Jim Messina will lead the Obama Campaign's latest incarnation, Organizing for Action.

Jim Messina will lead the Obama Campaign's latest incarnation, Organizing for Action.

Leaders of President Obama’s reelection campaign announced Friday that they are launching a permanent advocacy organization called Organizing for Action that will enlist his supporters to fight for his policy agenda. Calling it “the next phase of this movement,” former campaign manager Jim Messina described the new group as an extension of Obama’s successful bid for a second term, which used technology to engage volunteers at a new level in their communities. “If we can take the enthusiasm and passion that people showed throughout the campaign and channel it into the work ahead of us, we will be unstoppable,” Messina, who will be the chairman of the new group, wrote in an email to campaign donors early Friday morning. The launch, which the Los Angeles Times wrote about Thursday, was the subject of chatter among Democratic activists and strategists, who predicted that it could up-end the party’s power structure. If it is able to sustain the intensive volunteer effort that propelled Obama twice into the White House, Organizing for Action could outstrip the role played by traditional interest groups, such as organized labor and the environmental movement – and challenge the party itself as a center of influence.

As being reported by the Chicago Tribune:My take on this is wait and see.

Jim Messina says that the goals of this new organization are:



“We'll work on the key battles of our generation, train the next generation of grassroots organizers and leaders, and organize around local issues in our own communities,” Messina wrote. “We'll continue to support the President in creating jobs and growing the economy from the middle out, and in fighting for issues like immigration reform, climate change, balanced deficit reduction, and reducing gun violence.”

Seems to me the direction of what issues this organization will work on are being set in the White House, which I suppose seems appropriate. Barack Obama is our leader. For now.

My question is how does this square with building an organization that advocates ideas for the future? In other words, what are they for beyond the next four years?

The Democratic Party will still be here when President Obama has left the scene. What ideas will remain in his wake? Who will be the beneficiary of his coalition? This organization can't just be about him and his agenda alone. We tried that with Organizing for America and saw the end product in 2010. We know that Obama for America was designed to elect Barack Obama. The question is, can it get anyone else elected when he's not on the ballot? Can it win a governors race or local legislative races? Or is it for a bigger set of ideas, like the Center for American Progress? Or does it fill a role as a candidate training and recruitment organization?

For example, this year we have a mayoral election here in New York. Who is Organizing for Action's primary candidate? Because this is the key test for any political organization: winning elections. If you can't do that, nothing else matters. If Democratic candidates come to believe that Organizing for Action is useless to anyone except Barack Obama, then it will eventually disappear.

Barack Obama, so far, has studiously avoided the job of being a party builder. Which is a shame, because I can't think of anybody better suited to do the job. But I'm willing to give this new incarnation the benefit of the doubt for now. Let's wait and see what happens. The tests of what they are about and their usefulness will soon be upon us. I'm sure Democrats, and especially Democratic candidates, will be watching.

For more discussion, see TomP's recommended post.

