Well, yes, that is what the DNC is saying. Remember this is Obama's DNC now since he became nominee.
This quite frankly is a bunch of bull hockey. Sorry, but let's be honest.
From Fire Dog Lake:
DNC Remains Committed to 50 State Strategy: Just Without These Organizers
Is Dean's Legacy Being Destroyed?
Seriously, that's the pushback that the DNC is floating. What? Ok, let's fish and cut bait. Inside the spin is some truth—the 50 state strategy will continue and it will continue under Obama's control, through MyBarackObama.com and his re-purposed campaign. This isn't unique to Obama, Bill Clinton did essentially the same thing, not with the 50 state strategy (there wasn't one) but in the sense that he made sure power was centralized under him. Rove, likewise, did not go through the RNC, but ran his campaigns out of the White House and kept the network primarily under his, and thus, Bush's, control.
Essentially Barack Obama already had a 50 state strategy, and it was his campaign.
As for the specific pushback, let's run through it quickly.
1) The agreement always ended this year. Yes, well, it could always be extended, too, couldn't it? Or you could just pay the organizers for a couple months while you work it out. Losing experienced organizers because you're too cheap to pay a couple months wages is penny wise, pound foolish.
2) Al Giordano is right. The 50 state strategy worked, and what this is about is Obama putting his own people into it, avoiding duplication of effort, and making sure he has control.
3) What Al doesn't say and wouldn't agree with is that it's also about taking resources away from the State parties and then making them more dependent on Obama.
None of this is necessarily evil or bad. It might even be good. Duplication of effort isn't necessarily good, and Barack did run an effective grassroots organizing project. He trusts those people more than he trusts the DNC or the State parties, and he wants centralized control.
However this is just what a number of us predicted back in May, when Obama squeezed out the independent organizations by telling the big donors not to give to them. Obama wants centralized power, under his control.
The difference. Dean's goal had been to "decentralize" and put more power in the hands of the state and local parties.
Dean : "Letting go of central control"gives activists "real power".Letting go of central control in campaigns is what gives the electorate--particularly activists--real power. I learned this by doing it. When I first used the phrase "You have the power," I didn't at first realize the full impact of what I was saying. I meant only that Americans through working together to change America, could overcome the forces of the right wing and reassume their constitutional role in running the country.
What I didn't understand was that "You have the power" was a lot more than a rhetorical phrase. It didn't apply only to people's power to change a country, it also applied to their ability to direct a campaign.
..."From page 163:
We have to reconnect to the base.
In recent years the Democrats, in our pursuit of big dollars, have neglected the people we're there to serve. We let our connection to our base atrophy and have forgotten, as they say in politics, who brought us to the dance. In service to a falsely named "centrism," we've sidestepped every major request from labor unions, especially on including worker protections in our free-trade agreements.
That's what going on.
Centralization as it used to be. To put it simply...top down power is back.
All will be well. His campaign will become the 50 State Plan in some altered form. It will be under his control, and not bottom up.
And I will save a whole bunch of money monthly.
Thanks Howard Dean for trying to give power to the grassroots. They could have at least said thank you from the podium that night.