Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables and Figures
- Contributors
- Preface and Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Section I The Shifting Media Universe and News Consumers
- Section II Campaigns and Elections in the New Media Environment
- Section III Civic Mobilization and Governance in the New Information Age
- 7 Preaching to the Choir or Converting the Flock
- 8 Twitter and Facebook
- 9 The Dog That Didn't Bark
- 10 New Media and Political Change
- Index
- References
9 - The Dog That Didn't Bark
Obama, Netroots Progressives, and Health Care Reform
from Section III - Civic Mobilization and Governance in the New Information Age
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Tables and Figures
- Contributors
- Preface and Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Section I The Shifting Media Universe and News Consumers
- Section II Campaigns and Elections in the New Media Environment
- Section III Civic Mobilization and Governance in the New Information Age
- 7 Preaching to the Choir or Converting the Flock
- 8 Twitter and Facebook
- 9 The Dog That Didn't Bark
- 10 New Media and Political Change
- Index
- References
Summary
By late summer 2009, some of the people who had worked hardest to elect Barack Obama were beginning to doubt whether they believed in the changes the new president was advancing. The topic was health care reform, and what had started out in early spring as an exciting venture to restructure the health care system according to progressive principles had become, to some reformers, an increasingly bitter exercise in the disparity between words and deeds. In a Washington Post opinion piece, Peter Dreier and Marshall Ganz, who helped engineer Obama's grassroots campaign strategy, lamented how the president seemed to have forgotten his admonition made as a candidate that the only path to enduring social change was to organize against entrenched interests. Disappointed and worried progressive activists like Mike Elk, who had worked around the clock for months to help Obama carry Pennsylvania, echoed this sentiment in the blogoshere. Writing in The Huffington Post on behalf of hundreds of former campaign staffers, Elk implored the president not to drop a proposal for a publicly run health care option that would compete against private insurance plans, because doing so would amount to a major victory for the insurance industry and a stinging defeat for the progressive goal of affordable health care. Referencing the millions who worked to put Obama in office, Elk wrote, “Mr. President, we are here to say that there is only one force in this country more powerful than the insurance industry and its corporate allies – us! During the campaign, we defeated two of the strongest machines ever assembled in the primary and general election [Hillary Clinton and John McCain]. We can beat these guys too.”
Concordant voices could be heard at Daily Kos, the largest progressive community weblog and a hub of pro-public option activism. “Boy, oh, boy do I remember the fight to get President Obama elected,” blogged a former campaign organizer with the screen name HRCDemographic4Obama. “My experience working on President Obama's campaign teaches me he needs a strong reaction from Progressives. He needs to know we are willing to fight everyone, including him, for what is a moral obligation in a nation such as ours, universal health care.” While still regarding Obama as an ally, these individuals who had worked so hard to elect him were preparing to mobilize against him as they watched the president's rhetorical call for transformational change diverge from a governing strategy built around conventional politics. As Dreier and Ganz note,
Once in office, the president moved quickly, announcing one ambitious legislative objective after another. But instead of launching a parallel strategy to mobilize supporters, most progressive organizations and Organizing for America – the group created to organize Obama's former campaign volunteers – failed to keep up.…The administration and its allies followed a strategy that blurred their goals, avoided polarization, confused marketing with movement-building and hoped for bipartisan compromise that was never in the cards. This approach replaced an “outsider” mobilizing strategy that not only got Obama into the White House but has also played a key role in every successful reform movement, including abolition, women's suffrage, workers’ rights, civil rights and environmental justice.
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- iPoliticsCitizens, Elections, and Governing in the New Media Era, pp. 233 - 258Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011