Progressives frustrations with President Obama are boiling over in the wake of his compromise on extending the Bush-era tax cuts with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on Monday.
That anger is also widespread with many Democratic House members, and with a lot of activists who campaigned for Obama and have stood by him for the past two years.
Yesterday after Mitch Stewart, the director for Organizing For America (OFA), the online political activist group that worked hard for Obama's election in 2008 and has since become an activist arm for the Democratic National Committee, sent an e-mail out to its supporters praising the deal, OFA is feeling some significant blowback.
"..While not perfect, is vital to millions of Americans who are out of work through no fault of their own — as well as millions of middle-class families, students, parents, and small businesses," Stewart wrote.
As a blogger who writes on the Daily Kos website named Mike Stark wrote last night:
Mitch Stewart from Organizing for America (BarackObama.com) just sent me an email suggesting that I should be happy about the President's capitulation to Republicans. (The most recent one, that is…)
I think the last email I got from OFA asked us to support the President's decision to freeze federal worker's pay.
A pattern has begun to emerge: the OFA list (which was never shared with any of our imperiled Congressional candidates last cycle) is being used to rally support for the President's conservative decisions.
That's not what I signed up for.
So I unsubscribed.
You'll remember that I created and led the largest MyBarackObama.com group, Get FISA Right, when Obama decided to go back on his word and vote for retroactive telecom immunity. Obama ignored us, at least substantively. But I don't think it makes sense to give up; I remain hopeful that there is a progressive bone or two somewhere inside the President.
So I'm starting another movement. We need to let him know he needs to change course if he expects a second term. The quickest and most measurable way I know that the base can speak to him is for as many people as possible to unsubscribe from the OFA list.
Unsubscribing is easy; it will take you less than 30 seconds. You click the link at the bottom of the email, and they present you with a form asking for your email address and a comment explaining your reason for leaving. I suggest you leave the comment "I'm a fed up progressive" followed by any custom comments of your own. They need to know that this is a movement, and those words in common will give them something to measure by.
Look, the President, for whatever reason, seems completely unaware that he is losing his base, drip by steady drip. He needs an intervention, but he's not going to get it from any of the DC muckety-mucks who are going to enjoy the nice fat tax cut President Obama just delivered for them. We need to make ourseles heard, or we're going to find ourselves shouting at a Republican President in 2013.
Hillsborough Democratic party activist Susan Smith tells CL that has also stopped subscribing to the OFA e-mails. On Monday night, Smith said she was extremely disappointed with Obama, saying, "I think we've seen no leadership from him." Smith said she had contacted Senator Bill Nelson's office and told him he should reject the plan, because, "he's going to make it very hard for his own re-election efforts (in 2012) if he doesn't really fight for the middle class and the working class in this country."
This article appears in Dec 2-8, 2010.