Politico's Ken Vogel is reporting that the Obama worshiping group Organizing for America -- 13 million strong -- was "activated" to call their senators in support of health care reform.
Apparently, they didn't get quite the response they were hoping for:
The campaign yielded 150,000 calls - less than half the number of a similar effort in October - and it prompted a backlash among online and local activists who had logged countless volunteer supporting Obama's campaign and legislative agenda, but who felt betrayed by recent Democratic concessions in the healthcare reform fight. To be sure, the October effort targeted members of the House and Senate, while Wednesday's calls only targeted senators. Keeping any political organization together after the enthusiasm of a campaign is over is difficult, and it's hard to gauge how widespread the unhappiness is.
But there's plenty of unhappiness. One leading OFA volunteer in Florida blasted an email to a statewide listserv urging activists to "just say no" to the phone-banking effort - uncorking a torrent of frustration from Florida Democrats - while some OFA subscribers replied directly to the call-to-action email with angry messages and others asked to be removed from the list entirely.
Still others said they would indeed call their senators - but would urge them to oppose the bill. And the liberal blogosphere registered its dissatisfaction with the call to action, with one prominent blogger on MyDD predicting that "Organizing for America will get a rude awakening when they try to round up canvassers and phone bankers."
All is not well in Obamaland. The natives have turned to cannibalism while going to war against their father.
But beyond their obvious dissatisfaction with health care reform, the fact is that the bozos at the White House have gone to the well too often. You can't call out the troops every month to put organized pressure on politicians. It doesn't work after a while, plus you expend valuable political capital in the process.
But these guys are so arrogant they believe the cult of personality that Obama has created means you can throw out the rulebook and rely on their unthinking robots to do whatever they tell them to.
As they are finding out, they have overestimated the pull of the president and it will probably cost them down the road.
Hat Tip: Ed Lasky
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