Will Obama Mobilize His Millions of Supporters? The White House Responds

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On Friday morning, I asked, “Will Obama mobilize his millions?” By that, I meant would he activate the 13 million or so Americans who had signed up with his campaign in order to pass the stimulus bill. Organizing for America, the spin-off of the Obama presidential campaign, is holding house parties on the weekend to discuss the recovery package. But Obama has yet truly to unleash his supporters. His push for the economic bill has not had much of a grassroots component.

On Friday afternoon, I was able to ask White House press secretary Robert Gibbs about this. First, I inquired if President Obama wanted the folks attending the weekend house meetings to pressure members of Congress to support the stimulus bill. (As of this writing, the bill, which had passed the House, was heading toward a vote in the Senate. After that, the two versions will have be reconciled and a final version approved by both chambers.) Gibbs replied with something of a platitudinous reply, noting that the president always encourages citizens to be involved in their government.

I followed up by noting that when Ronald Reagan came to Washington in 1981, determined to pass an economic package of tax cuts and draconian cuts in social programs, he delivered multiple televised addresses and urged his supporters to call their members of Congress and demand passage of this legislation. The phones on Capitol Hill lit up; the legislation was passed–over the objections of the leaders of the Democratic-controlled House. Would President Obama, I asked Gibbs, make a similarly explicit call. “We’ll ask those who support him…to move this economy forward,” Gibbs said.

In other words, maybe.

Why hasn’t the Obama White House already directly engaged its supporters in this fight? After all, Obama has repeatedly said this is the number-one priority of his administration. Perhaps Obama aides initially thought that it would not be necessary to call in its troops. If so, that was a miscalculation on at least two counts. First, it does seem that Obama will have to show some political muscle to get this bill all the way through Congress. Second, whether or not the Obama White House needed its supporters to win this thing, it would have been smart for the White House to have involved its backers in its first–and most important–initiative. That would give these people a sense of ownership. And what could be a better way of keeping those millions (and others) engaged than by scoring a victory in a significant policy and political battle? (Now, it’s on to health care, everybody!)

It’s not too late for Obama to send for the people who helped get him elected. This coming week, he will be expanding his outreach efforts. He will hold a prime-time news conference on Monday night. And early in the week, he will travel to Elkhart, Indiana, and Fort Myers, Florida, to conduct town hall meetings to whip up support for the recovery package. Activating the 13 million names on his list and those who attend the house meetings on the weekend would easily fit into the White House’s new game plan.

Gibbs’ non-answer to my question suggests that White House want to keep Obama above the political fray and not make it seem as if he’s not resorting to political pressure to win passage of the stimulus legislation. But there’s nothing wrong with political pressure. And there’s nothing wrong with dancin’ with the ones who brought ya. Obama came to the White House with–and because of–millions of supporters. In a town about which Harry Truman once supposedly said (but really didn’t), “If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog,” having millions of friends by your side cannot hurt. It might even make life a little easier.

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Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We canā€™t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who wonā€™t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its futureā€”you.

And we need readers to show up for us big timeā€”again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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