Has Anyone Else Noticed Something Sketchy About How Quickly This Crisis Became a ‘Movement’?

Look around… Remember when team Obama told us they should ‘never let a crisis go to waste’? Is that what’s happening now?

There is one way in which Obama — then and now — has been routinely underestimated. His ability to mobilize a crowd around an idea.

https://www.facebook.com/176750656223447/videos/215395275692318/

And there’s a report that tells us just how narrowly we missed a bullet of Obama weaponizing not just the government, but the public itself. Silicon valley leaders backing Obama’s campaign discussed just such an idea:

…But Edley found himself newly motivated by a single big political idea, born in part from his past experience trying to win policy fights. What if Barack Obama could become not only the first black man elected president, but the first president in history to organize an enduring grassroots movement that could last beyond his years in office?

By that point in the race, there was every reason to think that Obama could build a lasting grassroots operation. His political machine had already amassed more than 800,000 registered users on My.BarackObama, its innovative social networking platform. “MyBO,” as it was known, gave supporters the ability—unthinkable in a traditional, top-down political campaign—to organize their own local groups, campaign events, and fund-raising efforts. Its potential for large-scale organizing after the election was vast—and completely without precedent in American politics. By Election Day, Obama’s campaign would have 13 million email addresses, three million donors, and two million active members of MyBO, including 70,000 people with their own fund-raising pages. This wasn’t just some passive list of campaign supporters, Edley realized—it was an army of foot soldiers, seasoned at rallying support for Obama’s vision of change.

“As the primary season wound down, it struck me that the campaign’s broad-based engagement via the internet could evolve into a powerful tool to shape progressive politics at the national, state, and local levels,” Edley recalls. “One goal would be to support an Obama presidency. But the agenda would be far broader.”

…As we now know, that grand vision for a postcampaign movement never came to fruition. Instead of mobilizing his unprecedented grassroots machine to pressure obstructionist lawmakers, support state and local candidates who shared his vision, and counter the Tea Party, Obama mothballed his campaign operation, bottling it up inside the Democratic National Committee. It was the seminal mistake of his presidency—one that set the tone for the next eight years of dashed hopes, and helped pave the way for Donald Trump to harness the pent-up demand for change Obama had unleashed.

“We lost this election [2016] eight years ago,” concludes Michael Slaby, the campaign’s chief technology officer. “Our party became a national movement focused on general elections, and we lost touch with nonurban, noncoastal communities. There is a straight line between our failure to address the culture and systemic failures of Washington and this election result.”

Source: NewRepublic

Obama understood the value and power of an organized grassroots movement. He watched the Tea Party, for example, erode his power base, election after election. (So it’s not surprising he weaponized the IRS against such a grassroots movement.)

The Left has wanted its own such movement. And it has tried to launch them one after another.

The Occupy Wall Street movement (launched September 17, 2011) was targeting ‘the evil one percent’, when they weren’t defecating on police cars or robbing each other. That was in response to the fallout after the Stock Market cratered, ‘too big to fail’ and all that.

Then came BLM in 2013. That was in response to the Trayvon (‘if Obama had a son’) Martin shooting.

That’s where the hashtag first popped up.

Riots were a regular feature. They were everywhere in the news. Until they weren’t.

Then It was a 1-2 punch of Antifa burning things, throwing urine, and beating people up and incendiary Women’s marches with disturbing anatomical costumes telling us to Resist. Somehow.

Those coincided with the Billy Bush tape, and the claims that Trump was backed by Nazis, even ‘in the White House’. (Which is, of course, stupid.)

None of those got the traction they were hoping for.

But now, suddenly all the Democrat bluster for those ‘poor immigrants’ has evaporated.

Where has it gone? They’ve thrown all their emotional support behind a children’s movement to oppose gun ownership. “March For Our Lives”. Amazing how quickly grieving students were able to organize a ‘grassroots’ movement around an event that happened less than a week before.

Just in time for an election year, in which the Democrats have been, well, rudderless would be the polite way to say it.

Before the bodies were even buried, there was a date for the march.

“Never Let A Crisis Go To Waste’.

Cynics might say politicians ‘co-opted’ their outrage, and directed it against their favorite right-leaning political scapegoats — like the NRA, or actual Republican politicians.

That’s sure what it looks like from here.

Wes Walker is the Author of A Blueprint For Government That Doesn’t Suck

We can all agree that Government is a long way from perfect… but where would you even begin if you were tying to fix it?

First, you’d need to wrap your head around what government might look like if it weren’t so dysfunctional. Only then would you have a sense of what needs fixing.

In A Blueprint for Government that Doesn’t Suck, Wes Walker takes you through seven deceptively simple questions in the ultimate experiment of thought.

What are the competing ideologies and why are they so diametrically opposed to one another? What do YOU believe? Can you defend your views? If you read this basic primer on government with courage and with honesty, even a teen will undoubtedly come out the other side as a better, more thoughtful and well-informed citizen.