Bob Ostertag: Update: Sending Your Obama Money to Feingold
Last night I posted a blog suggesting that Obama supporters who are angry about his about-face on the upcoming FISA legislation should take the money they would have given Obama this month and give it instead to Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI), who is carrying on the fight that Obama walked away from. Apparently the idea struck a chord. The Feingold campaign told me at midday that money was pouring in. Campaign manager George Aldrich was reluctant to give out precise numbers, but reported that the morning’s donations were “not a little blip but a massive spike” up from the norm.
That’s a big chunk of change that should have gone to Obama. Predictably, this infuriated many Obama supporters, but those of us who redirected our donations to Fiengold are Obama supporters too. My interest is not to derail Obama’s campaign from within, but to keep a place at the table for his activist base now that the chairs are being reshuffled to accommodate the heavy hitters of national American politics. This is the point in presidential campaigns where activists usually get sent to the kitchen to eat with the staff. But maybe with this new tool we have in the Internet, we can hold on to our seat in the dining room.
Sending money to Feingold instead of Obama the week of the FISA vote is a reasonable and powerful step to take. Remember the election is in November and this is only July. We have months in which to give Obama more money. We are not so tightly boxed in that we cannot make this statement on behalf of the Constitution now. Most important of all, I think Obama’s chances are better if he sticks to the principles that got him this far. As far as I am concerned, I am still working on his campaign right now.
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However, figuring out how to use the Internet in an honest and effective is a tricky business, as other events today highlighted. For example, membership in the protest group on MyBo jumped several thousand and is now at about 22,500. Many opposed to the protest suggest these numbers are artificially inflated by Republican “trolls.” But you can check the profile of each member of the protest group, and see when they joined MyBo, what activities they have done for the campaign viagra ohne rezept, and what comments and blogs they have written. The more than 18,000 who joined before today appeared to be for the most part exactly who they claim to be: the activist core of the Obama campaign. But the overwhelming proportion of today’s joiners are new MyBo and have not made any profile. These might be Obama supporters who joined MyBo to voice their protest over the FISA cave-in, or they might be a Karl Rove operation. There really isn’t any way to know.
Meanwhile a statement from a group called PUMA (Party Unity My Ass) appeared, purporting to use the principled stands which Obama supporter-critics are taking to launch an effort to revive the Clinton campaign. Everything about this group, their rhetoric, and their online kaufen levitra Web site suggests that this may indeed be a Republican troll operation. At any rate, their statements are so outrageous as to discredit them, no matter who they are or what motivations they have.
(For example, one Web site associated with PUMA is No Quarter. The site, which rabidly attacks Obama and promotes Clinton with articles such as “White Like Us?”, identifies its contact person as Larry C. Johnson, who “works with US military commands in scripting terrorism exercises, briefs on terrorist trends, and conducts undercover investigations on counterfeiting, smuggling and money laundering.”
Some commenters have even suggested that I myself am not a real person but a nefarious Republican trick. Well folks, I live and breathe. If you want to know me better, check out my most recent book, People’s Movements, People’s Press: The Journalism of Social Justice Movements, or my Web site.
Others suggested that I was never an Obama supporter to begin with, and demanded links to document the contrary. No problem. * Super Tuesday Leaves New Political Map (my first “Why I Support Obama” post) * Think Big: Democrats and (Young) Evangelicals (I actually support Obama’s outreach to young evangelicals) * Obama in Florida: Hooray for Substance! (I liked his outreach to Cuban Americans just as much.)
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Some commenters complained that donating to Senator Feingold’s campaign was a bad idea since he is not up for reelection this year. I thought that was a good thing, since the relatively inactive campaign would be able to easily distinguish whatever protest money arrived this week from its typical income stream which is probably close to nothing. However, if you
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