Obama's Missing Foot Soldiers

Harold Meyerson has a column in the Washington Post that looks at the Obama administration's apparent failure to mobilize its grass roots supporters via the Internet as it did during the campaign. Since I - and I suspect many other LGBT Americans - have unsubscribed from Obama's Organizing for America in disgust over the non-progress on LGBT issues such as DADT, DOMA and ENDA, I do not know personal knowledge of what is being disseminated. Personally, I believe that Obama's failure to forcefully push for change and use the presidency as a "bully pulpit" has greatly dampened spirits and left many disappointed and not just within the LGBT community. With Virginia elections coming in the fall, I hope the sense of malaise doesn't give a boost to the ultra far right GOP slate lead by Bob "Taliban Bob" McDonnell who is working hard to cast himself as a moderate when he is in fact anything but. Here are some column highlights:

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If you measure the Obama administration's campaign for health-care reform by its ability to win crucial support from major institutions, things are going swimmingly. . . . But if you measure the administration's campaign by the degree of street heat on legislators to enact a universal plan, the results look far less rosy.

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The problem begins with the administration's inability -- or disinclination -- to use its greatest political asset, the list of 13 million supporters that the Obama presidential campaign amassed last year. In 2008, that list was the wonder of the political world, enabling Barack Obama to run the best-funded campaign in history and to activate more volunteers than any candidate ever had.

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This year, however, the administration has asked far less of that list and received, not surprisingly, far less in return. . . . . "What made the presidential campaign so potent were clear goals and a strategy that made sense to people," says Marshall Ganz, one of liberal America's foremost organizing geniuses (who led training sessions for Obama campaign staffers and volunteers last year). Such goals and strategies are hard to discern today, and the participation of Obama volunteers has declined accordingly.

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the administration's willingness to limit the potential of its army of supporters and the progressive groups' unwillingness to try to create a movement (say, for single-payer health care) that goes beyond the administration's goals have all but ensured that legislators will feel no major pressure for systemic change as Congress crafts national policy.

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Are Obama and the Congressional Democrats throwing away the mandate for change that voters so clearly wanted? It would seem so and much of the problem stems from Obama's desire to play nice with Republicans who hate him rather than work to enact legislation desired by those who supported him.