Organizing for America Gets Organizing

ABC News’ Rick Klein reports: President Obama and his allies are trying to put the campaign army back into action. The president today signed a fund-raising appeal to the estimated 13 million-member e-mail list, asking his supporters to help recreate what they built during the campaign.  It's the first time President Obama has personally asked his Organizing for America supporters for contributions to support a push around an issue. “The pundits told us it was impossible — that the donations working people could afford and the hours volunteers could give would never loosen the vise grip of big money and powerful special interests. We proved them wrong. But as important as that was, that's not why we did it,” Obama writes in an e-mail to members of Organizing for America, the Democratic National Committee arm that’s now in charge of the campaign e-mail list.  The e-mail message continues: “The campaign to pass real health care reform in 2009 is the biggest test of our movement since the election. Once again, victory is far from certain. Our opposition will be fierce, and they have been down this road before. To prevail, we must once more build a coast-to-coast operation ready to knock on doors, deploy volunteers, get out the facts, and show the world how real change happens in America.”  Also today, Organizing for America began distributing some of the 200,000-plus “personal stories” collected from ordinary Americans recounting their problems with the health care system. You can watch the first of the videos HERE.  As we’ve covered before, it’s not yet clear what influence the Obama campaign infrastructure will have on policy debates in Congress, and observers can’t really judge the effectiveness. (That’s in part because officials say they are no longer putting out information about how many supporters sign petitions or attend events.) But the DNC is about to find out whether campaign magic — and fund-raising prowess — can be re-created around a political issue.