PrintWhere are all the Obamabots?
Relying instead on union lackeys and thugs, President Obama's vaunted 13 million name email list and his grassroots community organizing group "Organizing for America have failed miserably to answer his call to assist him in passing his health care reform package.
At most of the congressional town halls, protestors outnumber supporters of the package - usually by a considerable margin. One would think the Obamabots would be swarming these town halls, ready to defend their Messiah and put pressure on wavering members to give their hero what he wants.
But most of these Obamabots have the attention span of a grasshopper. Besides, the challenge of turning people from political activism to policy promotion has proven to be much more difficult than Axelrod and his crew imagined.
Jeff Zeleny of the New York Times has the story:
As the health care debate intensifies, the president is turning to his grass-roots network - the 13 million members of Organizing for America - for support.
Mr. Obama engendered such passion last year that his allies believed they were on the verge of creating a movement that could be mobilized again. But if a week's worth of events are any measure here in Iowa, it may not be so easy to reignite the machine that overwhelmed Republicans a year ago.
More than a dozen campaign volunteers, precinct captains and team leaders from all corners of Iowa, who dedicated a large share of their time in 2007 and 2008 to Mr. Obama, said in interviews this week that they supported the president completely but were taking a break from politics and were not active members of Organizing for America.
Some said they were reluctant to talk to their neighbors about something personal and complicated like health care. And others expressed frustration at the genteel approach, asking why Democrats were not filling the town-hall-style meetings of Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the ranking Republican on the Finance Committee negotiating health care legislation, or Representative Leonard L. Boswell, a member of the moderate Blue Dog Democratic group.
The template they are using to ignite the activists just isn't working and can't work on health care reform, cap and trade, or any policy issues basically because these are enormously complex issues and ordinary activists just aren't prepared to answer questions from their neighbors that would relieve their fears of what Obamacare means. Talking points are only go for talking, not explaining.
Besides, a lot of those 13 million names are kids or young adults who have a lot better things to do during the summer than schlep around the neighborhood bothering people about something they really don't care about (15 million of the uninsured are 18-30), nor understand at all.
So Obama is forced to fall back on his union friends for warm bodies to help push his reforms as well as stand up to protestors. And has already been amply demonstrated there are a lot more of the latter than there are of the former.
