Health Care

Senate Switchboards On Fire As Health Care Calls Flood Zone

Christina Bellantoni | November 20, 2009, 6:48PM

Women at a switchboard

We've heard all day about senate offices getting flooded with phone calls about the upcoming vote on the health care bill tomorrow.

As we reported earlier, Organizing for America is doing a call blast urging supporters to ask their senators to back the first procedural vote to start debate. Republicans also have been working the phones to ask senators to block the bill.

An aide to a Senate Democrat tells TPMDC their boss' phone rang so frequently today, the lines were busy for hours.

The calls "continued to fill our voicemail box over and over again," the aide said.

The overflow prompted another flood of calls to state offices. The majority of calls to this senator, who already supports the legislation, were in favor of the bill.

Health Care

Tag Team: Obama, Biden, Interest Groups Push On Health Care

Christina Bellantoni | November 20, 2009, 2:24PM

OFA Organizers Mitch Stewart and Jeremy Bird

The White House, Democratic National Committee and pro-health care groups are going full force to build support in advance of tomorrow test vote on the Senate health care bill.

President Obama had nothing on his public schedule following a return from his 8-day trip to Asia, and administration sources said they believe he and the White House team are pushing senators to at least vote to bring the bill to the floor. So far, they've had good news today as conservative Democrats agree to that first step.

Vice President Joe Biden, who is celebrating his 67th birthday home in Delaware today, has been on the phone with lawmakers to bend their ears and ask for their support on the health care bill.

The DNC used the Obama Twitter feed today to urge: "The senate has unveiled an excellent health reform bill. Call your senators and ask them to move forward."

Organizing for America is asking supporters to phone Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, and OFA volunteers showed up yesterday on Capitol Hill when Reid released the bill.

Read more »

Organizing for America

Like An '08 Flashback: OFA Targets Sarah Palin As 'Dangerous'

Christina Bellantoni | November 20, 2009, 10:30AM

Fmr. Gov. Sarah Palin, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ)

Organizing for America, the DNC's campaign arm set up to support President Obama's agenda, has a familiar target today: Sarah Palin.

Mitch Stewart, OFA's director, told supporters in an email just now they need help to raise "$500,000 in the next week to push back against Sarah Palin and her special interest allies."

His argument is that Palin's "lies" about health care are "widely covered by the media, then constantly echoed by right-wing attack groups and others who are trying to defeat reform." He uses her death panels meme as an example.

In his book "The Audacity to Win," Obama campaign manager David Plouffe said he was shocked that Palin was such a good fundraising driver for the team.

He writes that he looked at the online fundraising numbers a few hours after Palin made her big debut at the Republican National Convention going after Obama as his only experience being a community organizer.

"I couldn't believe what I saw," Plouffe wrote.

More from the book:

"We had taken in millions of dollars in the three hours since Palin had started speaking. We hadn't even asked for most of it; we had sent out just a single unplanned fund-raising email highlighting her attacks on community organizers, but it was just starting to hit people's in-boxes as I checked the numbers. So the big response from the last three hours meant people were merely venting via contribution. Her speech might have ginned up their base, but apparently it had sent ours into orbit."

He said he thought, "I hope she keeps this up. Sarah Palin has now become our best fund-raiser."

Sounds like that hasn't changed much.

Stewart's email from today after the jump.

Read more »

Health Care

Obama's Campaign Arm Plans Rally For Senate Bill

Christina Bellantoni | November 18, 2009, 5:53PM

President Barack Obama

As the Senate Democrats dropped their health care bill tonight, the DNC's Organizing for America is arranging asking supporters to attend an "impromptu" rally to encourage senators to back the bill.

OFA volunteers were calling Washington, D.C.-area people on the campaign mailing list tonight asking them to show at the Capitol Visitors Center at noon Thursday.

A volunteer who called TPMDC said the goal was "just to show support for reform."

Late update: This post has been updated. A Democratic source tells us it's not an official OFA event, and said volunteers have been directing supporters to Majority Leader Harry Reid's official roll out of the health care plan.

Health Care

OFA Picks Ad Starring Children: 'I'll Die ... Because We Couldn't Afford Health Care'

Christina Bellantoni | November 17, 2009, 5:10PM

David Plouffe

Last month Organizing for America solicited homemade health care ads from supporters, and today they released the winning video.

It stars several children with health care messages, including:

"Two years from now, I'll be diagnosed with Leukemia and I'll die, because we couldn't afford health care."

and

"There are over 8 million uninsured children in America. ... We all deserve health care."

In an email asking for donations to put the ad on television, David Plouffe says the Organizing for America Health Reform Video Challenge shows "our supporters' creativity and passion is more than a match for the slick ads and partisan spin doctors on the other side."

Read more »

Organizing for America

TPMDC Exclusive: Inside DNC's Organizing For America

Christina Bellantoni | November 11, 2009, 8:15AM

Nine months ago when the Democrats who ran Barack's Obama campaign created Organizing for America, no one was sure exactly how it would work or whether it was possible to harness the enthusiasm for the new president and translate it into action.

But nearing the anniversary of Obama's election, OFA has strengthened into a (smaller) mirror of the campaign, with volunteers in every single Congressional district and staff on the ground in every state but Oklahoma.

They also are growing the Obama donor base.

TPMDC has learned that 24.7 percent of the donations made online to OFA are new donors - people who didn't give during the campaign. That's a pretty striking figure give that a record 3 million people donated during 2007 and 2008.

Organizationally, the boots-on-the-ground, Washington outsider vibe has translated into real results as well. Saturday morning, an OFA volunteer in Louisiana flagged for the team that Rep. Joseph Cao (R-LA) might end up supporting health care.

The administration had been talking to Cao behind the scenes, but it was the volunteer who emailed OFA staffers to report that the Republican's office wasn't saying he was against the bill which opened the floodgates. OFA volunteers made 550 calls to the district office on Saturday in the hours before he became the lone Republican to back the bill.

In an exclusive interview with TPMDC, OFA officials laid out their metrics so far and stressed the results have exceeded expectations.

It was no surprise that Mitch Stewart, OFA's director, and Jeremy Bird, the deputy director, remained on message at all times. They told me nearly a dozen times the OFA mission is to support the president's agenda, and downplayed any disappointment that Obama voters couldn't make the difference in last week's state races in Virginia and New Jersey.

But the wide-ranging interview did lift the curtain on the organization, officially deemed a special project of the Democratic National Committee.

As I detailed earlier this year, OFA and the DNC share a building and merged finances, but keep many things separate. Among those are the list of email supporters, which stood at 13 million at the end of the long campaign. (They won't disclose its size today.)

Campaign geeks may like the transcript of our interview, and come along after the jump to delve into how OFA is doing.

Read more »

Barack Obama

Remember When? White House Staff (And President) Relive Campaign As OFA Plans Reunions

Christina Bellantoni | November 1, 2009, 6:17PM

Organizing for America is putting together campaign "reunions" in honor of the one-year anniversary of Barack Obama's presidential election victory.

Wednesday marks the anniversary of President Barack Obama's historic election, and White House staffers, campaign volunteers and supporters are reliving the moment.

Most prominent in the coming week is Tuesday's HBO debut of the "By the People" documentary, a retelling of the long campaign.

Also happening this week are reunions put together by the volunteers still active in Organizing for America, the next generation of the Obama campaign.

On a sign-up sheet for local reunion events, OFA tells supporters:

"One year ago, President-Elect Obama told us that the election victory was only the beginning of the change we all sought -- and today, through Organizing for America, we're fighting just as hard to make health insurance reform a reality, this year. But while we seek to live up to the President's words, we're planning to gather together to reconnect, celebrate, and remember that moment, last year, when we won a historic victory.

So this week, we're holding reunion events across the country for folks who were involved in the campaign. Can you attend one near you?"

Read more »