroots activists who were then trained how to be effective.

THIS is why he has been successful.

In South Carolina, Obama's victory was due largely to this grassroots organizing approach. The South Carolina campaign was so well organized they conducted two GOTV "dry runs" on the two previous Saturdays before the primary, practicing every step of the Election Day operation to make sure that all staff and volunteers understood their responsibilities.

On Election Day, the campaign had 15,000 volunteers in South Carolina, according to Jeremy Bird, the Obama campaign field director. Turnout nearly doubled since 2004. Moreover, Democratic voters in the primary exceeded Republican turnout by 97,000 voters. As a result, Bird says, "South Carolina is in play in November if Barack is the nominee," challenging the conventional wisdom that a Democrat can't win in the state.'

Obama is not just training people for his primary run. After this POTUS race is over, the Obama campaign will be leaving a network of trained activists in South Carolina and other states.

"We have been digging in here since last April, which is unprecedented in a presidential campaign," Bird commented. "South Carolina does not have a tradition of grassroots organizing, but what we will leave behind are hundreds of trained organizers and volunteers who will now run for school board, city council, the state legislature," Bird predicted. "They will transform this state."

This is how the Republican Conservative movement grew to prominence after Barry Goldwater's defeat in the 60's. They started on the local level and got people involved. Training them on what to say and how to say it... and then had them run for dog catcher.

Temo Figueroa, the son and nephew of UFW activists, and a UCLA graduate, worked as a union organizer before joining the Obama campaign as its national field director. According to Figueroa, most presidential campaigns take volunteers off the street and put them to work immediately on the "grunt" work of the campaign -- making phone calls, handing out leaflets, or walking door to door.

The Obama campaign, he says, is different. Before it sent its volunteers into the fields, he explained, the campaign required them to go through several days of intense four-day training sessions called "Camp Obama." The sessions were led by Ganz and other experienced organizers, including Mike Kruglik, one of Obama's organizing mentors in Chicago. Potential field organizers were given an overview of the history of grassroots organizing techniques and the key lessons of campaigns that have succeeded and failed.

Like Bird in South Carolina, Wicks is looking past the February primary to potential long-term impacts of the campaign. "We're training a new kind of political campaign organizer that speaks to who Barack is," she observes two weeks before the election. "We're trying to create community organizers out of our activists. There's so much energy and enthusiasm. It's just a matter of providing the infrastructure, the technology, the training, and the tools, and they feel part of a larger movement."

[polichick]

1. Movements are more powerful than machines! nt

[Mme. Defarge]

2. K&R!

[Cha]

3. Very enlightening post..thanks, cs.

I know Dean is happy with all this work that Obama and his campaign are doing for our Democratic infrastructure. Thank Goodness.

[RBInMaine]

4. Damn straight ! GO OBAMA !!

[Fredda Weinberg]

5. Obama's the beneficiary, but had nothing to with it. Don't try to

rewrite history before the first draft.

[Mme. Defarge]

6. Is this comment

supposed to make sense?

[alteredstate]

I don't think so.....

:crazy:

[KittyWampus]

7. Obama, is TRAINING DEMOCRATIC ACTIVISTS. What the fuck is Hillary doing but spending $25,000

on a room at the Bellagio for her privileged self?

[Fredda Weinberg]

17. Obama training activists? Where? When? n/t

[alteredstate]

25. Did you bother to read the original post?

[Fredda Weinberg]

33. And I understood it. Obama didn't train anyone ... the movement picked

him. What a shame you hold such low standards.

[ErnestoG]

29. Good Christ Freida, don;'t you read before you respond??

[Fredda Weinberg]

32. Duh ... like, yeah ... and it proves my point, dude. The activists picked

their candidate ... he didn't train nobody.

[ErnestoG]

30. Good God.

She is personally substantiating the worst crap I have heard about "limousine liberals".

[Why Syzygy]

43. She's throwing money at consultants. n/t

[mrreowwr_kittty]

15. Obama is putting the lessons of that history to use.

While poor Hillary Clinton is left wondering how to pay her 7 figure consultants.

[Fredda Weinberg]

18. Actually, he's not ... which bugs me, but doesn't surprise me. As I note

he is the beneficiary but not due to anything intelligent on his part.

I hear your resentment toward high paid consultants and raise you ... wouldn't touch that job myself. But HRC's campaign was never about her - organizers have been doing our thing for generations and she comes from that venerable tradition. High tech tools? That's my skill and trade, not hers.

And her techs have served her poorly. For example, I wasn't able to RSVP to a local event, nor did I have a link to alert the webmaster. I try to do better w/my own projects, but that's me.

But I don't blame HRC for that - or give Obama credit where it's not due. Online activism is older than the Internet - we started on peer 2 peer networks that would survive any catastrophe or political represssion.

[mrreowwr_kittty]

21. Look, I saw it on the ground here in Arizona

Granted, she won here. But by less than 8 points when all the counting was done, in a state with a large Hispanic and retired population, natural demographics for her. She was over 20 points ahead in a poll taken mid-January.

She had literally NO ground game here back in October, when Obama had a fully functioning office. When the Clinton office finally opened at the end of December, it was a full week before they realized their phones weren't working and couldn't take incoming calls. The first thing they did was set up a "Hillary Clinton Steering Committee". In other words, a bunch of social climbers schmoozing each other. We were laughing our asses off at Obama HQ. The night of Super Tuesday, the Obama campaign rented out the entire top floor ballroom of the Phoenix Wyndham, while the Clinton camp could barely fill a small conference room on a lower floor. According to my b/f, a party official who attended both events, the Clinton people had to get their volunteers to gather close together to make it look like they were a big crowd in front of the camera. This was not a problem for the Obama campaign because there were so many of us there. Were it not for our closed primaries, we probably would have won easily. Thousands of independent voters showed up at the polls and were turned away. Who do you think they wanted to vote for? Not John McCain, that's for sure.

One of the things that attracted me to Obama over Clinton, though I think highly of both of them, was the fact that Obama got a grassroots organization going here early last year. I was impressed to see that he was going after Red states and not writing them off. That means a lot to those of us who have struggled to carve out a Democratic presence in places where we felt outnumbered and forgotten, and we appreciate it. The Clinton campaign didn't bother. We may not have won here in AZ but I have never seen so many new people want to get involved in politics before. You can dismiss them as "cultists" or whatever but I'm proud to have volunteered beside them, and hope to continue to do so.

[FarCenter]

8. Leadership and Organization

Good qualities for a President to have.

[grantcart]

23. and a decade of talking to poor people

I think we should make it a requirement that anybody running for president has to spend a year meeting with poor people.

Experience

Yeah he is the only one I know of that has the kind of experience I want to see in the Whitehouse.

[truedelphi]

9. From Wikipedia on Saul Alinsky

Once Hillary Rodham Clinton became First Lady of the United States, the thesis was suppressed by the White House for fear of being associated too closely with Alinsky's ideas.<9>

[KittyWampus]

24. once you drink the Power Kool-Aid you no longer want to be closely aligned with the unwashed masses

except to have them in the background to foster the appearance of paternalistic benevolence towards ones adoring public.

[TexasObserver]

10. It's the tale of how someone gains power, stays too long, and forgets how they got there.

Meanwhile, another candidate comes long, hungry and committed. He inspires others, while the entrenched King or Queen has to rely on paid troops who lack the will or heart to win.

[sandnsea]

11. Oh that is too funny

I have known Marshall Ganz had been involved for months now, along with other UFW and AFSCME organizers. I knew he was mentored by Alinsky. But I did not know Hillary had admired Alinsky to the point of writing her senior thesis about him. Too bad she doesn't know how to put into practice what she learns.

[BeyondGeography]

14. Here's a good article on that

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/24/AR2007032401152.html

[Emit]

20. She's too far removed

way too far

[x-g.o.p.er]

12. I don't think she fails to understand it,

because her and Bill started at the local level in Arkansas, and they had a formidable grassroots organization in 1992.

I think she and her team grossly underestimated the Obama campaign. She portrayed the aura of inevitability, and then bought into it. By the time Obama and Edwards rolled her in Iowa, it was too late.

She doesn't even have a full slate of delegates from Pennsylvania, because she figured she would have had the nomination locked up on Super Tuesday.

[KittyWampus]

26. 1992? A grass roots organization to what end? Where was the movement to train Democrats nationally?

Where was the work going into party infrastructure while Clinton's crony McAuliffe was installed at the DNC?

It seems they built a central data bank and then used it to collect money for those few Democrats in those few states they deemed loyal ad worthy enough to help.

Paul Wellstone was the Democrat who worked getting people trained and involved.

The Clintons built a fiefdom for themselves and worked furiously to safeguard it.

[Raine]

13. Interesting insight

THANKS! :thumbsup:

[jmg257]

16. Interesting read! Words AND action! LOVE it!

[Emit]

19. You should add this link to your post

http://www.sfbayview.com/20080208884/News/Web_Exclusives/The_Obama_campaign_Organizing_and_empowering_the_people.html

;)

[JimGinPA]

35. Nice Article nt

[alteredstate]

22. I'm going to be ridiculed and accused of "Drinking the Kool-Aid" but I've gotta say it....

I'm a proud SC Obama for America volunteer who's worked for the campaign since April. I've pounded the pavement for lots of Democratic candidates at the local, state and national level, and I think I know a bit about political campaigns and strategies. The Obama organization is unlike any campaign with which I've volunteered --- it's incredibly organized and positive.

Barack Obama was seriously behind in the polls when he initiated his run for President in SC. During the months before the primary, the members of my team registered thousands of voters in areas where citizens had been disenfranchised. We visited churches, schools and retirement homes every weekend. We made phone calls and held rallies. On January 26th, residents came out to vote for Barack Obama in record numbers, and we knew that we'd actually played a part in making history.

The SC Obama staff was sent to Texas, and on Thursday 14 members of our local volunteer team will fly to Houston to help them get out the vote. Another volunteer group is going to Dallas to work with our staffers there. We didn't even think twice about going --- we're a team, we are ready to win in Texas.

[Tatiana]

28. Thanks so much for your time and effort!

:toast:

There is still a lot of work to be done in Houston.

[Tatiana]

27. Mike Kruglik is one of the best people I have ever had the privilege of meeting.

Barack Obama's unlikely political education.
The Agitator
by Ryan Lizza
Post date: 03.09.07
Issue date: 03.19.07

<snip>

Not long after Obama arrived, he sat down for a cup of coffee in Hyde Park with a fellow organizer named Mike Kruglik. Obama's work focused on helping poor blacks on Chicago's South Side fight the city for things like job banks and asbestos removal. His teachers were schooled in a style of organizing devised by Saul Alinsky, the radical University of Chicago-trained social scientist. At the heart of the Alinsky method is the concept of "agitation"--making someone angry enough about the rotten state of his life that he agrees to take action to change it; or, as Alinsky himself described the job, to "rub raw the sores of discontent."

On this particular evening, Kruglik was debriefing Obama about his work when a panhandler approached. Instead of ignoring the man, Obama confronted him. "Now, young man, is that really what you want be about?" Obama demanded. "I mean, come on, don't you want to be better than that? Let's get yourself together."

Kruglik remembers this episode as an example of why, in ten years of training organizers, Obama was the best student he ever had. He was a natural, the undisputed master of agitation, who could engage a room full of recruiting targets in a rapid-fire Socratic dialogue, nudging them to admit that they were not living up to their own standards. As with the panhandler, he could be aggressive and confrontational. With probing, sometimes personal questions, he would pinpoint the source of pain in their lives, tearing down their egos just enough before dangling a carrot of hope that they could make things better.

More than 20 years later, Obama presents himself as a post-partisan consensus builder, not a rabble-rouser, and certainly not a disciple of Alinsky, who disdained electoral politics and titled his organizing manifesto Rules for Radicals. On the stump, Obama makes a pitch for "common-sense, practical, non-ideological solutions." And, although he's anchored to a center-left worldview, he gives the impression of being above the ideological fray--a fresh face who is a generation removed from the polarizing turmoil of the 1960s. The mirror he holds up is invariably flattering--reflecting back a tolerant, forward-looking electorate ready to unite around his consensus-minded brand of politics. Indeed, if there has been a knock on Obama's campaign in these early days, it's that it may be a bit too idealistic for the realities of a presidential race. With his lofty rhetoric and careful positioning as above politics, Obama in some ways recalls Bill Bradley, another candidate of moral purity--and one whose unwillingness to engage in the rough-and-tumble of modern politics ultimately proved his undoing.

http://www.pickensdemocrats.org/info/TheAgitator_070319.htm

This is a movement, folks. Gradually, state by state, county by county, municipality by municipality, we are wresting control from the corrupting right-wingers. Obama is leaving behind an organizational structure and an army of forces that have energized many who had given up on politics and we will be better as a society and nation for it.

Thanks for this OP.

[KittyWampus]

31. and the most resistance to Obama won't be racists. It'll be old-guard Democrats

yes, yes, and the NeoCons, too.

But a great many Industrialists are sick of the shakedowns the Delay GOP were putting them through.

And many do see money in them there Green-Economy hills.

And a lot of traditional conservatives are sick of the fighting.

[FrenchieCat]

34. Reading the entire thread has been time well spent for me.

Thanks! :hi:

[cali]

36. Terrific and informative post, cryingshame

thanks so much for the substance. k&r with enthusiasm!

[AtomicKitten]

37. Obama, as it turns out, knows precisely what he is doing.

Thank you for this very informative post.

K&R

[Skidmore]

38. Hillary is not really looking for change beyond

those which will not rock the cozy liner the power brokers in which the power brokers in DC travel. She's looking for a rubberstamping of the status quo--left of center version, of course. Inch the nation back to just left of a center that has been forced right by the Bushes and Clintons.

[KittyWampus]

39. it seems a lot of people have no idea Obama is part of the movement to rebuild the Democratic Party

[Stephanie]

40. Modeled on Camp Wellstone, no doubt

That explains a lot. I was just shocked when I saw they organized 1000 house parties in one night in Iowa. I knew then he had an incredible organization. This is awesome, more power to them!

[KittyWampus]

41. Exactly, like Paul Wellstone.

[KittyWampus]

42. kick

[Deep13]

44. And now that indies and Republicans have chosen our candidate...

...we will be sure to be screwed in November.