Housed at the Democratic National Committee, the Sycophantic OFA Is

"! Perpetual Campaign

ORGANIZING for SOCIALISM Housed at the Democratic National Committee, the sycophantic OFA is doing everything it can to milk the cult of personality Barack Obama created during the 2008 campaign. Is it really political activism—or a massive ego trip?

by Matthew Vadum

iberals responded with howls now the Left is aiming to have the for government spending on whatever of indignation when Rudy last laugh. project is fashionable in leftist circles Giuliani mocked community Conservatives are justifi ably suspicious that day. organizers at last year’s of Obama-style community organizing, Republican National Convention. so it’s no surprise that Organizing MAKING SOCIALISM COOL The former mayor of New York City for America (OFA) is the kind of OFA attempts to make progressive said that Barack Obama “worked as a organization that makes those on the agitation hip and mainstream. community organizer.” Right uneasy. OFA tries to cross Howard Dean-style “What?” Giuliani said as he burst out Prior to last year, most Americans had activism with community organizing. laughing. Speaking over a boisterous never heard of community organizing. It seeks to improve on the Internet- crowd, he continued, “He worked—I But what exactly is community based success of Dean’s insurgent 2004 said—I said—OK, OK. Maybe this is the organizing? presidential campaign that propelled the fi rst problem on the resume. He worked In the specifi c sense the Community then-unknown governor from a sparsely as a community organizer.” Organizer-in-Chief uses the term, it’s populated state to frontrunner at the GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah not about church bake sales, picking up beginning of that year’s Democratic Palin, former mayor of tiny Wasilla, litter, little leagues or parent-teacher primary season. Alaska, also got laughs when she belittled associations. OFA, which, as a child of the Obama’s work with ACORN and other Obama-style community organizing president’s 2008 campaign, adapted radical groups. “I guess a small-town is pure leftist, anti-capitalist agitation. its name from Obama for America, is mayor is sort of like a ‘community It’s about that nebulous Marxist headed by Mitch Stewart, who was an organizer,’ except that you have actual concept of “social justice.” It’s about offi cial in the Obama campaign. Before responsibilities,” Palin quipped. making people angry so they push for that, he was the coordinated campaign Conservatives roared approval, but change. It artifi cially creates pressure manager for the Democratic Farm Labor

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Party in Minnesota in 2006, when Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D, won her race. In 2004, he was fi eld director for Sen. Tom Daschle, D-S.D., and regional fi eld director in Iowa for former Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., during his presidential run the same year. OFA is “more than a spinoff of Mr. Obama’s presidential campaign—it’s housed at the Democratic National Committee (DNC) but is free to let the Party do the political dirty work, and it keeps his enthusiastic supporters engaged, active and primed for his re-election bid,” according to a recent Washington Times article. The White House may not legally use the 13 million e-mail addresses compiled during last year’s campaign, so Obama created OFA so he could continue to proselytize between elections. Obama’s 2008 campaign was “the most technology-savvy political operation in American history,” writes Jose Antonio Vargas, the Huffi ngton Post’s technology editor. Those millions of e-mail addresses represent “supporters who not just fi nancially supported Obama’s candidacy but also collectively clocked hundreds of hours in volunteer time to help elect him president: knocking on doors, making phone calls, spreading the word around within their own online social networks,” he wrote. Obama’s campaign backers didn’t merely give money, Vargas noted. “They gave money and worked for Obama for free.” Dean, who served four years as DNC chairman after his unsuccessful presidential bid, said for a long time he pushed his party to embrace the idea of a “permanent campaign.” “We now have one, and you have to have that in order to win,” Dean said, adding he’s a “big fan” of OFA. OFA claims to replicate the work of

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These screenshots from ads entered in the OFA “Health Reform Video Challenge” are two of 20 fi nalists that site visitors can vote on.(YouTube.com)

community organizers on a national supporters, it displays this text: “You OFA recruits college students to “build scale, which is diffi cult to do because could save 44,000 Americans each year support for President Obama’s agenda” community organizing is by defi nition who die because they have no health and earn college credit while advocating local. In theory, it’s supposed to involve care. Support a public option.” for “change,” World Net Daily reported. participatory democracy, too. It’s not Judges for the contest included “By becoming a National Organizing supposed to be dictated down to local Obama campaign manager David Intern, you’ll be part of the grassroots communities from on high by the DNC. Plouffe, and actors Rosario Dawson, effort to make the change we fought for Labor organizer turned Harvard Kate Walsh and John Cho. Perhaps Cho, a reality in 2009 and beyond,” said an academic Marshall Ganz, who trained who played “Harold” in the hit movie OFA notice posted on social-networking state organizers for the Obama “Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle” websites. “You’ll learn core organizing campaign, agrees the OFA model is was recommended by Kal Penn, a White principles that are crucial for any fl awed. “It’s much more an instrument House outreach offi cial who played campaign and play an important role in of mobilizing the bottom to serve the top alongside him as “Kumar.” building our organization in your state.” than organizing the bottom to participate A “project” of the Democratic The notice continues: “President in shaping the direction of the top,” he National Committee, Organizing for Obama describes his time as a told the liberal New Republic. America’s very name is disconcerting community organizer by saying: ‘It was Whatever you want to call OFA’s to conservatives because it evokes the best education I ever had, because activism, it relies heavily on the Internet images of the radical left-wing father of I learned in those neighborhoods that and frequently draws upon the successful community organizing, Saul Alinsky. A when ordinary people come together, model of meet-up activism and point- Marxist Machiavelli, Alinsky dedicated they can achieve extraordinary things.’ and-click fundraising developed by his classic activism manual, “Rules for This is your chance to get that same MoveOn.org. That group, which helps to Radicals,” to Lucifer, whom he called education. keep the Democratic Party tilting to port, the “fi rst radical known to man.” The “If you’re passionate about making was created in 1998 as an effort to build purpose of the book was to help activists sure every American has quality grassroots opposition to the Republican take power from the “haves” and health care, reviving our economy, and effort to impeach President Clinton. redistribute it to the “have-nots.” building a clean energy future, don’t Today, the campaigns waged by OFA and Alinsky, a Chicagoan who elevated miss this great opportunity. No previous MoveOn.org often overlap. Sometimes local-level political agitation to an art experience is needed in order to apply.” similar mass e-mails from both groups form, was a signifi cant infl uence on will arrive in members’ e-mail boxes Obama, who, like Alinsky, cut his teeth SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION within minutes of each other. organizing in the Windy City. Alinsky Organizing for America exists to In the fall, OFA copied a publicity- believed in “rubbing raw the sores of relentlessly press for change. grabbing formula from MoveOn.org by discontent.” He prescribed the tactics “The advantage of Organizing creating a contest to produce a 30- and defi ned the goals of community for America is that it can be devoted second TV ad arguing for government- organizing. Among his “rules”: “Keep exclusively to a particular issue, run health care. the pressure on. Never let up” and 100 million percent,” said DNC One ad entered in the “Health Reform “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it communications director Brad Video Challenge” shows an overturned and polarize it.” Woodhouse. car burning on a highway, a woman One OFA program might well have The New Republic describes OFA as drowning and a raging fi re, and asks sprung from the mind of Obama’s “an Internet version of the top-down the viewer if he would help the people close personal friend Bill Ayers, the political machines built by Richard Daley shown if given the opportunity. Referring unrepentant terrorist turned education in Chicago or Boss Tweed in New York. to a bogus study by socialized-medicine professor. The difference (other than technology)

38 TOWNHALL December 2009 PerpetualNuclear Campaignkicker Iran ! was that this new machine would rely on grown more widespread since it was An OFA employee told me there’s ideological loyalty, not patronage.” revealed in the summer that the Obama never been any intention of making the When Obama received the Nobel White House tried to use the National group a permanent component of the Peace Prize, he blasted out a mass Endowment for the Arts to generate Democratic Party. “We haven’t thought it e-mailing through OFA that served art supportive of the president’s policy through that far. The goal right now is to notice he would use the surprise award to objectives. promote President Obama’s agenda.” push his extreme agenda. Of course, every administration is Contradicting Howard Dean, he said After acknowledging he didn’t deserve fi lled with starry-eyed true believers who OFA is “not a campaign apparatus; it’s a the prize, Obama announced he would think their president is the best ever, but continuation of the grassroots effort.” The nonetheless “accept this award as a call there seem to be so many more fanatics group currently has staff in 48 states and to action.” He said the prize “has not just in the Obama administration. plans to have staff in place in all 50 states been used to honor specifi c achievement; “It’s kind of eerie,” said David by the end of the year, he said. it’s also been used as a means to give Norcross, chairman of the Republican A different Democratic source told momentum to a set of causes.” National Lawyers Association, of OFA. the Washington Times that as OFA DNC spokesman Hari Sevugan “It’s creepy.” was being created some Democratic said the largely unregulated OFA’s “It’s not a permanent political offi cials worried it would attack the more primary purpose was “to advance the apparatus. It’s a permanent personal moderate Democratic lawmakers. president’s agenda, but when there are apparatus built around one man, meant Those concerns were well-founded. good candidates that can advance a to reinforce his cult of personality. It has This past summer, OFA marshaled its community and support his agenda, we precious little to do with Democrats.” considerable resources against fellow work for them.” The OFA Web site’s web address Democrats. The group ran health care ads OFA pushes the president’s legislative seems to reinforce Norcross’ sentiment: in eight Republican-leaning battleground agenda but has also dabbled in state www.BarackObama.com, which was the states in order to press wavering politics. In March, it got involved in a address of the presidential campaign Democrats to support the Obama health race in New York’s 20th District and, Web site. care nationalization agenda. this fall, it got involved in the Virginia “If I were a Democrat, I would be gubernatorial contest. concerned about this,” said Norcross. ONLINE HEALTH CARE ACTIVISM Organizing for America has no “With both Bushes, Clinton, Reagan, The pages of the OFA Web site’s blogs independent legal status outside the it was about the party. This is about read like a fawning “fanzine,” complete DNC. And DNC fi nancial fi lings suggest Obama. And what happens after him? with beautiful, large, high-resolution little about its structure and day-to-day Is this an attempt to put together a photos of President Obama and a smiling operations. Spending on the project is movement very different from the First Family. Essentially it’s Vanity Fair not separately accounted for in public Democratic Party and to take it over and in digital form. Some blog posts delve disclosures, so its actual scope is diffi cult to supplant it?” into substantive policy issues; others to determine. Whatever it is, most Democrats don’t show the president looking commanding, OFA likes it that way. seem too concerned about it. poised and even heroic. OFA does not seem to have helped Democrats raise money—at least not yet— but that doesn’t appear to be one of the group’s goals. As of Oct. 26, the DNC raised $61.8 million for the 2010 election cycle, which is below the $68.8 million the Republican National Committee raised in the same period, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. As a permanent campaign, OFA is indistinguishable from the presidential election campaign that Barack Obama ran in 2008. It buttresses and reinforces everything Obama does, echoing him, lionizing him and pushing his legislative agenda. “We’ve never had a political leader who has continued their organizing while in offi ce like this at this scale,” former Washington director of MoveOn.org Tom Matzzie said in January. Some say the group has a cultish feel to it, a sentiment that has only

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As tea party mania spread across the nation in August, OFA decided it needed to fi ght back in order to save ObamaCare from the fate HillaryCare suffered under President Clinton. OFA hosted an online forum with Obama billed as an opportunity to “update supporters on the fi ght to pass real health insurance reform.” This Internet-based pep rally featured outgoing Virginia Gov. and current DNC Chairman Tim Kaine and Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla. Viewers were advised that, since June 6, OFA volunteers had organized massive grassroots support for health care reform. The group claimed more than 1.5 million OFA members took action organizing 11,906 local events and making 64,912 local congressional offi ce visits in one week, and bragged that its A volunteer at Democratic National Headquarters sits beside boxes from all 50 states containing members had outnumbered protesters at 642,000 signed pledges of support for ObamaCare, which were delivered to elected o! cials on town hall meetings. Capitol Hill according to Organizing for America (OFA) who coordinated the event. (Reuters/Kevin Lamarque) During the online event, Obama used typical class-warfare rhetoric and attacked the previous administration: Network ceaselessly re-seizing power for the “insider lobbyists and partisan “We’re here because you believed that their treacherous leaders.” operatives” are “desperate” after their after an era of selfi shness and greed, that The Heritage Foundation’s “old formula of scare tactics, D.C. we could reclaim a sense of responsibility Rory Cooper was incensed. “Many back-scratching and special-interest and a sense that we have obligations to Americans took off work and sacrifi ced money” failed to stop the measure in each other not just here in Washington family time this past August to attend the House. but all across the country. You believed congressional town halls, where they that instead of growing inequality, voiced opposition to a government-run FIGHTING THE ACORN ‘SMEAR’ we could restore a sense of fairness overhaul of their personal health care OFA continues trying to cover up the and balance to our economic life and choices,” Cooper wrote. connection between President Obama create lasting growth and prosperity. Those town hall participants hand- and the most famous of community You believed that at a time of war and painted signs, picked up their children organizing groups, the radical turmoil, we could stand strong against and drove to their local church or school Association of Community Organizations our enemies, but also stand fi rmly for gymnasium “for valuable lessons in for Reform Now (ACORN). our ideals and reach out to the rest of community organizing and democracy,” On its “Fight the Smears” Web site, the the world and describe to them what he wrote. For their civic engagement campaign last year published a lengthy, America is about and how we can forge “they were called names, labeled as ‘too untruthful, unconvincing, purported together a world of common interests organized’ or ‘un-American,’ and likened refutation of Obama’s history with the and common concerns.” to mobs, Nazis and Fascists. And now advocacy group. Although anyone with Around the same time, OFA tried a President Obama’s team has designated access to the Internet could have found similarly hard-edged approach, lashing Sept. 11 as the day to liken conservatives proof of Obama’s ties to ACORN in out at opponents. The group did a mass to al Qaeda terrorists.” seconds, as more evidence surfaced, e-mailing to its supporters asking them OFA tried to keep up the pressure in Obama’s webmasters repeatedly fi ne- to call their U.S. senators on Sept. 11, the fall. President Obama used OFA for a tuned the words on the “ACORN rumor” now known as Patriot Day in honor of mass fund-raising e-mail barely an hour page to refl ect the rapidly changing those killed in the terrorist attacks eight after health care legislation won narrow evidentiary environment. years ago. House approval in November. “The fi nal Refl ecting the continuing interest The OFA message included this Senate bill hasn’t even been released yet, the Left has in obscuring the president’s infl ammatory statement: “All 50 States but the insurance companies are already history with ACORN, “Fight the Smears” are coordinating in this—as we fi ght back pressing hard for a fi libuster to bury it,” has been incorporated into OFA’s site. against our own Right-Wing Domestic Obama wrote. Interest in Obama’s connection Terrorists who are subverting the In what seems to be a case of to ACORN reached a low ebb last American Democratic Process, whipped psychological projection, the machine summer, but that was before videos to a frenzy by their Fox Propaganda politician from Chicago warned that of the undercover prostitution sting

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collective yawn about the group. But candidate Obama decided to take no chances and went all out in an effort to deny his association with ACORN. The campaign went to the political equivalent of DEFCON-1, treating the entirely factual accusation that Obama had worked for the politically radioactive ACORN as blasphemy. That effort went into high gear beginning in September 2008 when ACORN began to receive a mountain of bad publicity relating to nationwide allegations of election fraud. Obama supporters tried to confuse the issue by saying the senator was never an ACORN community organizer. They argued that Project Vote, the voter registration drive that Obama ran in 1992, was never a part of ACORN. Aided by the liberal Huffi ngton Post and its George Soros-backed allies at Barbara Malatesta, foreground, reads some health care reform literature as she and others wait for the start of a training session regarding health care reform given by Organizing for America, to dispel the propaganda factory Media Matters common “myths” surrounding ObamaCare. (AP/Tina Fineberg) for America, Project Vote engaged in legalistic hairsplitting, conveniently claiming it didn’t become closely engineered by conservative activists even get inaugurated, during the transition, aligned with ACORN until Obama left. James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles we’re going to be calling all of you in to Incredibly, reporters generally took surfaced on the “Glenn Beck Program” help us shape the agenda. We’re going to Project Vote at its word. and on BigGovernment.com. be having meetings all across the country They shouldn’t have. ACORN is well The videos shocked Americans and led with community organizations so that you known for its never-ending reliance on the IRS and Census Bureau to sever ties have input into the agenda for the next of the “plausible deniability” argument. with ACORN. presidency of the United States of America.” Its unusual mafi a-like organizational During the 2008 campaign, as The month before, Obama said: “I’ve structure allows it to take credit when ACORN voter-registration issues been fi ghting alongside ACORN on issues a member of the ACORN family fl ared up, Team Obama was desperate you care about my entire career. Even does something commendable and to distance itself from the candidate’s before I was an elected offi cial, when I to distance itself when the affi liate previous employment with ACORN ran Project Vote voter registration drives runs into trouble or when the political affi liate Project Vote. in Illinois, ACORN was smack dab in the environment requires it. Organizing for Obama’s ties to ACORN go back to middle of it, and we appreciate your work.” America seems to have stayed out of at least 1992 when he directed voter And during the primaries, the late legal trouble—so far. registration efforts for Project Vote. The blogger Nancy Armstrong discovered OFA used e-mail to urge its members push helped elect Sen. Carol Moseley the campaign paid $832,598 to Citizens to call voters in New York’s 23rd District Braun, D-Ill., who went on to be plagued Services Inc., an ACORN affi liate, for get- in November to remind them to vote. by serious corruption allegations out-the-vote activities. The expenditures Members were asked to click on a link to throughout her single term in the Senate. were originally listed in campaign fi nance an “online tool” that showed the names Obama also helped train ACORN leaders fi lings as “staging, sound and lighting,” and telephone numbers of 25 voters and and represented ACORN in court. but when the campaign was caught offered a script for the call. The campaign got lucky when most lying, it quickly issued a “correction” The Washington Examiner’s Mark of the media—led by the agenda-setting acknowledging the money went to get-out- Hemingway criticized the “careless” get- New York Times—responded with a the-vote efforts during primary season. out-the-vote operation, arguing it opened deafening silence to news of Obama’s Although the media had been the door to spammers and criminals involvement with America’s most interested, albeit briefl y, in the Rev. whom OFA would have diffi culty infamous activist network. Jeremiah Wright, the preacher whose tracking down after the fact. “By the end During the election cycle, it was already fi ery anti-American sermons Obama of the process, total strangers with the known that, at an ACORN-sponsored forum willfully attended for decades, reporters imprimatur of calling on behalf of an in late 2007, Obama vowed he would meet showed little interest in investigating organization founded by the president with ACORN and other members of the the candidate’s ties to ACORN. Despite will be privy to the name, phone number, radical advocacy community in his fi rst 100 ACORN’s track record for crime e-mail, age and gender of 25 voters in days as U.S. president. He said: “Before I and corruption, journalists offered a New York,” he wrote.

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CRITICISM David Wasserman of the Cook THE TOWNHALL ON... Political Report said he didn’t share the view of some that OFA is a political operation unprecedented Obama’s Perpetual Campaign in American politics. “The operation is essentially designed to keep Democratic enthusiasm percolating “In what may have been the fi rst instance of an while Obama tries to rise above the American government o! cially calling on one group of fray to pass an agenda,” Wasserman told me. “I think what’s historic is that American citizens to protest against, ‘get in [the] faces’ Obama compiled 13 million e-mail of and shout down another group of their own country- addresses. Bush was able to compile millions of e-mails as well, and those men, President Obama authorized his campaign arms, e-mail addresses were useful to the DNC and Organizing for America, to call opponents Republicans politically.” of his health overhaul plan a ‘dangerous mob’ and to And Michael Barone, senior political analyst at the Washington encourage supporters to counter (violently, if neces- Examiner and co-author of the sary) reasonable demonstrations and to put a stop to “Almanac of American Politics,” didn’t their questioning of elected o! cials.” seem impressed by OFA. “What Erick Erickson strikes me as fascinating is the lack Red State of energy and enthusiasm that I perceive from this group and the vivid “Organizing for America, Team Obama “It’s interesting to see the president’s contrast from what you saw in the & the DNC’s perpetual campaign arm, political machine [in a mass e-mail] Obama campaign in 2008 and the is holding a health reform video contest. calling on his supporters to use their way that they were able to gin up all They’ve chosen 20 fi nalists. Continuing Constitutional right to free speech when this support, enthusiasm of people the human stage-prop theme plied by the the White House spent the last week around the country,” Barone said in White House over the past year ..., many criticizing others for doing the exact an interview. of the video fi nalists use children to shill same thing.... Af"er the ‘astroturfi ng’ “They don’t seem to be nearly for ObamaCare ... the next generation of rhetoric from the Democrats [about health matching the spontaneous enthusiasm government entitlement-seekers declaring care protesters], it’s hard to ignore the of the tea party groups of these angry ‘I deserve health care.’” hypocrisy in this mass e-mail.” people at town hall meetings,” said Michelle Malkin Brian Walsh Barone. MichelleMalkin.com National Republican If he’s right, this could bode ill for Senatorial Committee Obama’s agenda. “One blogger recently noted that [sale of] Obama memorabilia, the coffee mugs with his picture on it and tea towels or whatever else people were selling, is way down and it strikes me that for many of his supporters perhaps the great achievement was installing America’s fi rst black president, a man who gave lip service to a lot of left-think and called it traditional Americana and who removed the ‘evil’ Texan George W. Bush from the scene,” Barone noted. “And having done that, they’re resting content,” he said. •

Matthew Vadum is a senior editor at Capital Research Center, a Washington, D.C. think tank that studies the politics of philanthropy.

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