Barack Obama came to town a year ago to change the way politics worked, and Organizing for America was to be his instrument. The successor to his campaign organization, with the largest e-mail list in America, was poised — many observers thought at the time — to bring the campaign’s movement fervor and Web-centric tactics to pushing Obama’s legislative agenda through Congress.
A year later, politics is working pretty much as it always did, and it’s Organizing for America that’s on defense.
With little public profile and a difficulty in pointing to concrete accomplishments, OFA, as it’s known, has faced criticism on many fronts: Progressives blast OFA as a soulless, top-down machine that’s alienating the base, even as some state party officials complain that the group is stepping on their toes. Conservative Democrats, too, grumbled over the summer when OFA ran mild, campaign-style ads in their districts backing health care reform, a violation of political etiquette the group hasn’t repeated after complaints from congressional leadership.
Perhaps most troubling for the party, former Obama aides and other Democrats say, OFA simply hasn’t been as effective as they had hoped. And as 2010 shapes up to be a difficult year for Democrats, the quiet hand-wringing among party officials over the organization’s capacities has been matched by a new public hand-wringing among Democratic activists, with both struggling to diagnose the ills of the group that was meant to change the game. - Politico Story
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