The ability of Koch funded national efforts to create LOCAL efforts is not dissimilar to in the mold of thew old Communist Part of America cells.
For the last three years I have been depressed by the lack of any LOCAL presence of the Obama campaign in Seattle. This time the Obama campaign may not be over.The machinery that put Obama back in the White House isn’t being placed in mothballs. Campaign manager Jim Messina signaled Tuesday that Obama For America will play a role in the legislative process — beginning with pending fiscal cliff negotiations.
This is great news .,, perhaps even revolutionary. After Obama 08, the Obama campaign virtually disappeared. Local Obama associations in Seattle became as rare as the Communist Party of the USA or Quebec Liberation Front . With no local presence, Obama gave away a huge part of the clout he should have built on.
In the meantime, with funds from the Kochs and their ilk, the right built a local structure, the Tea Party.
Messina was reticent to explain how the Obama effort will work. Speaking to Politico, “We don’t know,(per Federal Election Commission law the campaign itself has to shut down) “Some of it will absolutely live on,” he added, pointing to the social tools that defined the OFA operation’s technological strategy.
Hopefully more than the tools will survive. Party loyalties are dying, especially among the young. With the death of traditional party politics, LOCAL organization .. now led by national resources .. may be the key to the future. Not just the democrats, the liberals need a local “machine” to rival the Tea Party.
Can MoveOn become truly local?
This could be the future … a return to the local politics described by Tip Oneil, but local politics coordinated with the tools of the internet. The potential is already obvious. Without the Tea Party and Fox, the residual of the Republican Party would have joined the Whigs.
As Tip Oneil sais .. all politics is local ..still!