Funding the indies: Obama says, Don't

T.A. Barnhart

Probable Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama is moving to cut off funding to independent political groups, urging his donors to channel their political funding through his campaign. Ben Smith, in Politico:

Senator Barack Obama's campaign is steering the candidate's wealthy supporters away from independent Democratic groups, calling into question what had been expected to be the groups' central role in this year's Democratic offensive against Senator John McCain.

...

"From the beginning of this race Obama has told supporters that if they want to help his effort, they should do so through his campaign," said Obama spokesman Bill Burton, who confirmed that Pritzker has told donors not to give to the groups. "And he means exactly what he says."

Nothing wrong with this, of course: It's the job of any campaign to get as much of the pie as possible: funding, message, volunteers, campaigning. With the stakes as high as they are in a presidential election -- we are, after all, talking about the next Commander-in-Chief and the person who'll name several Supreme Court justices -- Obama and his team want to control this huge juggernaut to whatever extent is possible. There will be plenty they cannot control, so reducing the uncontrolables makes sense.

Not being a member of the Obama campaign, however, I have different objectives for the coming year. Electing him president is the most important thing we can and must do in 2008, but it’s not the only thing. So there may be times when what matters to me is not what’s going to matter to the campaign. Other people, whose support of Obama is incidental to their long-term goals, may be sympathetic to his campaign's understandable wishes but unwilling to abandon programs they see as essential to moving forward with a more democratic politics. And there are plenty of us, from different perspectives and for different reasons, who believe that there will be a need throughout the general election for messages not controlled from Chicago.

But we’re not the campaign. We’re not hired with the sole purpose of electing Barack Obama president. For that matter, I don’t think his sole purpose is getting elected. David Axelrod and David Plouffe, on the other hand, may want to see some other good things happen, but their job is to win the election. The three of them, for a variety of reasons, desire to keep the 527s from going off and doing their own thing.

Some of the reasons given for the Obama campaign's work to contain and control message are more cynical than I am. Smith explains that some think Obama is trying to undercut groups headed by people like David Brock and John Podesta who have close ties to the Clintons. And throughout the article is the insinuation that Obama is trying to become the Al Capone of Democratic politics. I don't see any evidence of darker motives, and certainly nothing in his background would indicate that he's interested in being the kingpin. I don't see this as anything more than a campaign trying to control as much of their message as possible.

That control has been, Smith writes, very effective to date:

Obama’s campaign has been remarkably effective so far this year at maintaining a coherent message, built around Obama’s biography and his appeal for a new kind of politics. Part of his success has been tight message discipline: The campaign has been virtually leak-free, and the line of control from Obama to his chief strategist David Axelrod to campaign manager (and Axelrod business partner) David Plouffe is unchallenged.

Many involved in the independent efforts find it hard to quibble with that success, and may have second thoughts about continuing that work over Obama’s explicit objection.

That’s going to end very soon. Now that the primary is just about wrapped up -- in the past week, he’s gained far more in super delegate endorsements than Hillary’s nine-delegate “win” in West Virginia -- the focus will be on defeating John McCain. And while most of those who oppose McNasty and the GOP recognize that Obama is a superior campaigner who can hold his own, they also know he will frequently not get a chance to do his own holding. The video on Good Morning America of an idiot woman in West Virginia saying she thought Obama was lying when he called himself a Christian demonstrates how much of the message is beyond his campaign’s grasp. Two months of Jeremiah Wright, and this woman still thinks Obama is a Muslim.

So, the thinking goes among supporters outside the campaign, we have to provide cover for the nominee. We have to undermine their messages, bring the attack to them. It ought to be clear to everyone that Obama, Axelrod and Plouffe will not fight dirty. There has been no use of Monica Lewinsky even as Hillary regurgitated Wright and presses the case that Obama can’t overcome enough white bigotry to win. Obama will fight damn hard, but he won’t do unto the neocons what they are sure to do to him.

That’s what the 527s will do, if necessary, but it’s the kind of politics Obama is trying to eliminate. Those types of strategies are part of the divide-and-conquer (and then beat their corpses beyond recognition with piles of lobbyist money) tactics that are Obama’s primary targets in this campaign. So, continuing to remain consistent to his own values, he’s calling for his donors not to support those groups. Not because they are bad or because he’s afraid John Podesta will undermine him for Hillary in some sick way; just because he wants to get rid of that kind of politics and does not want to win that way.

Ok, I’m fool enough to take him at his word. But you don’t change the world for the better by hoping it will just kind of happen, or that enough of the bad guys get killed. You start by believing it is possible, and then you live by that belief as if it is true.

Unfortunately, we have not gotten to the place where this the way of life in American politics. It’s still just 2008, and American politics is in transition from the old to the new politics. In the past ten years, we’ve watched the new politics being born: From MoveOn to Dean for America to 2006 to Obama: it’s growing out there, people-powered and not following a leader but providing their leaders with somewhere to go with the millions of supporters right there, standing by their side. But we’re not there yet. Hillary’s old-time politics cost her this nomination (her decision to stonewall her vote on Iraq was the ultimate in old-timing, a decision based not on her values or on morality but on what would serve her campaign best). Obama’s rejection of that kind of politics is, as Smith notes, transforming, at the very least, the Democratic Party.

But what about us? We, the people. The folks on the ground, the ones who’ll give $25 to Obama and then another $25 to David Brock. Do we heed Obama’s words and shun those groups, or do we accept harsh “reality” and help fight fire with fire? Those of us who share Obama’s vision of a new politics, do we go all-in with him or hedge our bets? The pot is huge; the possibilities, both for success and failure, are tangible and tantalizing.

Who is right? Brock and Podesta, or Obama? Can a positive, person-to-person, issue-oriented campaign win in 2008? Can we win this fighting clean?

Or will it take a knee to the neocons’ groin?

By T.A. Barnhart May 13, 2008