[ed. See also: Dems: New Obama Activist Army is B.S.]
On July 20, 2008, Mitch Kapor, the creator of Lotus 1-2-3 and a longtime denizen of Silicon Valley’s intellectual elite, dialed in to a conference call hosted by Christopher Edley Jr., a senior policy adviser to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. Joining them on the line were some of the world’s top experts in crowdsourcing and online engagement, including Reid Hoffman, the billionaire co-founder of LinkedIn, and Mitchell Baker, the chairman of Mozilla. Drawing on Kapor’s influence, Edley had invited them to join a “Movement 2.0 Brainstorming Group.” Together, they would ponder a crucial question: how to “sustain the movement” should Obama, who was still a month away from accepting the Democratic nomination, go on to win the White House.
Edley had been a personal friend of Obama’s since his days teaching him at Harvard Law School. Their kinship had been underscored the previous summer, when Obama had invited Edley to the Chicago apartment of Valerie Jarrett, the candidate’s closest confidant, to deliver a stern lecture to the seasoned political operatives who were running his underdog bid for the presidency. The campaign team had Obama on a relentless pace of town halls and donor calls, and Hillary Clinton had been besting him in the early primary debates. Both Barack and Michelle Obama were unhappy. According to John Heilemann and Mark Halperin’s account in Game Change, Edley urged Obama’s campaign managers to schedule fewer rallies and fund-raisers, and allow the candidate more time to think and develop innovative policy ideas.
The intervention, delivered with a full-blown harangue telling the troika managing the campaign—David Axelrod, David Plouffe, and Robert Gibbs—to “get over yourselves,” was deeply resented by the political professionals; in his memoir, Believer, Axelrod would later call Edley “systematically antagonizing.” But Jarrett and Michelle Obama, who was also in the meeting, hung on Edley’s every word. “He’s channeling Barack,” Jarrett thought, according to Game Change. Jarrett told Axelrod she thought Edley’s fiery presentation had been “brilliant.”
Now, a year later, Edley had been moved over to Obama’s still-secret transition team, helping to map out policy and personnel on education, immigration, and health care. It was a better fit for Edley, a dapper and soft-spoken law professor with a salt-and-pepper beard, who had served in senior policy-making roles under Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. “Although I have worked in five presidential campaigns,” he told me recently, “I hate them because there is never enough emphasis on policy.” But Edley found himself newly motivated by a single big political idea, born in part from his past experience trying to win policy fights. What if Barack Obama could become not only the first black man elected president, but the first president in history to organize an enduring grassroots movement that could last beyond his years in office?
By that point in the race, there was every reason to think that Obama could build a lasting grassroots operation. His political machine had already amassed more than 800,000 registered users on My.BarackObama, its innovative social networking platform. “MyBO,” as it was known, gave supporters the ability—unthinkable in a traditional, top-down political campaign—to organize their own local groups, campaign events, and fund-raising efforts. Its potential for large-scale organizing after the election was vast—and completely without precedent in American politics. By Election Day, Obama’s campaign would have 13 million email addresses, three million donors, and two million active members of MyBO, including 70,000 people with their own fund-raising pages. This wasn’t just some passive list of campaign supporters, Edley realized—it was an army of foot soldiers, seasoned at rallying support for Obama’s vision of change.
“As the primary season wound down, it struck me that the campaign’s broad-based engagement via the internet could evolve into a powerful tool to shape progressive politics at the national, state, and local levels,” Edley recalls. “One goal would be to support an Obama presidency. But the agenda would be far broader.”
After discussing his idea with his wife, Maria Echaveste, who had served as White House deputy chief of staff under Bill Clinton, Edley turned to his friend Kapor, a digital pioneer and progressive activist who was widely seen as a folk hero of the computer revolution. “I knew that Mitch would be an indispensable partner to judge the merits of the general idea and help figure out some details,” Edley says. “I also realized, quite quickly, that Mitch had amazing contacts in that world whom we could enlist for the project.”
Opening the July brainstorming session, Edley framed the stakes sharply, according to notes he prepared for the meeting and a summary he wrote afterward. “On the morning of November 5,” he told the assembled tech leaders, “imagine saying to millions of donors, new voters, volunteers: ‘Thanks for everything; so long.’” Instead, he urged, “Imagine a way to transfer/transmute all of that involvement into a new mechanism or set of instrumentalities through which people can feel a heightened and more powerful kind of civic engagement with each other and with Obama and other leaders. And vice versa.”
Edley echoed what many progressives were beginning to believe was possible with a President Obama: “There is a rare opportunity to have a citizen movement heading in the same progressive direction as an incumbent president.” According to his notes, the Silicon Valley luminaries on the call agreed. “Most felt it would be an unacceptable loss not to take advantage of the rare alignment of an incumbent President with a progressive agenda, and an online constituency of donors and supporters who can press for change against the inevitable upsurge of entrenched special interests which will resist it.”
As we now know, that grand vision for a postcampaign movement never came to fruition. Instead of mobilizing his unprecedented grassroots machine to pressure obstructionist lawmakers, support state and local candidates who shared his vision, and counter the Tea Party, Obama mothballed his campaign operation, bottling it up inside the Democratic National Committee. It was the seminal mistake of his presidency—one that set the tone for the next eight years of dashed hopes, and helped pave the way for Donald Trump to harness the pent-up demand for change Obama had unleashed.
“We lost this election eight years ago,” concludes Michael Slaby, the campaign’s chief technology officer. “Our party became a national movement focused on general elections, and we lost touch with nonurban, noncoastal communities. There is a straight line between our failure to address the culture and systemic failures of Washington and this election result.”
The question of why—why the president and his team failed to activate the most powerful political weapon in their arsenal—has long been one of the great mysteries of the Obama era. Now, thanks to previously unpublished emails and memos obtained by the New Republic—some from the John Podesta archive released by WikiLeaks, and others made available by Obama insiders—it’s possible for the first time to see the full contours of why Movement 2.0 failed, and what could have been.
by Micah L. Sifry, TNR | Read more:
On July 20, 2008, Mitch Kapor, the creator of Lotus 1-2-3 and a longtime denizen of Silicon Valley’s intellectual elite, dialed in to a conference call hosted by Christopher Edley Jr., a senior policy adviser to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. Joining them on the line were some of the world’s top experts in crowdsourcing and online engagement, including Reid Hoffman, the billionaire co-founder of LinkedIn, and Mitchell Baker, the chairman of Mozilla. Drawing on Kapor’s influence, Edley had invited them to join a “Movement 2.0 Brainstorming Group.” Together, they would ponder a crucial question: how to “sustain the movement” should Obama, who was still a month away from accepting the Democratic nomination, go on to win the White House.
Edley had been a personal friend of Obama’s since his days teaching him at Harvard Law School. Their kinship had been underscored the previous summer, when Obama had invited Edley to the Chicago apartment of Valerie Jarrett, the candidate’s closest confidant, to deliver a stern lecture to the seasoned political operatives who were running his underdog bid for the presidency. The campaign team had Obama on a relentless pace of town halls and donor calls, and Hillary Clinton had been besting him in the early primary debates. Both Barack and Michelle Obama were unhappy. According to John Heilemann and Mark Halperin’s account in Game Change, Edley urged Obama’s campaign managers to schedule fewer rallies and fund-raisers, and allow the candidate more time to think and develop innovative policy ideas.
The intervention, delivered with a full-blown harangue telling the troika managing the campaign—David Axelrod, David Plouffe, and Robert Gibbs—to “get over yourselves,” was deeply resented by the political professionals; in his memoir, Believer, Axelrod would later call Edley “systematically antagonizing.” But Jarrett and Michelle Obama, who was also in the meeting, hung on Edley’s every word. “He’s channeling Barack,” Jarrett thought, according to Game Change. Jarrett told Axelrod she thought Edley’s fiery presentation had been “brilliant.”Now, a year later, Edley had been moved over to Obama’s still-secret transition team, helping to map out policy and personnel on education, immigration, and health care. It was a better fit for Edley, a dapper and soft-spoken law professor with a salt-and-pepper beard, who had served in senior policy-making roles under Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. “Although I have worked in five presidential campaigns,” he told me recently, “I hate them because there is never enough emphasis on policy.” But Edley found himself newly motivated by a single big political idea, born in part from his past experience trying to win policy fights. What if Barack Obama could become not only the first black man elected president, but the first president in history to organize an enduring grassroots movement that could last beyond his years in office?
By that point in the race, there was every reason to think that Obama could build a lasting grassroots operation. His political machine had already amassed more than 800,000 registered users on My.BarackObama, its innovative social networking platform. “MyBO,” as it was known, gave supporters the ability—unthinkable in a traditional, top-down political campaign—to organize their own local groups, campaign events, and fund-raising efforts. Its potential for large-scale organizing after the election was vast—and completely without precedent in American politics. By Election Day, Obama’s campaign would have 13 million email addresses, three million donors, and two million active members of MyBO, including 70,000 people with their own fund-raising pages. This wasn’t just some passive list of campaign supporters, Edley realized—it was an army of foot soldiers, seasoned at rallying support for Obama’s vision of change.
“As the primary season wound down, it struck me that the campaign’s broad-based engagement via the internet could evolve into a powerful tool to shape progressive politics at the national, state, and local levels,” Edley recalls. “One goal would be to support an Obama presidency. But the agenda would be far broader.”
After discussing his idea with his wife, Maria Echaveste, who had served as White House deputy chief of staff under Bill Clinton, Edley turned to his friend Kapor, a digital pioneer and progressive activist who was widely seen as a folk hero of the computer revolution. “I knew that Mitch would be an indispensable partner to judge the merits of the general idea and help figure out some details,” Edley says. “I also realized, quite quickly, that Mitch had amazing contacts in that world whom we could enlist for the project.”
Opening the July brainstorming session, Edley framed the stakes sharply, according to notes he prepared for the meeting and a summary he wrote afterward. “On the morning of November 5,” he told the assembled tech leaders, “imagine saying to millions of donors, new voters, volunteers: ‘Thanks for everything; so long.’” Instead, he urged, “Imagine a way to transfer/transmute all of that involvement into a new mechanism or set of instrumentalities through which people can feel a heightened and more powerful kind of civic engagement with each other and with Obama and other leaders. And vice versa.”
Edley echoed what many progressives were beginning to believe was possible with a President Obama: “There is a rare opportunity to have a citizen movement heading in the same progressive direction as an incumbent president.” According to his notes, the Silicon Valley luminaries on the call agreed. “Most felt it would be an unacceptable loss not to take advantage of the rare alignment of an incumbent President with a progressive agenda, and an online constituency of donors and supporters who can press for change against the inevitable upsurge of entrenched special interests which will resist it.”
As we now know, that grand vision for a postcampaign movement never came to fruition. Instead of mobilizing his unprecedented grassroots machine to pressure obstructionist lawmakers, support state and local candidates who shared his vision, and counter the Tea Party, Obama mothballed his campaign operation, bottling it up inside the Democratic National Committee. It was the seminal mistake of his presidency—one that set the tone for the next eight years of dashed hopes, and helped pave the way for Donald Trump to harness the pent-up demand for change Obama had unleashed.
“We lost this election eight years ago,” concludes Michael Slaby, the campaign’s chief technology officer. “Our party became a national movement focused on general elections, and we lost touch with nonurban, noncoastal communities. There is a straight line between our failure to address the culture and systemic failures of Washington and this election result.”
The question of why—why the president and his team failed to activate the most powerful political weapon in their arsenal—has long been one of the great mysteries of the Obama era. Now, thanks to previously unpublished emails and memos obtained by the New Republic—some from the John Podesta archive released by WikiLeaks, and others made available by Obama insiders—it’s possible for the first time to see the full contours of why Movement 2.0 failed, and what could have been.
by Micah L. Sifry, TNR | Read more:
Image: Matt Mallams/Aurora
