On reading CNN’s report about the fallout from Bobby Jindal’s put down of “volcano monitoring,” I felt a sense of some sort of deja vu — haven’t we been here before?
Then, aha, I remembered John McCain’s snarky put-down “$3 million for an overhead projector at a planetarium.” I wouldn’t be surprised if the same knuckle-dragging reactionary wrote Jindal’s speech and McCain’s debate sound bite, so similar is the lame attitude behind them.
In addition to the contempt for science, Jindal’s ‘volcano’ remark is revealing in another way. For one thing, it indicates that the GOP is sorely in need of better speechwriters. The whole rebuttal was pretty thin, even though it does reflect Republican ideology faithfully enough, as Ed notes below. But the volcano remark was going well out of one’s way to step in it. A second-rate speechwriter should be able to understand that such a cheap shot would backfire because of Mount. St. Helens, where 57 people were killed. Certainly they should have been able to come up with something better, considering the broad scope of the stimulus. Crappy speechwriting often comes from lazy research.
A lot of Dem commentators have had fun mocking Jindal’s condescending delivery, here amusingly compared to the oratorical stylings of “Kenneth the Page” on “30 Rock.” Jindal’s rebuttal reminded me more of a comment attributed to Gore Vidal: “Today’s public figures can no longer write their own speeches or books, and there is some evidence that they can’t read them either.” Not to gloat, but happily, we Dems are in the opposite position of having a thoughtful writer, as well as speaker, at the helm of our party. When Obama’s speechwriters slip up, they have a tough editor to get them straightened out in the person of the President. It helps a lot.

President Obama’s first address to Congress was exceptionally well-received, according to opinion polls, focus groups and reportage across the country. For a good round-up of opinion polls and focus groups, check Pollster.com, where Mark Blumenthal cites a CBS News poll which found that 79 percent of viewers approved of the President’s plans for “dealing with the economic crisis” — up from 62 percent before the speech. Additionally, Blumenthal cites a CNN poll showing 68 percent of speech-watchers with a “very positive reaction.”
Blumenthal also reports on a DCorps dial-group of speech-watchers, and quotes TDS co-editor Stan Greenberg’s observation “I’ve never seen anything like it. Republicans never went below 50 [on their dial ratings].”
While most newspapers dutifully quoted from Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal’s ho-hum rebuttal on behalf of the GOP as a concession to ‘balance,’ a quick survey of “second-tier” newspapers across the country suggests that Obama’s speech generally received a favorable reception from reporters and the public alike. For example, in Detroit, reeling from the meltdown like no other city, Obama’s address seems to have hit the mark. Todd Spangler reported in The Detroit Free Press :

Although not formally recognized as a State of the Union address because it came in the same year as his inauguration, the hour-long speech had all the makings of one and contained much of concern to Michiganders struggling with high foreclosure rates, plant closures and the highest jobless rate in the nation in December at 10.6%…The auto industry, he said, has been beset by “years of bad decision-making” and government shouldn’t protect the industry from “their own bad practices.” But he said it is too big an industry to fail…His commitment to the domestic auto industry is essential, said Sen. Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat.

Miami Herald reporters Robert Samuels and Evan Benn had a man-on-the-street round-up, including:

At the Riverside Hotel on Fort Lauderdale’s Las Olas Boulevard, Rocco Norman watched Obama address the nation on television and said he was pleased to hear the president say he would fight corporate greed.
…”I’m a worker. Most everyone I know is a worker. And we’re scared for our jobs, while the CEOs keep getting bonuses? That isn’t right,” said Norman, 42, a law office assistant.
Obama’s remarks about the economy drew the attention of several Barry University students, who took time off from their studies to watch the address…”It rejuvenated the hope for me that our education system will be able to compete with the Chinese,” said Michael Whorley, an 18-year old freshman…’Usually, in economic turmoil, education is the first thing to go.

The Abilene Reporter-News featured AP white house correspondent Jennifer Loven’s wire report, which explained that the President’s address was more of a speech on domestic policy, but noted:

In contrast to many State of the Union addresses by George W. Bush, Obama did not emphasize foreign policy. He touched on his intention to chart new strategies in Iraq and Afghanistan and to forge a new image for the U.S. around the world even as he keeps up the fight against terrorism…He touted his decision to end the practice of leaving Iraq and Afghanistan war spending out of the main budget. “For seven years, we have been a nation at war. No longer will we hide its price,” Obama said.

The Portland Oregonian ran a well-titled editorial “More Braveheart, Less Cassandra,” which had this plaudit for the President:

The president, deprived by the electoral calendar of the chance to offer a true State of the Union speech this year, made the most of his opportunity to show America an air of confidence and competence. With stock indices down, job insecurity up, local governments planning service cuts and banks being seized weekly, nervousness has threatened to give way to panic. That’s why Obama sought to sound a reassuring note Tuesday night. And let’s face it, the president has a gift for persuasive rhetoric…Obama conveys the demeanor of a man who knows his history, can command attention and is mindful of peril. All of those qualities were on display Tuesday night.

The Omaha World-Herald went with a legislator round-up, “Reaction by the Midlands congressional delegation,” including the following observations:

Republican Senator Charless Grassley: “Beyond the policy debates, the President can do good by expressing confidence in the future and help to give Americans the fortitude we need to weather this economic crisis and come out of it stronger than we were before, as we have done time and again in our country’s 233-year history.”
Democratic Senator Tom Harkin: “The president’s economic recovery package, along with his plans for reducing foreclosures and stabilizing the financial system, will rebuild confidence and stop the downward dynamics in the economy. In the longer term, he is making investments that will restore growth and transform our approach to energy, health care, and education…he intends to move to rein in deficits once the economy recovers. The president made it clear, tonight, that he will continue tackling the fiscal and economic messes created in recent years with boldness and urgency. This will not happen overnight, but it will happen.

Up in New Hampshire, even The Manchester Union Leader published a fairly positive account of the President’s address to Congress, observing,

The central argument the President’s speech was that his still-unfolding economic revival plan has room for — and even demands — simultaneous action on a broad, expensive agenda including helping the millions without health insurance, improving education and switching the U.S. to greater dependence on alternative energy sources.
Rep. Paul Hodes, D-N.H., called Obama’s speech “interesting and inspiring.” “Obama showed that even when we disagree, we can produce the best results when we engage in the process in good faith and he is forcing us to engage in a new way to govern,” Hodes said.
Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H. said the speech was “very strong.” “The President made it very clear that addressing these spending issues is going to be a priority for him, and it’s certainly going to be a priority for me,” Gregg said in a written statement. “I believe that here in the Senate we have the opportunity to take some strong and decisive action in this area by trying to control the rate of growth of entitlement spending, and I am hopeful that the President will come forward with specific programs to accomplish that.”

In her Hotline After Dark post, Katherine Lehr quotes other GOP leaders making positive comments about the President’s speech, including Senators John Thune, Mitch McConnell and John McCain. She also quotes David Brooks calling it an “excellent speech,” which “perfectly captured the tenor of the country” and David Gergen calling Obama’s address the “most ambitious we have heard in this chamber in decades.”
We’ve become accustomed to excellent speeches by President Obama. It appears that this one has also served his strategy of building support outside the beltway, as well as in Congress.

Paul Starr has a short, but insightful post, “Breaking the Grip of the Past” at The American Prospect today, which sheds light on president Obama’s political strategy. As Starr explains:

For Barack Obama and the Democrats, the problem is not just the hard-right conservatives who dominate the Republican Party and the right-wing media echo chamber. Given the urgency of present circumstances, the critical impediment may lie in the ambivalent center — among the middle-of-the-road Democrats and Republicans who hold the margin of votes in the Senate, much of the business and opinion-leader establishment, and a large part of the public who are not strongly affiliated with any party or ideological position.
Winning over those groups poses the key challenge if Congress and the new administration are to free the country from the dead right hand of the past. Obama’s mix of conciliatory and assertive stances — an openness to talking with the other side and a willingness to concede, in principle, that it may have a point, yet a determination when pressed to fight for his policies — is not just an expression of his personality. It’s the rational strategy of a politician who can’t get his program through unless he peels off some part of the opposition.

Starr goes on to note Obama’s tendency “not to confront conservatism in general terms” which Starr believes makes some sense because “Many Americans who identify themselves as conservative nonetheless favor liberal positions on specific policies” — a “symbolically conservative, but operationally liberal” group estimated at 22 percent of the public in 2004 by James A. Stimson in his book Tides of Consent. Starr believes surveys indicate there may be a “big increase” in this group since the election.
Starr believes Obama’s ‘whatever works’ rhetoric is calibrated to address this group and the “deep American strain of post-partisanship.” WaPo columnist E.J. Dionne sees the evolving consensus on bipartisanship a little differently in his column today on “Obama’s FDR Moment“:

And when it comes to bipartisanship, the point is not the numerical count of Republicans who vote for this or that. It’s whether frightened citizens sense that government is working…”People want the basic stuff fixed,” said state Rep. Vernon Sykes, a Democrat who chairs the Finance and Appropriations Committee in the Ohio House. “They don’t have a romantic notion of bipartisanship. They just want people to come together to solve problems.”

Post or bipartisanship notwithstanding, Starr credits Obama with drawing a line in the sand against more tax cuts for the rich and do-nothing government. Starr feels this rhetorically-nuanced approach could well “educate the public about the folly of conservative views and help move the country toward a new progressive center.” However, Starr warns,

it’s crucial, perhaps more for others than for Obama, to continue to press the case that our present problems have ideological roots — that they are not due equally to all sides but rather to the mistaken premises, malignant neglect, and sometimes outright malfeasance of a long era of conservative government…But if he concedes too much, it could be another version of disabling triangulation

It’s a delicate balancing act, and the President’s communications skills in educating the public will be on wide display tomorrow, when he addresses the nation. It may be Obama’s “FDR moment,” but he should also remember MLK’s dictum “Ultimately, a genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus, but a molder of consensus.”

In Politico‘s ‘The Arena,’ Drew Westen has this harsh evaluation of the Obama Administration’s leveraging of its mandate:

Unless the Democrats dramatically change course or the new President puts his foot down and reminds the American people who they voted for, any new legislation will have to pass muster with co-presidents Collins, Specter, and Snowe, and their shadow cabinet of Cornyn, Boehner, Shelby, and McConnell. The new co-presidents will not be able to do the kind of damage their party did over the last eight years, but they will be able to prevent the Democrats from fixing it—and to allow the radical conservatives to say “I told you so” in two years and take back large swaths of the House and Senate. If somehow this stimulus package succeeds, they will be able to claim that it was their changes, their tax cuts, and their “fiscal restraint” that worked.

Ouch. I’m hoping Westen has overstated the case here, especially insofar as his prognosis for the ’10 elections are concerned. Less than a month into president Obama’s term seems a little early for d.o.a. pronouncements. Still Westen may have a point about the need for some bully pulpit to rally supporters, which has been well-noted by Ed here at TDS and others.
Digby has an interesting take on Westen’s argument, affirming his “good case that winning elections required appealing to emotion,” but adding,

I never agreed with him and some other advisers, that people didn’t also need to vote on the basis of substantive political argument. If you don’t ground politics in ideas, it’s nothing more than show business (or religion.) And while the Republicans are great showmen, they very definitely ground their politics in ideology. They sell it with emotion, to be sure, and it’s completely incoherent when you scratch beneath the surface, but it’s there. It’s what they call “principle” and it brainwashes people to sell out their own self-interest without knowing they are doing it.
…there is a consequence to refusing to fight campaigns on ideology and present those ideas as a cogent set of political principles. Right now, the Democrats are basically assuming that people are hurting enough to find the Republicans reprehensible for trying to obstruct the help they need. That’s a pretty risky strategy….Democrats do themselves no favors by looking for magic bullets. What Westen (and Lakoff before him) prescribed was invaluable. But they were never adequate. Ideology matters and the Democrats have to explain theirs and attack the Republicans’.

Both Westen and Digby provide important insights here. But it’s not quite enough just to call for a more energetic presidential bully pulpit and a more vigorous statement of ideological clarity. What seems to be missing thus far is a commitment and a structure to transform Obama’s prodigious campaign assets into a strong, responsive citizen lobby. Obama does have a potentially powerful, but as yet undeployed asset in his massive mailing list of supporters, who wait to be mobilized as citizen lobbyists. He has been sending out emails to his supporters. But I’m wondering if a more formal structure, perhaps a multi-state network headed up by his best campaign workers could be called together and organized into a legislative task force, so that they have a clear identity, instead of just receiving emails urging them to action. It hasn’t really been tried before. But the potential for such an organization has never been stronger — and the need has rarely been more compelling.

Open Left‘s Chris Bowers has a fun takedown of msm reports that term Gregg’s withdrawal a “blow” to Obama. Bowers is exactly right. The idea is pretty silly.
Yes, No-Drama Obama would rather have had all of his appointments go smoothly. But reasonable voters understand that there was no way to predict Gregg’s histrionics. Most U.S. Senators get it that cabinet secretaries are charged to carry out the President’s policies, as part of a team, not as unelected free agents doing their own thing. I remember being taught that in middle school civics class. Gregg’s realization comes a little late and invites ridicule.
Characterizing Gregg’s vacillations as a “blow” to the President, rather than the GOP, is also a stretch. More on point is this from the comments following Bowers’ post:

He’s shown the whole world what we in NH have always known – that Judd is all about what Judd wants…And he, the last major GOP figure in NH, has become the laughing stock of both parties.

and another:

Merits of the appointment aside, I don’t see how this is a “blow”; the public is left with the clear impression that Obama made yet another attempt to bridge differences with the GOP, only to be rebuffed…This doesn’t make him look bad; if anything, he looks magnanimous, and the GOP looks petty.

Well said. Like Obama’s bipartisan outreach efforts or not, his sincerity, goodwill and consistency in reaching out are not in doubt. Indeed, they are highlighted in contrast to his Republican adversaries.
The Gregg withdrawal may also recall memories of McCain’s erratic behavior concerning his decision to debate or not following the economic meltdown. That can’t be good for the GOP.
Especially given Ed’s point in his post yesterday about the importance of the Census, Gregg’s withdrawal is not unwelcome among Democrats concerned about strengthening our case for reforms. President Obama now has plenty of cover for nominating a strong Democrat to head the Commerce Department, and it would be a shame not to use it. In that regard, Larry J. Sabato’s contribution to a round-up on the Gregg withdrawall in today’s WaPo may prove instructive:

The Gregg withdrawal can be a watershed. It’s been a grand and noble experiment, but now the Obama administration should abandon aggressive bipartisanship. The president deserves great credit for reaching out to Republicans in Cabinet appointments, frequent consultation and some substantive compromise on the stimulus bill. President Obama read public opinion correctly: Americans want civil debate between the parties, and that aspect of bipartisanship should be continued.
Yet pleasantries should never be exchanged at the cost of an electoral mandate. Obama secured a higher percentage of the vote than any Democratic presidential nominee since 1860, save for Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson. Splitting the difference on issues of principle waters down his mandate and dilutes the changes his supporters expect him to deliver. We have a two-party system, not a one-party scheme, and the fundamental differences between Democrats and Republicans create clear choices for the electorate. Obama should succeed or fail based on enactment of the Democratic platform. Voters will be the judge of Democrats’ handiwork in 2010 and 2012. Leave “national unity” governments to parliamentary nations, and let the American two-party system work.

It may be that the President’s bipartisan outreach will get better results later on, after his Administration is more securely established. For now, Sabato’s argument makes sense.

After cruising the Rags of Record for insightful reports on the Senate vote on the stimulus, take a couple of minutes to read Dieter Bradbury’s article in the Kennebec Journal Morning Sentinel, “Collins gains political capital in vote: Senator won’t back stimulus if bloated spending measures reinstated.” Bradbury’s article provides an interesting home-state perspective on what is involved in piecing together a barely filibuster-proof majority, while focusing on Collin’s pivotal role in sculpting the compromise. Bradbury also does a good job of showing how Collins boosted her own stock, including:

Richard M. Skinner, a government professor at Bowdoin College, said Collins is now in good shape to win administration and Democratic support for bills that would benefit Maine, having played a pivotal role in the economic stimulus debate…”She’s really in a position to get what she wants from the Obama administration,” he said.

While artfully covering her rear flank:

Even if the stimulus fails and the economy continues to decline, it’s unlikely that Collins would pay a price for supporting the measure, said Sandy Maisel, who teaches government at Colby College.”If this is passed and it is seen as a failure, it will reflect on the Obama administration,” he said.
Maisel said the risk for Collins lies just ahead, as a conference committee hashes out differences between the $827 billion Senate bill and the $820 billion House version. Collins has said she will not support the bill if “bloated” spending provisions are reinserted….”If she decides she’s not going to vote for the conference report, then she is in the position of being the person who causes this to go down,” Maisel said.

Hard to see much of an upside in Collins playing a spoiler role. But the option is there if public opinion heads south on the stimulus, an unlikely prospect, if recent polls are any indication.
The 61-36 procedural vote was close to perfect, indicating that the compromise bill is about as progressive as it could have been and still pass. This is not to say that the left critics are wrong about the stimulus being too small and the tax cuts too large to do much good — a separate question. They may be right. But a razor-close margin is exactly what you want to see to get the most progressive possible bill passed.
Collins’ leadership shows the important role liberal Republicans will play during the Obama administration. Sure, we would rather have a filibuster-proof Senate majority. But it helps a lot to have a few Republicans neutralizing the ideologues in their own party. It reminds me of a similar situation back in 1982-83, when Republican Congressman Jack Kemp was instrumental in passing the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday bill. From a pragmatic, reform agenda point of view, the proper care and feeding of liberal Republicans is a worthy Democratic priority.
Give due credit as well to President Obama and his legislative staff for having the smarts to give Collins the room she needed to maneuver the centrists into position and cobble the majority together. Harry Reid also owes her big time. As Bob Herbert put it in his New York Times column today,

It’s early, but there are signs that Mr. Obama may be the kind of president who is incomprehensible to the cynics among us — one who is responsible and mature, who is concerned not just with the short-term political realities but also the long-term policy implications…Mr. Obama is like a championship chess player, always several moves ahead of friend and foe alike. He’s smart, deft, elegant and subtle. While Lindsey Graham was behaving like a 6-year-old on the Senate floor and Pete Sessions was studying passages in his Taliban handbook, Mr. Obama and his aides were assessing what’s achievable in terms of stimulus legislation and how best to get there.

It will take a little more time to see if the white house is really playing championship chess. For now, however, the poker analogy fits nicely, and Obama and Collins have just played a very shrewd hand.

Pass the crow, please, re my Friday post on the Gregg appointment. Excuse me for thinking a Democratic Governor would surely appoint a Democratic Senator to replace Judd Gregg, if and when he is confirmed as Secretary of Commerce. The deal was apparently never that simple.
I’m not quite buying the noise that the Gregg nomination is all about the quiet joys of bipartisanship. I doubt that President Obama would put a third Republican in his cabinet without a little quid pro quo somewhere down the line. The explanation that makes the most sense at this point is that the Senator replacing Gregg will support Obama on some key legislation, such as the stimulus package (if it’s not a done deal before then) and/or EFCA and health care reform — not way off the range of possibilities for a centrist/liberal New England Republican. Sort of a sometimes 60th vote to prevent or stop filibustering. That way Gregg gets to save face with his GOP buds, and Obama gets at least some of what he wants from Gregg’s replacement.
The whole thing is a little dicey, in that it requires a lot of trust in, not one, but two Republicans, under the best of scenarios. In his post at OpenLeft, David Sirota calls Gregg a “radical free-trader,” and makes a convincing case that Gregg’s track record on trade issues is worrisome. And there may be another twist or two before all of the fallout settles. I don’t much like the precedent of a Democratic governor caving in and appointing a Republican, which doesn’t help with party-building. But no telling what other behind-the-scenes options Obama had. It’s not the queen gambit I was hoping for. For now, however, it seems reasonable to trust in Team Obama, since they have been pretty shrewd political chess players so far.

Republican Senator Judd Gregg is probably going to be getting more love today than anybody in Washington, as buzz builds about his possible selection as President Obama’s nominee for Secretary of Commerce. Should Gregg accept the post, New Hampshire’s Democratic Governor John Lynch will appoint his successor — the 60th Senator Obama needs to stop filibusters (assuming Al Franken is sworn in).
Some promising signals are emanating from the Gregg camp. This week Gregg called President Obama a “tour de force” and he has said “I can’t tell you anything…no comment,” in response to media inquiries about his possible nomination, according to the New York Times. In addition, Gregg is a bit of a gambler, who won about $850K, when he hit five of six numbers on a Powerball lottery ticket, after purchasing four different $5 quik-piks at a D.C. gas station.
The Gregg appointment would work well on several levels. His fellow Republicans would not be able to whine much about his qualifications, since Gregg, a former congressman, and Governor (and son of a Governor), as well as Senator, is one of the more broadly-experienced members of the GOP. He is one of the more moderate Republicans, but he has solid cred with the private sector as an advocate of cuts in taxes and government spending. Commerce is one of the more coveted cabinet posts among Republicans, inasmuch as it offers a wealth of fund-raising connections and a potent rollodex for future campaigns, as well as entre to the upper echelons of the corporate stratosphere, with its dangling golden parachutes and cushy Board memberships.
No doubt GOP leaders and corporate honchos will be offering Gregg all kinds of goodies not to take the job. (See the item in our staff post yesterday about the corporate panic over the possible enactment of EFCA).
Not accepting the post, however, would mean Gregg spending the remainder of his Senate tenure as member of the party of legislative obstruction, not a particularly happy prospect for a three-term Senator, who is up for re-election next year. After 16 years in the Senate, he can’t be too excited about his future opportunities in that body.
The Gregg gambit would also work for Dems, since Obama would likely appoint a moderate, pro-business Democrat to the post, if not Gregg. At Commerce, Gregg would not be a big tilt to the right. Green Dems should be fairly comfortable with Gregg, who was instrumental in passing the New England Wilderness Act, voted for the CLEAN Energy act of 2007, and he has a mid-range rating (43 percent) with the League of Conservation Voters. As Nate Silver has noted, Gregg has voted for the Obama agenda in six of seven votes thus far.
All in all, it’s a good match for both Gregg and the Democrats, giving Obama cred for bipartisan outreach, while strengthening prospects for his legislative agenda.

Nate Silver’s fivethirtyeight.com post “Obama: More Political Capital Than Reagan?” compares President Obama’s approval and disapprovall ratings with those of other recent Presidents shortly after their respective inaugurations. Obama tops all but JFK, as Silver explains:

Obama’s initial approval rating, indeed, is the highest of any president since Kennedy. His initial disapproval rating, meanwhile, is about half that of his two most recent predecessors, although higher than that of Eisenhower, Kennedy, Nixon, Carter, and G.H.W. Bush, all of whom began with disapproval in the single digits.

Silver goes on to favorably compare Obama’s numbers with those of President Reagan, including a 68 percent initial approval rating for Obama, compared to 51 percent for Reagan. He notes also that Obama’s political capital is strengthened by his 65 seat advantage in US House seats “controlled” over Reagan, and a six seat advantage in the Senate, even though Reagan had a slightly larger margin of victory (Reagan’s 9.7 percent, and 7.3 percent for Obama). Silver adds:

Reagan won considerably more electoral votes in 1980 than Obama did in 2008. As measured in percentage terms, his margin of victory over Jimmy Carter was larger than that of Obama over John McCain. On the other hand, Obama won a lot more popular votes than Reagan did. He also won a higher percentage of the popular vote, and his margin of victory was larger than Reagan’s in absolute (rather than percentage) terms.

It’s an interesting comparison, especially for Dems who can remember how Reagan steamrolled Congress and cut the legs off the trade union movement. Silver wonders whether Obama’s “post-partisan rhetoric” is a factor in his high approval numbers, and if the debate over the stimulus will undercut Obama’s leverage in the polls. No doubt many progressives are wondering if the comparison suggests that Obama’s tax cut proposals are conceding more than necessary, and if he could invest substantially more in job-creating infrastructure upgrades.
At the same time, Obama’s advisors, many of them Clinton Administration veterans, remember the political debacle that ocurred when the First Lady led the campaign for a big package of health care reforms. Overreaching can be as damaging as timidity.
But I would contend that Obama also has a potent secret weapon that argues for a more aggressive reform agenda: the “movement” that elected him. More than any President, perhaps ever, Obama has awakened a genuine grassroots movement, with record numbers of citizens involved in his campaign at the street level. But can he convert these campaign workers into lobbyists for a strong reform agenda? It’s never really been tried on the massive scale I’m envisioning here.
Certainly the Obama campaign has mastered the new tools of political organizing to an unprecedented extent, and he can reconnect with his activist base within minutes of launching a lobbying campaign. Think of FDR’s fireside chats, in streaming video on millions of monitors across the nation, 24-7. Think of TR’s bully pulpit on electronic steroids. Think of MLK’s call to his troops to “make politics a crusade” answered en masse by a new generation of citizen lobbyists. Sure, it would take a lot of commitment and energy to make it work. But given all that is at stake, the real shame would be in not trying.

I’m liking the latest fund-raising email I got from the DSCC. (See full text after the jump) Instead of a dreary old politician begging for money, it comes from a top actor, Morgan Freeman, with a thoughtful appeal, based on a sober recognition that,

…We’ve only taken the first step. As President Obama said on election night, “This victory alone is not the change we seek – it is only the chance for us to make that change.” In many ways, our work didn’t end at the ballot box, it began there….That is precisely why we need your support – not just on the eve of an election, not just when the airwaves are crammed with negativity, and not just when the sense of urgency is palpable.
We also need your support now, at the beginning of a long journey together to reclaim and rebuild the American dream. It will be a difficult slog measured in months and years — but the journey will be worth it if, in the end, we are able to say that we have left a better country and a safer world for our children.

Freeman goes on to ask for a “click here” contribution to the DSCC. The wise oracle of many a good film, Freeman has to be the perfect choice to make the pitch for long-haul party-building. You can almost hear his mellifluous baritone working the room.
Freeman’s letter got me thinking that now, while hopes are at an all-time high, really is the time for the Democratic Party to aggressively recruit celebrities for fund-raising promos. And it’s not just about money. It’s also a great time to get celebrities and other public figures on record as supporting the Democrats as the party of hope. Despite all of the GOP whining about Democrats and Hollywood, I’m struck by how little we have used performing artists to raise consciousness and funds directly for party-building, as opposed to supporting candidates. There’s never been a better time, while Obama rides the high tide of popular good will. No doubt many celebrities who may have been a little reluctant to “out” themselves as partisan Democrats are more comfortable with the idea now.
Freeman may be in a minority in his profession, in that he gets it that Obama isn’t going to be able to pass much legislation without a few more Democratic Senators, or at least that a couple more senators could make a huge difference in America’s future. But there must be others. Let’s not miss the opportunity for a full court press in recruiting them. It’s not likely that we will see a better time.
And speaking of a full-court press, think about how limp the Democratic effort to tap the appeal of professional athletes has been. Obama’s cred ought to provide unprecedented leverage for promos from the top NBA super-stars, with professional football all-pros and baseball all-stars not far behind. Who better to get the attention — and support — of millions of young people?
I’m not saying here that celebrities are the key to success in long-haul political organizing. But in this culture particularly, they do command a lot of attention, and Dems would be negligent if they don’t make the most of it.
In The Shawshank Redemption, Freeman’s character, Red, tells Andy (Tim Robbins), “Hope? Let me tell you something, my friend. Hope is a dangerous thing.” Very true. But when it is backed up by organized action, hope can also be a powerful force for positive change.

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