Democrats will be using the full Organizing for America email list in an attempt to rescue Massachusetts Senate candidate Martha Coakley, a party official tells Mother Jones. Democrats hope that Coakley, the Democratic candidate in the special election to fill Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat, will benefit from the energy of the activists on the massive email list President Barack Obama assembled during his campaign for the White House. In the wake of the White House’s announcement that Obama himself will campaign for Coakley on Sunday, the move to fire up the full 13-million-person list is just the latest sign that national Democrats are panicked about Republican Scott Brown’s momentum and polling leads. David Corn wrote about OFA—and journalist Ari Melber’s 73-page report on it—yesterday:
So far, Obama has mostly stuck to familiar presidential pathways when it comes to using power, communicating with the public, and interacting with the citizenry and his supporters. (His use of electronic town halls and the like have been mostly gimmicks.) Though he entered the White House with a network unlike any amassed by a predecessor—both larger and more engaged—he has not tried to deploy it to reshape the operating system of Washington.
Republicans all over the country are phonebanking for the Massachusetts race (Democrats say they are, too), and Brown has reportedly been raising a million dollars a day online. Can the OFA list save Coakley? Can anything? The Dems are definitely pulling out all the stops.
