OFA 2.0

Matt Bai's piece in the New York Times Magazine chronicles the emerging tensions between the White House and the Congress as they strategize for the 2010 mid-terms. Within the piece, Bai discusses the generational dynamic at play as the DNC (what is now the Obama-backed OFA) is pushing congressional candidates (against their wills) to make their pitches to voters normally perceived as unreliable.

...The lesson that Plouffe and his operation took away from the dismal 2009 elections is that Obama can act like a matchmaker of sorts, introducing the party’s candidates to new voters and vouching for their intentions, but it’s only going to matter if the candidates themselves embrace the so-called new politics. What that means, practically speaking, is that the White House is urging candidates to divert a fair amount of their time and money — traditionally used for buying TV ads and rallying core constituencies — to courting volunteers and voters who haven’t generally been reliable Democrats.

This is not what members of Congress or their campaign managers are trained to do, and it has created something of a cultural chasm between the White House and the party apparatus. There is a strong generational component here. With some exceptions, Obama’s passion for organizing finds more enthusiasm among candidates closer to the president’s age and newer to politics (candidates like Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado), while older Democrats have a harder time imagining that a bunch of volunteers and a dozen virtual town-hall meetings are going to matter more than labor endorsements and some killer 30-second spots...

[...]

By Democratic Party standards, this is a relatively muted internal disagreement. But it nonetheless points to the emergence of rival schools of thought within the party when it comes to Obama’s importance as a party leader. Some see him as having transformed both the electorate and the nature of campaigning in what could be a lasting and fundamental way, meaning that things are possible now — both in terms of liberal governance and winning elections — that did not seem possible before. Others view 2008 mostly as a cathartic election that had more to do with conditions in the country than with Obama’s peculiar magic, and they don’t think the party should assume that there are millions of new voters out there who can be tapped if you just knock on the right doors. These two worldviews coexist uneasily among the party’s elected officials and candidates, young and old, in every part of the country — sometimes just hours apart.

The congressional camp within the Democratic Party reflects the status quo that continues to claim that new voters -- including young voters -- don't vote and are apathetic. What they refuse to understand is that we are civically active; we do vote when we are genuinely engaged in a conversation about issues through a medium relevant to our lifestyles. These labor endorsements and "killer" television ads are almost as boring as network news these days. Instead, we should be investing in the peer-to-peer voting drives and organizing work that have already increased the youth vote for three straight elections. From Mike Connery's Journalist Cheat Sheet:

Tip #5: If you insist on reporting the same old story that young people vote at a lower rate than the rest of the electorate, then you have an obligation to also inform your readers/viewers/listeners that youth turnout has increased for 3 years straight, and is at its highest level in over a decade. You also have an obligation to note that in 2006 the youth vote swung a number of important federal races, including pushing Democratic candidates Jon Tester, Jim Webb, and Joe Courtney over the top.

Source: Historical voting patterns (pdf), Impact on Races (pdf), Midterm Turnout (pdf).

Tip #6: If you are going to report on low-turnout among young voters, you also have an obligation to note that young people face more barriers to voting than do older voters. We move more frequently, requiring us to re-register sometimes on a yearly basis, on campus we face a lack of voting machines and long lines, and many university towns actively discourage and try to prevent students from voting.

Source: League of Conservation Voters Education Fund

Tip #7: There are simple fixes to the problems outlined in #6 – election day and same-day registration and mail-in voting are two such fixes that can be applied at the state level. These have been proven to bump youth turnout by as much as 14%!!!!! It would be nice if you reported on them occasionally.

Source: CIRCLE

Tip #8: Young voters will participate if they are asked to, particularly by a peer. This is proven. But the system stopped asking long ago by removing resources and manpower away from young voter outreach. Only in recent years have organizations – and a few campaigns – begin to reengage young voters in any serious way. The result is three straight years in which youth turnout increased. In plain terms: young voters are not apathetic. Rather, the system fails to engage them in any meaningful way.

Source: Young Voter Strategies, Voter Mobilization Tactics

Tip #9: Stop reporting on “celebrity activism” as the Rosetta Stone for understanding the youth vote. This is a Boomer and Gen-X construction created for a broadcast TV culture of the 80s and 90s. Today’s young voters are interested in peer-to-peer communication and networked action. From Facebook to on the ground, peer to peer organizing at club, bars, barbershops and apartment canvassing, the most effective, and sustainable developments in youth organizing in the past five years have come from new, grassroots organizations doing peer to peer organizing on the ground or online. Stop reporting on celebrities and start doing the work of talking to and reporting on the activities of these organizations. Good places to start include:

Forward Montana, The Oregon Bus Project, New Era Colorado, Young Democrats of America, and The League of Young Voters.

There are many more, but let’s do this in baby steps. Start with these and we’ll work out way deeper into youth organizing together.

Young voters can be courted; it just takes some courage and genuine effort. The Speaker's office and legislators like Congressman George Miller (D-CA) have been great on youth policy issues, but in purely electoral terms, the Congressional campaign plan outlined above is disappointing. While OFA doesn't have a pristine record with young voters, they apparently get it more than many of the old guard congressmen and congresswomen.

UPDATE: An example of Congress not understanding youth priorities or youth culture today? Ike Skelton, a longtime Democratic congressman, provides one:

The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee said Tuesday that he thought the military should keep its ban on openly gay service members in part because he did not want to open a national discussion about homosexuality. The chairman, Representative Ike Skelton, a conservative Missouri Democrat, said he thought the debate in Congress over the proposed repeal of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy might force families to explain homosexuality to their children. “What do mommies and daddies say to their 7-year-old child?” Mr. Skelton asked reporters at a news media breakfast.

As many of you have probably heard, Organizing for America (aka Obama for America 2.0) took it's first action today, asking thousands of supporters to hold house parties to watch a video and discuss the importance of the stimulus. Sam Stein at Huffington Post has the full email.

By far the most interesting take on this so far has come from Zephyr Teachout, the woman behind Howard Dean's internet strategy. In Zephyr's opinion, not only will OFA fail as an organization, but she believes it's imperative that it does:

Organizing for America sent out a request for house parties today, asking people to watch a video about Obama's economic recovery plan, talk about it with their friends, and build support for it. While there will be tweaks, this is the kind of action we can anticipate from OFA.

I predict that there will be perhaps a thousand of such parties, then hundreds, then dozens. I think OFA will fail in its mission to directly engage Obama supporters in supporting Obama's executive actions. And I think this is a very good thing.

It will fail because Obama--suiting a President--is not oppositional, conflict-driven, and not likely to pick out particular targets to be won over--all things that are likely to engage people. It will fail because it is from OFA, not from Obama. And it will fail because OFA cannot be a new democratic party, but will have a hard time defining what it is, and what kind of real power ought exist at every level of the organization.

Zephyr offers an interesting alternative to this model; one that is instead based on decentralization and a greater emphasis on localism (hmmm.....sounds a whole lot more like something I remember called the 50 State Strategy):

This is not to say I think OFA should throw away its list and networks. If it were up to me, I would encourage OFA to throw all of its support and resources at local democratic parties and officials--to decentralize the data, and let local groups experiment. I believe Obama has largely done his job, by getting elected and by electrifying the country and showing people that they can have power; but for them to exercise it meaningfully, instead of simply acting as shills for Presidential policy, they will need to exercise it through our representative offices: Congress, and the state houses.

I have to say that I agree with this. I know Zephyr is speaking towards wielding policy power, but I can't help but be reminded of the Cornell Belcher memo to the DNC and the 20% of youth who dropped off the Democratic ticket down-ballot. I can understand the desire of the Obama team to want to marshal support for their policies, but let's be real: they don't need additional support. On Wednesday the stimulus bill passed in the House of Representatives without a single Republican Vote. And it's possible that if Judd Gregg accepts an appointment as Commerce Secretary, we could see a filibuster proof 60 Democrats in the Senate.

Democrats do, however, need to keep working if they want to make sure that their numerical advantage in Congress - and in state houses - is secure and growing. That will require more down-ballot work as described b Zephyr and Cornell Belcher. It's not yet clear if Organizing for America will be suitable to that task.

Another week and more stories about OFA 2.0 continue to trickle out, offering a smattering of new information, and often even more questions. Since how OFA 2.0 plays out may in large part decide how the Democratic Party engages (or rather, begins to engage) young voters, I thought it might be good to compile what we now know and the questions that are still unanswered.

What We Know

• OFA 2.0 will be housed in the DNC and not run as an independent entity.
• Tim Kaine will be a figurehead/fundraiser at the DNC (so praise from YDA and CDA for his pick seems fairly premature), while the day-to-day operations will be run by Jennifer Dillon O'Malley.
• OFA 2.0 (now Organizing for America) will in turn be run by Mitch Stewart and Jeremy Bird.

What the Rumor Mill Says

• The 50 State Strategy will continue, albeit in an altered form.
• OFA 2.0 will aim to have a $75 million budget.

Open Questions

• Dillon O'Malley is a bit of a wild card when it comes to the youth vote. She ran Iowa for Edwards, who did poorly with the youth but also was one of the few candidates to not question the voting rights of local students. She later did battleground work for Obama so she must at least have some positive feelings about youth engagement, but how that will translate at the DNC is unclear.
• Ditto Bird and Stewart, who worked in battleground states for Obama. How will they incorporate youth outreach into OFA's work?
• Where is Students for Barack Obama and Generation Obama in all of this? Considering all the props given to young voters by President Obama and (DNC) Chairman Tim Kaine, you would think that there would be at least some mention of how the youth element of the campaign will roll into all of this. The lack of information about youth engagement is peculiar. My fear is that such engagement work will be completely outsourced to USA Service, the independent entity that is getting spun out of the Obama campaign.

Greg Sargent at the Plum Line has some more questions that I think are relevant:

* How will this group do its fundraising? With the economic crisis expected to take a big toll on fundraising by the Dem party committees, will this new group’s fundraising siphon off needed funds from Dem operations focused on 2010?

* Is the White House going to do any meaningful blog outreach? Or will all such efforts be run from the DNC? Who will be the main blog outreach person?

* How is this new group going to interact with the White House and the administration’s political communications shop?

* How aggressively will this new machine target Congressional Democrats who are resistant to this or that aspect of Obama’s agenda?

* How can a campaign-like organization such as this one function in an environment where there’s no concrete end date, such as there is in a political race, and no single focus, such as a candidate?

I'm about to get in the car to head down to Baltimore. I'm staying with my aunt and taking the metro into DC tomorrow for the inauguration and then again at night for the official youth ball. I plan on taking tons of pictures at both events. I'll try to upload them and blog about the experience during the afternoon when I have some down time. For those at home, the youth ball will be broadcast on MTV at 10pm Eastern. In the meantime, here's some interesting reads and updates on things we've blogged about previously:

• The biggest news is that OFA 2.0 officially launched as Organizing for America - a reimagination of the Obama political operation inside the DNC. I share Micah Sifry's take on it thus far. Here's the announcement from the President Elect himself:

• Speaking of organizing for America, today's is the national day of service planned by the Obama campaign. Follow along or find an opportunity in your area at the USA Service website. Also do check out Peter Levine's blog post about today's volunteer activities.
• Future Majority got a shout-out in the latest youth/constituent newsletter from Speaker Pelosi's office. You can sign up for those emails here.
• Campus Progress lists 6 things the incoming Obama administration must do to make headway on the issues that matter to young voters.
• Rock the Vote polled its membership to determine the direction of the organization in 2009. Preliminary results are here, and they tend to favor policy work aimed at solving the economic crisis.
• Eric Greenberg has a nice piece at the Huffington Post explaining the importance of young voters in the 2008 campaign.
• The New York Times has a nice photo essay of Obama's 50 closest advisors. There are three Millennials in the group. Check it out.
• On the other side of the aisle, the Houston Chronicle interviews Young Republican Chairman Jessica Colon and asks her how the Republicans can recapture the youth vote.
• Finally, in light of tomorrow's events, I think we can all recognize and celebrate this as an especially significant time to celebrate Martin Luther King Day:

More speculation is emerging about the future direction of what's come to be known as "Obama for America 2.0." A new piece out in yesterday's LA Times - mostly quoting anonymous sources - reveals the latest rumors about the organization's scope and purpose.

While most nonprofits are struggling to raise money - and many good orgs may drop like flies before we hit the end of this economic crisis - the proposed budget for OFA 2.0 could well be $75 million used to support hundreds of field staffers in every state.

Though the plan still is emerging, one source with knowledge of the internal discussion said the organization could have an annual budget of $75 million in privately raised funds. Another said it would deploy hundreds of paid staff members -- possibly one for every congressional district in certain politically important states and even more in larger battlegrounds such as Florida, Ohio, Colorado, Virginia and North Carolina.

The full-time staff is likely to consist primarily of the presidential campaign workers, many in their 20s, who served as the local points of contact for the campaign's vast network of neighborhood volunteers. As part of the new organization, these workers probably would focus on similar campaign-style tasks, such as arranging phone banks, distributing signs, recruiting more helpers, buying coffee and doughnuts for house meetings and reporting voter contact data to senior officials.

"The only way to keep this thing going is to have boots on the ground," said a strategist familiar with the plan who spoke on condition of anonymity because campaign officials have not granted permission to talk about it.

Such an operation would effectively be running it's own 50 State Strategy. Like the 50 State Stategy, it would run out of the DNC, only instead of working to take out Republican incumbents and expand the map for Democrats, the organization would instead be targeting Democrats and pressuring them to support Obama's legislative priorities:

Though the campaign-style organizing network would be operated through the Democratic National Committee, the new service organization is envisioned as a separate nonprofit. Obama recently appointed his friend Gov. Tim Kaine of Virginia as chairman of the DNC and his campaign battleground states director, Jennifer O'Malley Dillon, as executive director.

Some top Obama organizers, such as former deputy campaign manager Steve Hildebrand, had argued that the grass-roots machinery should be kept separate from the DNC to avoid alienating Republicans and independents who were inspired by Obama but could be turned off by a close association with the Democratic Party. But those organizers are not part of the inner circle drafting the plan.

A centralized system run from the DNC would mark a break from the Democratic tradition of relying more on muscular state and local party organizations. It would more closely mirror the Republican structure created under President Bush, whose political guru Karl Rove engineered the 2004 reelection campaign from his post at the White House using a central GOP database.

One key difference, however, is that the Republicans used their network to target Democrats and win elections, whereas the Obama system will be used at least in part to influence members of the president's own party.

For example, Democratic lawmakers in Republican-leaning districts might resist voting for an Obama-backed global warming bill. In that case, the White House or DNC could use the new network for phone campaigns, demonstrations or lobbying trips to push lawmakers to stick with Obama.

"You can pretty much target the list to people who haven't always voted with Democrats," said a House Democratic leadership aide familiar with the plan.

This aide said the pressure could actually help Democrats in those districts. They could either point to a groundswell of support for the Obama policy as a reason to vote for it -- or, alternatively, they could choose to score points with conservatives by bucking the activists.

"It could give them cover either way," the aide said.

In a move that will surely appeal to many Millennials, OFA 2.0 also plans to start an independent nonprofit dedicated to national service:

In what would be another unprecedented step, Obama's political staff is deciding whether to create a service organization that would use the vast corps of its grass-roots campaign supporters. As described by one source knowledgeable with the discussions, this nonprofit arm would be used to help victims of natural disasters, but would do so under the Obama umbrella while continuing to build the overall network's massive e-mail database.

The prospect of a president being able to guide a service or relief agency outside the framework of his government is a unique development.

Not everyone is happy with this situation, though. Certainly not the Democrats who might become targets, and not the state parties, who see a danger in allowing the Democratic Party infrastructure to become too wrapped up in one individual:

"The party needs to be rooted not just around one individual, but it needs to have a grass-roots base that can survive the times and even endure past whoever may be in office," said Jerry Meek, chairman of the North Carolina Democratic Party. "Obama brings a lot to the table, but, on the other hand, state parties exist for more than serving the objectives of the president and are in the business to elect county commissioners, school board members and members of the legislature."

I have to say that I agree with Meeks. If true, this plan for the future of the Obama political operation is something of a double-edged sword. It might allow for fantastic legislative accomplishments (assuming you agree with all of Obama's policy prescriptoins), but it could leave a seriously weakened party structure in its wake once Obama is no longer in charge. And if it weakens the state parties without committing resources downballot, it could actually cause the Democratic Party to atrophy at the local level.

There's still no word as to what role Students for Barack Obama would play in this OFA 2.0 model, nor how they would (or would not) work with the College Democrats of America if both groups were operating out of the DNC simultaneously. That too is an important question given the importance of young voters this election and the fact that Obama remains an anomaly among Democratic candidates. Will his work engaging young people be integrated into the structure of the Democratic National Party (and state parties), or will it merely be used as a weapon to target other Democrats?

For now, at least, this is all still just conjecture, and I dare say we don't really know anything until an official decision is announced.

Update: I'm trying to find out more about O'Malley Dillon. Meanwhile, Marc Ambinder has more on the new DNC team and how they might work with OFA 2.0. He paints a sunnier picture than I did, which is encouraging, but his reporting is more general and not at all youth-specific. Notably, Ambinder suggests that the 50 State program will not only continue, but will actually expand.
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The Washington Post reports that Virginia Governor Tim Kaine will replace Howard Dean as the head of the Democratic National Committee. Kaine will serve in a part-time capacity until 2010 as he finishes his term as governor. Jennifer O'Malley Dillon will be named the Executive Director of the DNC and handle day-to-to day operations.

So what does this mean for youth within the DNC and any hope of seeing a coherent, long-term youth strategy emerge from the party? It's unclear at this point.

A friend involved with the Young Democrats tells me that this could be good for youth organizers. YDA ran a strong program in Virginia in 2005, and Kaine was very supportive of their efforts on his behalf. And in 2006, young voters in the state played a crucial role in the election of Sen. Jim Webb. All that, along with his early support of Obama's youth-driven campaign, gives hope that Kaine "gets it" and will support efforts to increase young people's participation in the party infrastructure and as a key target in their strategies.

Yet at the same time, Kaine is only going to be on board part time and I haven't heard anything either way about Dillon. She worked for Edwards in Iowa, where he garnered very little of the youth vote, despite efforts by the campaign to court young voters through it's One Corps service program. But she also switched over to the Obama campaign during the general election. Who knows where that leaves her when it comes to increasing youth participation within the party.

I'm also discouraged by a simple fact that a colleague reminded me of this morning. Every Democratic Chairman in the last 16 years who served under a Democratic President has left the party in a weaker position than he found it. Generally this is because the party is subservient to the needs of the President during the time he is in office. During a Presidential term, the party in power focuses on helping their President achieve short-term goals instead of focusing on long-term infrastructure building. The two counter examples are Terry McAuliffe and Howard Dean, both of whom were independent of a Democratic President and left a drastically improved party in their wake.

Not to be a pessimist, but history seems doomed to repeat itself. Obama For America 2.0 looks like it will remain an independent entity, separate from the DNC. This of course is in the name of "post partisanship." The Obama folks don't want to scare off any supporters who may not want to be associated with the Democratic Party, so they are going to operate outside the party. That might be smart politics in the near-term, but if it means that the DNC is neglected, or an after-thought, that's also a recipe for an atrophied Democratic Party, potentially undoing the work of the past eight years.

This seems particularly true of the young people supporting Obama. We're already stuck in the less than ideal position of having YDA and CDA competing for the Democratic youth brand. With separate structures, one inside the party and one outside, one heavily funded and one drastically underfunded, and no real coordination between the two, Democratic Party youth organizing isn't as strong or as unified as it should/could be. Now add into the mix an extremely popular Students for Barack Obama 2.0 organization. It's got more credibility than YDA and CDA among students, but it doesn't necessarily build party loyalty or help anyone other than Obama. It will compete with YDA and CDA for money and bodies, potentially siphoning off valuable resources, yet even if it out-organizes YDA and CDA in the short-term, there is no guarantee that it will outlast either organization. SFBO is tied directly to the Obama brand. Once he is out of office, the organization loses it's core mission - supporting Obama. The potential is there to build a stellar organization that disappears at the end of the Obama administration, leaving nothing in its wake.

Maybe I'm too much of a pessimist here. I hope so. Time will tell. The DNC Winter Meeting is on January 21st in DC. I'm attending as a member of the youth council. It's my first DNC meeting, so it should be interesting. I'm doubtful, but maybe we'll get some light shed on these questions.

Hope you are all having a better holiday than me. I've been sick as a dog and mostly useless since Friday morning.

• CQ Politics profiles Henry Waxman, congressional watchdog and the new chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee. Waxman is likely to be a big ally in passing bold energy policy this year.
• Despite problems with the exit polls, word is trickling in that young voters in Colorado came out big and like their peers in most states, went for Obama.
• Ari Melber at The Nation has a few thoughts about Obama for America 2.0.
• Looking back on Obama for America 1.0, you should read this lengthy interview with campaign manager David Plouffe if you have not already done so.
• At CNN.com, Marian Salzman discusses intra-generational politics within the Baby Boomers, and how Obama represents a changing of the generational guard.
• Meanwhile, the Washington Post delves into generational politics in this piece about the "Madoff Generation."