OFA

Obama campaign manager David Plouffe just posted a video for Organizing for America (OFA). After the colossal youth fail in the Massachusetts Special Election, two of the highest priorities of OFA members was bringing first time 2008 voters back to the polls in 2010 and registering new voters.

I just wrote about the contrast in the Mass elections where partisan organizers neglected young voters vs. the non-partisan youth outreach organizations that got the youth vote to the polls to pass a tax hike to wealthy people in Oregon. Does this mean OFA is committed to young voters in the 2010 election the way they were in 2008, or is this going to be a lip-service kinda thing?

Nearly three years ago, Democrats Work was launched with a simple goal: build a new service-based approach to politics. That meant making community service a big part of political activism -- not something divorced from political goals, but rather integral to the success in achieving them. This weekend, the "service politics" movement grows up and goes big.

On Saturday, the Democratic Party -- through the new Organizing for America project -- will hold the grassroots-powered National Day of Health Care Service. (You can check it out here: http://my.barackobama.com/HCservice.) The message is simple: while we fight for health care reform in Washington, D.C., we can also bring about change in our communities right now through service.

This is a big step for the DNC/OFA and an experiment worth trying. Health care reform may not be as easy to link to service as, say, the environment or education may be, but those who participate will get hands-on experiences and build relationships that won't come from television ads, town hall meetings, phone banks, or other "traditional" political activities.

We have come a long way from the days of begging local party organizations to try community service and schedule a few projects. The Georgia Democratic Party now has its own program called Georgia Democrats Work. Democrats from Northwest Arkansas to Auburn, Washington have embraced the approach. And rightfully so.

In October 2007, Democrats Work launched a pilot project in Arapahoe County, Colorado -- a hotly contested battleground -- to measure the effect of its Democrat-branded community service programs in targeted precincts and among targeted groups of voters. Fifty precincts were randomly divided into treatment and control groups. Democrats Work contacted voters eight times in the treatment precincts -- with a combination of mail and phone calls -- with information about the upcoming service opportunity and touting the success of past events over the course of a year. Afterwards, the organization measured the effect of the service-based approach on voters’ attitudes towards Democrats with polling.

The results with respect to young and unaffiliated young voters were extremely promising. Voters under the age of 35 in the treatment group (i.e., those who received information about the service events) reported being "warmer" towards the Democratic Party, felt the Democratic Party shares their values more than the Republican Party, and intended to vote for Democrats by wide margins. With respect to young, unaffiliated voters (not just all young voters), the results were even more encouraging. Democrats Work found that increased positive feelings towards Democrats caused a 30-point swing in vote share among young, unaffiliated votes.

This weekend, the service-based approach goes to scale in a way that we could have only imagined three years ago. Service politics -- the connection of direct service work and political action -- has finally grown up and the Democratic Party is a step closer to being the Party of Service.

Bumped. --Mike

This past Friday, I had the opportunity to listen in on a conference call, along with college democrat leaders from across the state, as the leadership of the College Democrats of America and Organizing for America made a joint conference call.

The Political Director of OFA started with a recap of the achievements of the organization during the election season, along with the purpose of their organization. Accordingly, the purpose of OFA is to help promote President Obama's agenda, as well as expand their organization. During the election season, the Obama campaign set up Students For Barack Obama chapters (SFBO) which worked with college democrat chapters to help get Barack Obama elected. Once the election season ended, David Plouffe and Organizing for America worked to transform those SFBO chapters to Organizing for America chapters (OFA).

In one of the most pressing issues that OFA college groups will be focusing on, is the new college tuition proposal that President Obama announced last week, which aims to drastically increase the amount of money that students will get to pay for college.

In the coming days and weeks ahead, both OFA and the College Democrats across the country will be putting pressure on our legislators to accept the Obama adminsitration's new proposal.