The Prophet (Page 3)

After a historic election night, on November 5, the fifty-state strategy's nearly 200 local organizers woke up to the news that their contracts were expiring on November 30. The e-mail from headquarters called it a "bittersweet moment." Until further notice, the program had taken a leave of absence. Once again, the party's grassroots activists were on their own, awaiting marching orders.

Dean and his allies are hopeful that the strategy is simply on brief sabbatical, while the Obama administration conducts a postelection review and decides whom to install as new leader (surprisingly few names have been floated for the job). "I think they'll do it their way, but I think they'll continue it because it worked for them," Dean says. "This is the candidate who expanded the playing field in a way we haven't seen for a long, long time." In 2007, at the beginning of the Democratic primary, the state chairs persuaded all the potential nominees to commit to funding the fifty-state strategy should they become president. Now they're looking for Obama to keep his pledge. "We've made it very clear that we think the program was a great success, and we'd like to see it continue," says Mark Brewer, head of the Michigan Democratic Party and head of the state chairs.

Discussions are ongoing among Obama's top strategists about how to institutionalize their network of supporters and how to use the DNC. "I absolutely think the DNC should have a fifty-state strategy," says Obama deputy campaign manager Steve Hildebrand. "I think there needs to be an evaluation of exactly what that means. It's an expensive endeavor. And the way it was done this time doesn't mean that's the way it has to be done every time." Dean clearly wants the party to become the new center of Obama's movement. "I would like the DNC to not only be what it is today but to be the grassroots arm for support of Obama's policies," he says.

Obama's advisers are debating whether to create a separate organization to house the valuable assets from the campaign--particularly the coveted 13 million-name e-mail list, which is likely to grow--or to fold the Obama network into a quasi-independent entity within the DNC (think of a vast, Obama-centric MoveOn.org, tentatively known as Obama for America 2.0). "Going forward, they are committed to having a robust operation at the party," says a former DNC official close to the Obama campaign. "Most of Obama's grassroots infrastructure is going to go to the DNC. That's the prevailing gossip of the past few weeks, and it's been pretty consistent." Others aren't so sure; a few DNC members in San Diego privately worried that Obama would make the DNC and state parties mere figureheads, subsumed by the Obama wing of the party.

Party veterans like Kamarck are urging the sometimes insular Obama team not to take the broader party for granted. "People always want to keep their own organizations, but the problem is then they go away with the candidate," Kamarck says. "If you want to build a lasting legacy, you have to do it through the party. In the years of Republican dominance, which we now hope is over, one of the things that was striking was how institutionalized the RNC was. They had stable teams, personnel; it wasn't a revolving cast of characters. It was really the place they built a base of strength from."

The DNC could become the place where, as Simon Rosenberg of the New Democratic Network puts it, "Obama can reinvent the party apparatus around the model he just used to win the presidency." With redistricting on the horizon in 2010, as state legislatures determine the makeup of Congress for years to come, "the Obama team has a massive incentive in this coming election cycle to run a national fifty-state, bottom-up, grassroots campaign," Rosenberg says.

Dean, for his part, wants to move from electoral politics back to his original passion, public policy. "Whether it's inside the administration or out, that's up to the Obama folks," he admits. "With a little of God's grace I have ten or fifteen more years of working activism in me, and I'll use it to continue a progressive agenda."

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