The Fucking OFA, They Pissed on the Rug, Man
The OFA story, and why Democrats are still cleaning up the mess
Look, man, I want to say something nice about Barack Obama. The guy gave a hell of a speech. You’d be sitting there with a White Russian, maybe a little something going in the ashtray, and he’d start talking and you’d think — yeah, man. Yeah. This is the guy. This is finally the guy.
And he was the guy. For about five minutes.
Here’s the thing about rugs. You ever had a rug that really tied the room together? You know what I’m talking about. Everything just fit. The whole vibe was correct. That’s what Obama built in 2008. A grassroots organizing operation that actually worked — millions of small donors, volunteers who gave a damn, data that made Karl Rove look like he was working with a Rand McNally and a prayer. It was beautiful, man. That rug tied the whole room together.
And then some guys came in and pissed on it.
Those guys were Obama’s own people.
The Name Game
Here’s how the hustle worked. After 2008, the campaign machine gets parked inside the DNC and rebranded “Organizing for America.” Sounds fine. Then after 2012 it gets spun off into a 501(c)(4) nonprofit called “Organizing for Action.” Notice anything? They kept the initials. Very smooth, man. Very smooth.
What they actually built was a presidential legacy protection racket wearing a grassroots costume. The whole thing operated top-down — Obama’s priorities, Obama’s timetable, Obama’s donor relationships. State party chairs and local operatives who tried to get some of that organizing mojo for down-ballot races got a very polite version of “sorry man, we’re busy.”
One red-state Democratic operative — and this is a Democrat, man, not some Fox News guy — put it like this: “OFA built an alternative infrastructure that was very top-down. OFA’s actions were wasteful, duplicative, and it made no sense. Local officials felt tossed aside.”
Tossed aside, man. That’s the phrase. Like a Kleenex™. Or a rug.
When OFA tried to relaunch in 2017, the Democrats who’d been watching this for eight years had a reaction. Someone leaked emails from a party listserv. The subject line: Grade A bullshit.
Walter Has Feelings About This
Walter, if he were here — and Walter is always somewhere, probably loading a weapon — Walter would slam his hand on the bar right now and say something about Vietnam. He’d be right, but for the wrong reasons. The point isn’t that Obama was the enemy. The point is that even people who are genuinely good at winning elections can be absolutely catastrophic at building the infrastructure that means winning elections matters.
Donnie would ask what OFA stands for. Three times. And Walter would tell him he’s out of his element.
He’s not wrong, Donnie. None of us were in our element.
The Numbers, Man
You want the numbers? Because I got the numbers. I’ve had a couple White Russians and I’ve been thinking about this.
During the Obama years, Democrats lost 968 state legislative seats. Nearly a thousand, man. The most of any president since World War II. Not just seats — chambers. Whole damn chambers. They went into 2009 controlling 27 state legislative assemblies. They came out of 2017 controlling 14. Republicans went from 14 to 32.
Fourteen to thirty-two, man. That’s not a losing streak. That’s a methodical demolition.
And here’s why it matters beyond just being a depressing number to roll around in your head: those state legislatures drew the maps. The gerrymandering that everyone’s currently losing their minds about — correctly, it’s a genuine nightmare — got drawn on maps that Republicans controlled because Democrats spent the Obama years tending the presidential brand instead of the party.
The consultants who ran OFA didn’t lose their jobs over this. That would require some kind of accountability structure, man. They moved on. They staffed campaigns. They got cable news contracts. They wrote newsletters. They’re fine.
Maude Gets It
Maude would have something to say here. Maude always has something to say, and she’s usually right even when it’s uncomfortable to admit. She’d point out — very directly, in that way she has — that the donor relationships OFA was cultivating weren’t politically neutral. You want $500,000 from a finance guy? Great. But that finance guy has opinions about whether you should prosecute bankers, and about labor law, and about what “economic populism” means in practice. The access OFA was selling wasn’t just access to the president. It was access to a party increasingly shaped around not making those donors uncomfortable.
That rug wasn’t just pissed on. It was rolled up and sold.
The working-class voters Democrats have been hemorrhaging for two cycles didn’t make an irrational inference. They watched who the party actually listened to. Revealed preferences, man. It’s all right there if you’re willing to look.
This Aggression Will Not Stand
I want to abide about this. I genuinely do. Abiding is kind of my whole deal. But it’s hard to abide when the same people who built this beautiful thing and then hollowed it out are still the ones explaining, on their Substacks, why Democrats keep losing.
There’s a certain irony in that last sentence that I’m fully aware of, man.
The consultants are doing fine. The party is not doing fine. Those two facts are related. This aggression — the sustained, multi-decade looting of Democratic infrastructure in favor of presidential personality cults and donor relationship management — this aggression will not stand.
But it’s still standing, man. That’s the problem.
The Dude abides. The consultants also abide, in their own way, which is the whole damn issue.
Next time: How those same consultants moved from Twitter to Substack and kept huffing the same fumes in a nicer room.
The Dude drinks White Russians in Reseda and thinks about this stuff.
At last, someone sees the Light. I've been yelling about St. Barack and the 1,000 legislative seats lost and the Great Recession sellout protecting the bankers that led directly to Trump for years. Few want to hear it. Thank you!