Why the ongoing Sanders movement will not turn out like OFA
The Obama years have definitely been a mixed bag, but to me one of the biggest disappointments was the complete dissolution of Organizing for America. Hundreds of thousands of potential activists just melted back into the woodwork.
The local group did some work advocating for ACA, but I stopped when I told them I would only doorbell and phonebank to campaign for it as a step on the way to state single payer (ACA still has that provision). They said I couldn't do that, so I quit going.
I went back in 2010 in response to an invitation to work on electing Democrats to Congress. The first meeting featured a young woman who gave a slide show including the famous "bikini graph" demonstrating job recovery. I had a bad feeling about that, and pointed out that in 2008 Obama campaigned on values, and that my neighbors didn't care about charts and graphs--they cared about how their economic lives were going. Which was then and still is shitty for way too many.
She also advised campaigning on ACA, which I thought was pointless, since the people benefiting right away were so small in number. Certainly it was a major boon to people with serious illnesses who had lifetime caps removed and to people under 26 whose parents actually had insurance policies where they could be included, but most people would continue to see nothing until the exchanges were established and Medicaid expanded.
I felt that OFA was asking me to campaign on pie in the sky, and didn't go back. Being on Social Security, I put much more time into fighting the Catfood Commission's chained CPI than I did in campaigning for Democrats.The state OFA organization essentially dissolved after that.
With Sanders, win or lose, this time it is going to be different. The people involved have a far clearer notion of what we are up against, and are resolved to keep on fighting no matter what. I really can't see any of them being diverted by weak tea proposals.
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