Obama’s Political Operation Calls On Supporters To Back Dems At Town Halls
For the first time, Obama’s formidable political operation, Organizing for America, is calling on supporters to go to town meetings and show support for Congressional Democrats, as a way of countering the Tea Party brigade’s efforts to lay siege to such gatherings.
The new initiative, which hasn’t been publicly announced, goes a step further than what OFA did yesterday, which was to ask supporters to turn out at a Joe Biden event. OFA is now explicitly directing supporters to get the backs of members of Congress at public meetings.
A source forwards an email that OFA sent out to its Maryland list, calling on supporters to go to a local town hall today:
I wanted to send you an urgent invitation to an important town hall with Rep. Frank Kratovil, Jr. this afternoon, Thursday, August 6th. He’ll be talking to constituents and gathering feedback — this is an ideal opportunity to make sure your support for health insurance reform is seen and heard at exactly the right time.
Our congressional representatives are back home this month, and they’re facing more and more pressure from special interests on health insurance reform. It’s critical that we get out there and show them where we stand.
I hope you can join us.
The use of the word “urgent” carries a new tone of, well, urgency, and OFA officials tell me they’ll be doing lots more to shore up embattled Dems as August heats up.
Update: Kratovil, you may recall, was the unfortunate fellow who was hanged in effigy.
Update II: TPM has more on another dimension to this OFA campaign.
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Now this is the proper way to react. I’m sure there won’t be any effort on the part of supporters to shout down the opposition – that would be so unamerican!
“Lay seige?” Pretty loaded there, Greg. (But at least you stopped calling them “baggers.”)
I really wish that I could get John Titer out of my mind, but the way things are going, it’s getting way too close to the predictions for my taste.
I know Titer is a hoax, but whoever thunk it up sure was a prophet.
sbj, you don’t see OFA sending out memo’s to shout down people like animals do you?
You know why?
Because it’s a civilized organization.
Greg – the site is down and I doubt this posts -
apologies for the difficulties, all. appreciate your patience. seems to be back up (for now)
Here we are!
I can’t believe that comment posted, when I kept getting the error message. Ah the mysteries of blog commenting programs. They really should be studied to see if they are actually a life form because I swear all commenting programs have minds of their own and an agenda that is hidden from us.
all, we’re working as hard as we can to resolve this…and Tena, agreed. Commenting programs are going to take over the planet.
@ sbj, don’t you get sore after tea bagging for so long? Like does lockjaw set in?
Its all fun and games until somebody gets their a$$ whupped. I can pretty much promise you that sooner rather than later the tea bagging protesters will incite their crowd to violence. Especially if they start being confronted by liberals and progressives who support health care reform. Its almost inevitable now and when they end up hurting somebody it will be too late for the GOP to try to hide their hand in it.
One of the things that the mainstream media isn’t reporting on is that even though President Obama’s approval numbers are dropping you don’t see any Republicans in Congress having their numbers going up. In fact I think the two Republican leaders of congress are both somewhere south of 25% in approval rating. If this stuff gets more violent than it already has you can expect their numbers to plummet even further.
Now, will anybody report it? (other than you Greg, of course)
Damn. I knew I shoulda bought WaPo when I had the chance!
This could be better. One of the biggest issues is that Pres. Obama continues to reiterate that we WILL have health care reform by the end of the year. This leaves most of his volunteers unmotivated. I like the use of the word “urgent”, but that’s still a drop in the bucket when it comes to getting fired up and ready to go.
If OFA really wanted to bump turnout, they’d create a youtube video with clips showing these mobs shouting down representatives.
Then call on supporters to go to these townhalls and:
Ask that they show up early, be respectful, and ask questions when called on.
Ask them to talk to other people at the event before and after to see if they can answer any questions that might not get answered during the meeting.
Ask them NOT to engage with the mobs – it will only cause more problems – instead ignore them.
Ask them to suggest websites with more information and give them the Reps. contact info, in case they weren’t able to ask a question.
Let’s hope that OFA continues to press supporters to push back against these beligerent lynch mobs.
Krugman differentiates…
“Seriously, I’ve been searching through news reports on the Social Security town halls, and I can’t find any examples of the kind of behavior we’re seeing now. Yes, there were noisy demonstrations — but they were outside the events. That was even true during the first month or two, when Republicans actually tried having open town halls. Congressmen were very upset by the reception they received, but not, at least according to any of the report I can find, because opponents were disruptive — crowds booed lines they didn’t like, but that was about it.
After that, the events were open only to demonstrated loyalists; you may recall the people arrested at a Bush Social Security event in Denver for the crime of … not being Bush supporters.
So please, no false equivalences. The campaign against Social Security privatization was energetic and no doubt rude, but did not involve intimidation and disruption.” http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/05/one-of-these-things-is-not-like-the-other/
Back then, the press didn’t take much notice of the closed-to-supporters-only Bush townhalls. Some mention, some discussion but seldom any direct criticism of what was a rather dictatorial understanding of free speech and democratic community discussion.
In that case and in this, the fundamental strategy of the RNC and team is to control communication through domination. In the earlier case, through disallowing progressive voices to have the floor and in this present case to disallow progressives to hold the floor. We’ll call it Rove’s Rules of Order.
“We’ll call it Rove’s Rules of Order”
Excellent. I was just thinking yesterday how very much all this stinks of Karl Rove. And then I remembered that Cheney is running a Shadow Government from somewhere in DC; or at least, that was the last thing I recall reading before he oozed out of the headlines again.
astroturfing
Apart from Krugman’s post, another example I’m hearing for justification to yell people down at town halls and completely disrupt them are two examples of College students protesting some sort of Minute Men speech.
I don’t see the comparison between constituents unable to have a discussion with their Reps. because a bunch of belligerent people shout down the Representatives in a public forum to college kids protesting on a private campus.
Tena
The Cheney’s aren’t very visible now, are they? And if you look across the spectrum of rightwing media, there’s little mention of the boilerplate “America is threatened from abroad and Obama is damaging our safety”. Almost everyone and everything going on with the right now is focused on stopping anything like a public option in healthcare/insurance. This is pretty certainly based on the notion that if Obama succeeds here it will mean decreased power and influence for the Republicans and the movement (and there’s more money involved than any of us can properly imagine). As others have noted, the Waterloo metaphor applies in two directions and these people understand this.
Heh. I see your Waterloo and raise you a Battle of Troy.
“As others have noted, the Waterloo metaphor applies in two directions and these people understand this.”
I totally agree – I was pointing out the projection in the GOP’s Waterloo rhetoric right from the start. They are terrified and this is how they fight when cornered.
They are bunch of cornered rabid weasels and someone is going to get hurt before it’s over. It’s not just the money – it’s teh blackness too and they have these nuts fired up.
another example I’m hearing for justification to yell people down at town halls and completely disrupt them are two examples of College students protesting some sort of Minute Men speech.
The response is, “you mean the racist organization that murdered a family in their own home?”
Debate over.
“And if you look across the spectrum of rightwing media, there’s little mention of the boilerplate “America is threatened from abroad and Obama is damaging our safety””
Well, Bernie, we did have the edifying spectacle yesterday of John Bolton claiming we should have left the two journalists over there.
Tena
Yes, and Hayes as well. What’s unusual here is the minimal degree to which “defense” issues presently form part of the Republican/conservative attack on Obama. Where the NR and Weekly Standard normally include this line of attack in something like 40% of what they write about, it’s nearly invisible now. The Clinton/Korea episode had to be dealt with to some degree because 1) this is Bolton’s and Haye’s personal fetish and 2) it just wouldn’t be acceptable to allow Bill Clinton to appear in a positive light.
Uh…sorry but the folks yelling ARE their constituents.
I’ve been surprised to see the radicalization of old, fat, white Medicare recipients. It’s amazing that these old folks watch Fox News (average viewer age 72) all day then get off their old duffs and jump around and shout a little.
Still, they’re nothing compared to the old anti-war movement (Vietnam, that is). Now they could put 2 million people on the street on the same day. That’s protesting.
Greg, is there a real process that allows the public’s real “Legitimatee Concerns” without an “Orchestrated” tagline? Surley the first reply above of – sbj | August 6th, 2009 at 11:30 am – “Now this is the proper way to react. …” ; truely there should be a way, even away excluding screened press qued confrences, within a Constitutional auspice; that is, just to answer the questions and dont pass what can’t be answered(as a representative) ; encouraging more townhall meetings for the senators would be great too; ultimately if the auspices are truely to stagnate the process and cage the dependency towards keeping the individuals in office;then, if not, every representative that cancelled townhalls should reexamine plan or resign