Obama gebruikt zijn verkiezingsnetwerk om steun beleid te werven

[Cees Binkhorst]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

Obama gebruikt zijn verkiezingsnetwerk om steun beleid te werven, en dus
druk uit te oefenen op het Congress.
Hij speelt voortdurend op zeker en laat geen mogelijkheid ongebruikt.

Wanneer gaat Europa een eigen 'Obama' krijgen?
Gaat Declan Ganley (de man van het Ierse 'nee' tegen de grondwet) dat worden?

Groet / Cees

PS. Overigens een goed krant http://www.csmonitor.com/ met evenwichtige
artikelen.

http://features.csmonitor.com/politics/2009/03/22/obama-redeploys-his-grass-roots-network-to-push-budget/

Obama redeploys his grass-roots network to push budget

Volunteers canvassed door to door over the weekend in the first big test
of his ground support.
By Alexandra Marks  |  Staff writer/ March 22, 2009 edition

Guilford, Conn.

With the sun shining overhead and the crocuses poking through the grass,
Diva and Lois Kenkare walked up Fair Street determined to bring President
Obama’s budget battle home to their neighbors.

“Hopefully, we can make an impact,” said Ms. Kenkare, as she approached a
house armed with a stack of pledges and the aim of helping Mr. Obama win
the votes he needs to pass his record $3.6 trillion budget.

In what’s shaping up to be a different kind of permanent campaign than is
usually waged by Washington’s political consultants, thousands of
volunteers across the country took to the streets over the weekend at
Obama’s behest. They knocked on doors, stood in front of stores to collect
signatures, and urged their neighbors to call their congressman.

With this canvassing operation, the Obama administration is taking
traditional presidential strategies for building public support to a whole
new level.

President Franklin Roosevelt had his fireside chats and Ronald Reagan
urged his supporters to call their congressmen, but Obama is asking people
to give up their time and engage their neighbors in policy battles usually
waged within Washington’s Beltway.

“What the Obama team is trying to do is far beyond what any president has
tried to do before. Take the enthusiasm and activism that helped him win
the presidency to help him win his political agenda,” says Stephen
Farnsworth, a professor of communication at George Mason University and
the author of “Spinner-in-Chief: How Presidents Sell Their Policies and
Themselves.”

“People tend to be very jealous of their time,” he notes. “What Obama is
asking is not cost-less – it’s very different from 
 nodding when FDR says
something you like on the radio.”

The canvassing operation was put together by Organizing for America, the
political organization that grew out of Obama’s grass-roots campaign and
is now part of the Democratic National Committee (DNC).

A mixed response

The group claims that there were more than 1,200 canvassing groups out
nationwide this weekend. But many places saw fewer volunteers than
expected.

In Guilford, Conn., only five volunteers arrived at Cathy Cassar’s white
clapboard house on Saturday morning. She had hoped for at least 10 or 15,
but the smaller turnout didn’t diminish her enthusiasm as she explained
the day’s goals.

“We want to get people to support the budget, and [we are] also hoping we
can get a lot of signatures so we can show the House and Senate how much
support we have,” she said.

“We also want to get people really excited about taking part in government
again – this is just a first step to make the community and public part of
the whole political process,” she added.

After receiving maps of their territory, the Kenkares and other canvassers
took to the streets. Their door-to-door operation got mixed results. Lots
of people weren’t home. Others such as John and Barbara Wells are staunch
Republicans who didn’t want to sign a pledge, although they did voice
support for Obama’s goals.

Up the street, Michael Sulzbach also didn’t want to sign the pledge – at
least not yet. “I don’t know enough about the budget yet. I want to read
more about it,” he said.

But the Kenkares had some successes. By the end of their two-hour walk
through the neighborhood under a chilly, spring sun, they had collected
eight pledges. Their whole group brought in a total of 30 pledges.

That number was on the low side for most of Connecticut’s canvassers. But
that’s partly because it was a door-to-door operation, says Jennifer Just,
the statewide volunteer liaison for Organizing for America. Volunteers who
stood in front of supermarkets and other busy stores had better luck.

“Overall, we didn’t have as many volunteers as we had hoped, but the
number of pledges per person was really quite extraordinary,” says Ms.
Just. “We were hoping for 20 pledges per volunteer, [but] we’re doing more
like 50 pledges per volunteer. That was unexpected.”

Nationally, the DNC says it “exceeded expectations” in several areas but
it is still tallying the weekend’s results. A spokeswoman added that they
have gotten “hundreds of thousands” of people to sign the pledge on the
Web.

Will grass-roots pressure work?

This kind of grass-roots organizing could alienate some of the very
lawmakers it aims to persuade, some political analysts suggest. But
Professor Farnsworth thinks that’s a risk worth taking.

“The greatest peril for Obama is if Congress doesn’t do what he wants,” he
says. “Obama does not want to be the next Jimmy Carter, who didn’t get
very much of what he wanted from Congress even though there were
Democratic majorities in the House and Senate.”

But Farnsworth also notes that Obama’s mobilizing strategy could be
undermined by the makeup of the current Congress, where there are only a
handful of persuadable lawmakers.

By contrast, when President Reagan urged his supporters to call their
congressman to support his 1981 tax bill, there were many centrist
Democrats representing conservative districts in the House who felt
“cross-pressures,” he says.

Today, most of the persuadable lawmakers are in the Senate – such as
Connecticut’s Independent Sen. Joseph Lieberman or moderate Republicans
Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, both of Maine.

“These are the people that perhaps will be the most persuadable. [A]
strong performance by activists in those states will make a difference in
terms of how they choose to vote,” says Farnsworth. “If you’re going to
measure the success of this, you have to watch the Senate not the House.”

The Kenkares have already called Senator Lieberman and urged him to
support Obama’s budget. They were not pleased with the response they got.

“He says he’s going to support the budget overall, but when it comes to
taxes he’s going to raise questions,” says Lois Kenkare. “That will simply
slow things up and we need to get this done.”

Her husband, Diva, complains that Lieberman, like most other members of
the Senate, has had many years to put his stamp on the economy.

“These people have a lot to say now about how to run the country, but
they’ve had their chance and they didn’t do a good job,” he says. “They
have to at least give this young guy Obama a chance to implement his
ideas.”

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