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I observed the first Tea Bagger rally in my area at the behest of a local democratic big whig, I volunteered for the mission and observed them from a far in a park in Bethlehem Township, PA. About 50 people with Don't Tread on me Flags, a few anti-Obama signs and lots of American Flags. I said they don't look like much but to remember that the rebirth of the DNC in 2006 was fueled by the anti-war movement of 2002-2006. The odd thing about the Tea Baggers was for a bunch of people claiming poverty over taxation and hating government, they had rented a moon walk for their kids and were using a Public Park. Just seemed an odd contrast, gotta love America where you can scream about how you are being bankrupted with expensive rental play toys in parks funded by taxes and given any attention.
In May/June (can't remember if it was the end of May or the beginning of June) I went to the first OFA meeting for HCR for the area. The effort was petitions, phone calls, and fairs for the media. I called the OFA twice and asked them to do something more edgy, they assured me they got this.
I was not surprised to see screaming Tea Baggers on the TV in contrast with OFA people on street corners with Public Option buttons (they made themselves). I was not surprised at the debate starting to lose steam either.
Meanwhile, Moveon.org was doing the same type of thing as the White House run OFA groups and so was every other group except Organized Labor, which took an approach of doing a rally on the Mall bigger than what the Tea Baggers did later, which was not reported by any media outlet and going to Insurance company headquarters and getting arrested. They were actually making the bigger impact as far as they at least got covered on the web and seemed to show more the urgency of the issue than the OFA people with their petitions and taking blood pressure.
By September, the Tea Baggers had been so effective that local candidates from the suburbs were complaining that OFA people were in the democratic tent during the Allentown Fair and they didn't want to be associated with Obama. Arlen Specter and Bob Casey had committed to voting for the bill yet they were still getting phone calls, and the OFA groups were more focused on HCR lobbying than doing things for Democratic candidates in 2009 even ones that locally were OFA members, thus PA will be redistricted by GOP judges. Turn out was abysmally low, and I was amazed at the people who would show up at an OFA meeting but not for a canvass shift for the party. I knew these people, they did plenty of canvas shifts in 2008. I was more worried about the County Commissioner races and the City Council races because they would be the ones supervising the stimulus funds, I had led an effort for, and to be fair, I didn't really see the value of the petition drives and since there were plenty of petition gatherers out there, I figured my knowledge of canvassing, phonebanking, and the party VAN system was better used helping those folks. At the very least to get turnout up for those Judicial races.
Finally around late October, the liberal groups like Moveon.org appeared to give up on Message discipline inc and started to do their own thing. The Heather Graham ad and other things were examples of this, and their tone in their emails changed.
The 50 state program was scrapped for the OFA idea, and thus far it has failed to deliver anything for the party. So forgive me, if I have a distrust of leadership right now. I haven't seen it be effective.
We got a bill, without the biggest things people wanted and with a provision that was campaigned against in the primary.
Now flame away.
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