We spent most of Monday reporting on these tea-bagging crowds going to Democratic health care town hall meetings to shout down the hosts and shut the events down. It’s classic agitprop, very akin to the ‘Brooks Brothers riot’ down in Florida during the recount.
But where’s the other team?
Folks can whine on endlessly about outfits like Freedom Works putting these rackets together. But if the president’s plan has any public support they should be able to get supporters to these events too, right? Not to pull the Black Shirt routine but to provide some public demonstration that there’s real public support for making reform a reality.
If there is. So that’s the question. Where’s the other team?
The other team, of course, is supposed to be Organizing for America, Obama’s much-vaunted* reconstituted campaign and political operation run out of the DNC.
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OFA is supposed to be doing exactly what the right is now doing: Staging very visible displays of passionate support for their side’s goal — i.e., health care reform.I don’t know if OFA is succeeding or not. If so, its successes are decidedly less visible than what we’re seeing from the anti-reform forces, though this could reflect the fact that OFA events don’t emply (sic) the raucus (sic) agitprop we’re seeing from anti-reform crowds.
But OFA’s activities, and those of the Democratic Party in general, are suddenly are much more important, now that there appears to be a very deliberate right-wing effort under way to create the impression of populist opposition to reform. It’s yet another reminder that health care is the ultimate test of whether Obama’s vaunted* campaign operation can drive Obama’s legislative agenda and achieve real results.
Will Obama’s much-vaunted* campaign operation be outworked by the Tea Baggers?
Josh and Greg are both missing the point by wide margins. It’s not that there isn’t another team, of course there is. The problem is that Obama isn’t pushing any identifiable plan. He started out by pre-compromising away single payer which is really the only way to truly universal coverage. He then flirted with co-ops and trigger schemes before pressure from his left pinned him down on the public option. Lately though, he’s even been waffling on that. Now it appears he’s just waiting to declare victory on whatever bill Ben Nelson, Max Bauchus, Mike Enzi and Chuck Grassley decide is both appropriately bipartisan and protective of the insurance rackets that fund their campaigns. It’s really an amazing mix of vanity, impotence, and political cowardice.
Practically speaking, how are any activists – current Obama true-believers included – going to match the intensity of lunatic teabaggers? The teabaggers know exactly what they are fighting for: the status quo. At best, OFA is countering with “status quo plus some marginal benefit.” Worse, they don’t know exactly what what Obama will settle for nor do they know the exact nature of the small benefit it may or may not produce. This intensity and certainty gap is a big problem, and it’s why no good can come of the August recess.
*Can you really use the word “vaunted” three times in the same blog post? I mean without getting fined or something?