The New Republic

now wait just a second. 214,000 signatures about a budget is a significant achievement.  The fact that they didn't persuade congressmen and women to change their position shouldn't be evidence of ineptitude on the part of the organizers but rather of the irrelevancy of the GOP.

- Maxblum13

April 6, 2009 at 4:00pm

There's also the fact that giving money to a campaign is more effective than just calling Congress people.  My congressman is a House Democrat, he was going to vote for the budget anyway.  My Senators are Sherrod Brown and George Voinovich.  I mean why waste my time calling either.  Brown is a for sure yes, and Voinovich is not only a for sure no, but he's also probably retiring, so he doesn't even care what I think.

- acria multa

April 6, 2009 at 4:02pm

How do you know what those 214,000 signatures did or did not accoplish? How did you confirm it?

But I do have to agree I don't exactly see hundreds of thousands of Obamaniacs marching on the Capital Building demanding that economic justice be given top priority in the recovery plans.

And I'll give a thousand to one odds that no one in the White House thought to go that route.

American citizens we are told over and over again are mad as hell and they are not going to take it anymore.

Right.

george

- iambiguous

April 6, 2009 at 4:13pm

I haven't been wowed by OFA so far.  As a recipient of the emails, I can tell you that I find them lame and that they motivate me to do nothing.  Part of the problem is the same problem I'm having with the Obama administration so far.  I don't think he's doing a good enough job of talking to the public and selling his plans.  Part of that problem, I think, is that his big-ticket items so far -- the stimulus, the banks plan, and the budget -- are scattershot and lack the sort of focus that lends itself to effective salesmanship.  So, the door is opened for people to criticize the stimulus as unfocused waste, the banks plan as a complex taxpayer-cheating giveaway that won't even work, and the budget as too ambitious for the times.  We need the WH to explain forcefully and clearly to the public why and how we can stand the debt we're taking on and why we should take on even more.  We need the WH to sell confidence in the future.  Economic downturns, as Richard Posner wrote in the latest issue, are about fear of the unknown.  The unknowns are almost always there, in good times too, but we forge ahead anyway, and put aside our fears, because we're sold on the future.  When we lose that confidence, we hoard money and decline to make bets on a better tomorrow.  A stimulus lacking in enough flagship items that people can wrap their arms around that most seem to think is either too big or too small, and a banking plan that is complex, uncertain, and, according to many, far too optimistic are not insipring enough confidence, so it's not surprising that the cw about the budget becomes, "Too much, too soon."  If we were persuaded that we had nothing to fear but fear itself, we might not say that, and understand that now is precisely the time to, say, reduce the cost of health care while expanding coverage.  But we're not -- not yet -- and it's going to take, I think, an adjustment in pitch strategy from the WH.

- jhildner

April 6, 2009 at 7:07pm

I think the real problem may be that knocking on doors to get people to vote for Obama seems much more likely to work than knocking on doors to gather signatures which maybe congress will care about. I think it is very hard to get people to do that. That said people should respond to their emails and make sure he has as many signatures as possible..

- CraigMcGil

April 7, 2009 at 7:50am