Obama Policymakers Turn to Campaign Tools: Network of Supporters Tapped on Health-Care Issues

[DeepModem Mom]

Source: Washington Post, Page One

Barack Obama's incoming administration has begun to draw on the high-tech organizational tools that helped get him elected to lay the groundwork for an attempt to restructure the U.S. health-care system. Former senator Thomas A. Daschle, Obama's point person on health care, launched an effort to create political momentum yesterday in a conference call with 1,000 invited supporters culled from 10,000 who had expressed interest in health issues, promising it would be the first of many opportunities for Americans to weigh in.

The health-care mobilization taking shape before Obama even takes office will include online videos, blogs and e-mail alerts as well as traditional public forums. Already, several thousand people have posted comments on health on the Obama transition Web site....

It is the first attempt by the Obama team to harness its vast and sophisticated grass-roots network to shape public policy....

Daschle, who is expected to become the next secretary of health and human services, is waging the outreach campaign by marrying old-fashioned Washington-style lobbying and cutting-edge social-networking technologies. Although he has yet to be formally nominated, he has already met with more than 100 insiders, ranging from union leaders and the seniors group AARP to hospital executives and representatives of corporate America....

The Obama team, which recruited about 13 million online supporters during the presidential campaign and announced its vice presidential selection via text message, is now moving to apply those tools to the earliest stages of governing. "This is the beginning of the reinvention of what the presidency in the 21st century could be," said Simon Rosenberg, president of the center-left think tank NDN. "This will reinvent the relationship of the president to the American people in a way we probably haven't seen since FDR's use of radio in the 1930s."...

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/03/AR2008120303829_pf.html

[bemildred]

1. Kick for Obama.

Use the bully-pulpit. Scare the poop out of Congress.

[qwlauren35]

2. WoW!!!

This is EXCITING!

There was a long list of possible supporter interests. I'm very glad to have seen this, because it will make me read my e-mail in hopes of seeing requests for MY input!

This is BEYOND exciting.

[DeepModem Mom]

3. More on this from this posted article from Froomkin --

You Mean We Can Talk Back? "Sometimes, the change is enough to make your head spin."

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=4586635&mesg_id=4586635

[Imperialism Inc.]

4. That is so totally cool isn't it?

Youtube government. What a trip.