A day late & a dollar short

The other day our president called for people like me to go knock on our neighbors’ doors to talk up the health reform bill. That’s the measure struggling to garner a bare majority after the White House frittered away support in myriad ways, including by ignoring us and calling us ‘fucking retards’ in Rahm Emanuel’s historic phrase. As someone who actually did go knocking on doors to elect Barack Obama to the presidency, I would be a likely target of his call to arms.

It brought to mind the post-election meeting of Obama campaign volunteers that I attended in an Upper West Side apartment in December or January with the victory still fresh in our change-and-hopeful hearts. We were instructed by the campaign-cum-transition operation to discuss our priorities and carefully write everything down to be forwarded up the food chain to the new administration.

Some 40 people gathered and slowly spoke about what had motivated them to get involved, what they saw as the key issues of the first year of the Obama presidency. It was laborious and tedious but extremely interesting. Being a veteran of such conclaves, I saw it as a very tentative initial step toward building a permanent grassroots component to the electoral juggernaut that had generated so much enthusiasm, energy and cash.

However, some questions immediately came to mind: what shape would this movement take? Who would move to control it? What would its relationship be to the Democratic Party structure? How would its decisions be made? What actions would participants be called upon to undertake? How would key issues be discussed and inputs and decisions filtered up and down the structure like the nutrients in the phloem and xylum of a big tree?

I could have saved my mental energy. I filled out all the forms and put my contact information on all the sign-up sheets circulating around the room, and that was the last I ever heard of it. The great post-victory Obama Movement was neatly folded into the Democratic Party as a vast mailing list used to send out constant requests for money.

The right has its Christian base where grassroots activists meet regularly (in church) to plot how to crush abortion rights, fight progressive economic reforms and further stigmatize gays. The Republican Party may ultimately regret how the fundamentalist tail now wags the GOP dog, but the Bible-thumping fringe has been an effective vehicle to power for them for three decades. And it took the Obama Administration completely by surprise with its furious teaparty/town hall sandbagging of health reform.

Obama & Co. had nothing with which to combat it because they had dismantled the possible equivalent. Barack and Rahm and Timothy and Lawrence put their faith in the big guys and their own smarts and left the electoral movement and its netroots components to piss off up a rope. As usual, they assumed we have nowhere else to go and would largely behave ourselves and remain at their backs while they wheeled and dealed.

I still hope the health package passes. But it is a shame to have been part of a real grassroots awakening that, once again, was dismissed as irrelevant as soon as its leaders had obtained their tickets to the best seats. It would be nice to think they’ll learn their lesson and look for ways to reestablish an organic link with those who should be their supporters and not just call upon us to jump when they get into a tight spot. But I’m not holding my breath.