The President decides he’s a Democrat after all
by David Atkins
I know this is inside baseball that many readers may not care about, but one of the more troubling aspects of the Obama presidency has been the failure to convert the Obama campaign apparatus into an effective mobilization tool for Democratic candidates down ballot. President Obama in 2008 ran one of the most innovative and successful field campaigns in American history, and the data derived from that campaign was every field organizer’s dream. However, after winning office the Obama team did not give its data to the Democratic Party. Instead, it kept that treasure chest to itself, and converted Obama for President into the group Obama for America (the same thing happened in the 2012 cycle, after which OFA became “Organizing for Action.”)
The ostensible reason for doing this is that the President received a great deal of independent and cross-party support, and many people in the Obama for America infrastructure were not registered Democrats. In a Democratic Party controlled environment, those individuals would have to switch party registration or be removed.
The end result has been a weird amalgam at the state and local levels, where the Democratic Party infrastructure runs parallel to an Obama for America parallel party of sorts that mostly aligns with Democratic interests but doesn’t conduct significant operations to assist in elections, and essentially only activates to make calls to voters and legislators asking them to “support the President’s agenda” even if it’s not entirely clear at any given point what that agenda is. In my own efforts to bring my county Democrats and the local OFA together, I participated in some of those phonebanks as a gesture of good will. But it was very clear that the data and resources of OFA could have been put to much better–and more progressive–use by the actual Democratic infrastructure.
To say nothing of the fact that once a Presidential candidate secures the nomination, that person becomes de facto the leader of the Democratic Party. Running one’s own parallel pseudo-Democratic organization to the Party doesn’t do much for Party cohesion, or for a trusting relationship between the President and his Congressional allies. And indeed, one of the weaknesses of the Obama presidency has been a lack of communication and coordination with Democrats in Congress.
What it all points to is something that has been a common thread of the Obama presidency at a policy level as well: a genuine distrust of and distaste for partisanship and political parties in general. The creation and evolution of Obama for America was another symptom of the President’s desire to transcend “the politics of division” and become a post-partisan charismatic figure. I leave it to the reader to judge how well that worked.
At any rate, the President has finally decided to allow the DNC to have access to most its data–but, singularly, not the most important part, which is the President’s email list.
President Obama’s campaign will transfer voter data, turnout models, and information about supporters who volunteered on behalf of the president to the Democratic National Committee, in a move Democrats say will boost the party’s efforts ahead of the midterm elections.
The decision to turn over the data to the DNC comes despite initial discussions about creating an external corporation to house the Obama campaign data.
Those deliberations had sparked concern that the committee may have been prevented from full access to the modeling and data systems widely credited with helping propel the president to two consecutive victories.
“It’s a big get for us,” said a DNC official. “This is a treasure trove of information we’ll be able to utilize.”
The official said that early discussions “may not have enabled the DNC” to use some of the campaign’s information, but that the agreement was “a good-case scenario for us.”
The DNC believes that the volunteer data, in particular, will help Democratic candidates looking to rally support in off-year elections. Voter profiles that indicate how and when individuals voted in the past can also help campaigns target solid Democratic voters who might not otherwise turn out in a non-presidential year.
“The single most informed predictor of people’s voting habits is their previous election data, so when you have their voting history and that information, it’s incredibly powerful,” the official said.
Not included in the turnover — first reported by Politico — is the Obama campaign’s email list, considered by some campaign strategists as the crown jewel of the Obama data effort.
There was concern that if the email list was gifted to the committee, outside political groups — and specifically Organizing for Action (OFA), the nonprofit policy organization born from the president’s reelection effort — would be legally unable to access it.
The DNC and other campaign committees — including the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee — will be able to access the email list under the new agreement but will not take ownership.
The DNC official also said the committee may be using the email list increasingly for its own fundraising efforts.
That could help to calm tensions between OFA and the DNC, which has complained that the unprecedented creation of a political advocacy group to support the president outside of the party was hurting fundraising efforts.
Again, folks who don’t do field work on campaigns won’t realize quite how troublesome all of this is. But it’s a big deal. Seamlessly transferring voter contact lists for controlled use by Democratic candidates all the way up and down the ballot should be a given. The reticence and delays are just another way in which Democratic and progressive efforts have been hampered by a President who never did get very comfortable with being a partisan Democrat.
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