[lbo-talk] obama's end run around the democratic party?

Jeffrey Fisher jeff.jfisher at gmail.com
Fri Nov 7 07:59:04 PST 2008


On Fri, Nov 7, 2008 at 5:11 AM, Michael Pollak <mpollak at panix.com> wrote:


>
> On Tue, 4 Nov 2008, shag wrote:
>
> I was listening to the talking heads on MSNBC and they were going on about
>> how Obama basically ignored the traditional Democratic party structure.
>>
>
> This seems like nonsense. Both the internet fundraising concentration and
> the 50 state strategy were both right out of Howard Dean's playbook. And
> he's the chairman of the Democratic party.
>
> Doug's pointed out how, if it's all 50 bucks here and there from
>> individuals, there's no much of an organizational structure to hold a
>> politician's feet to the fire.
>>
>
> Really? Because you can just as easily interpret exactly the opposite:
> that because 1/2 of Obama's money came from little donations, he is more
> beholden to keeping his base excited about him than any previous Dem.
> Because if they stop being excited, they'll still vote for him, but they
> won't cough up money and they won't people his machine. The machine is an
> indispensable thing you've always needed a base for which has always meant a
> candidate has to pay some attention to their mood. But normally they could
> get virtually all their money from the rich or from organizations. Now you
> need the base for that too -- not for all of it, but for enough of it to
> make the difference.
>

this was the way i've been thinking about it, on both points. but it's also true that dean is generally understood to have broken from a tradition of leaving the red states be.

imo it goes to the other conversation shag and i were having about organization going forward.

j



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list