Monday 10a.m. UPDATED: see below.
Me too.
Expanding on my comment in jeffroby’s most excellent essay (please check it out.)
Something’s a – brewin’.
From a CPM Facebook early Discussion thread:
Yes We Can. Tes We Did. Yes, We Must Do It Again.
Saturday, January 30, 2010 at 12:56pm
We’re at 367 fans and growing. In less than 5 days. It’s clear, many of us are in the same boat.We’re frustrated that the movement that we were part of last year is in a slumber and the tea baggers have invaded the political landscape. Pundits are already assuming that the 2010 midterm elections will be a massacre of the Change agenda.
It’s time to wake up, people! Stop your complaining about Sarah, Glenn and the tea baggers and get off of your butts. It’s not about attacking them. It’s about reigniting our movement that attracted people of all parties, ages and backgrounds. All the people who know that we must have change in this country. We did it last year. Yes, it was exhausting and yes, we thought that we did our job, yes, we thought we wouldn’t have to do it again until 2012. Well, we were wrong.
Change does not happen overnight. This is not a Hollywood movie where our superhero is crowned and we live happily ever after. That’s a fairytale. The reality is we have to GET BACK TO WORK!
Get back into touch with your fellow volunteers, locate the super volunteers in your district. We cannot allow the change agenda that attracted people of all parties to be thwarted. Not now.
So, wake up! Brew some coffee and get back to work for the Change we believe in & must achieve for our children and grandchildren. We did it last year. We must do it again this year.
Yes, we can. Yes, we did. Yes, we must do it again.
and so then I wondered and went to look for the date and I found this at HuffPo dated Jan 23, 2010:
David Plouffe, the man who managed President Barack Obama’s campaign, will be taking on an expanded role as an outside adviser to the White House, according to sources familiar with the plan, a move that comes just days after a stunning defeat for Democrats in a Massachusetts Senate special election.
and Plouffe’s own WaPo OpEd piece is dated Jan 24.
Theres also this at WaPo The Fix, Jan 23:
Allies of the White House cast the Plouffe move as less about the Massachusetts election and more about the fact that the election year is heating up and Plouffe has more free time following the publication of his campaign memoir late last year. Still, the timing is sure to stoke speculation that the White House is seeking to shore up its political operation.
After managing Obama’s successful primary and general election races, Plouffe chose not to go into the White House — as so many of his campaign colleagues did — but rather return to the private sector and focus on writing his memoir of the campaign called “The Audacity to Win”. The book was released on November 3, 2009.
Plouffe did stay involved with Organizing for America, the operation formed in the wake of Obama’s victory to maintain the massive grassroots email and donor base built during the campaign. While OFA officials tout it as a success story there is increasing skepticism within the party about whether it has truly fulfilled its mission of bringing a grassroots army to bear on the President’s top priorities.
Plouffe has also remained in regular touch with the President and his political team. The President talks fairly regularly with David,” said White House press secretary Robert Gibbs. “I know that it is somebody whose advice and counsel he both seeks regularly and believes David is an exceptionally smart advisor who understands the type of anger and frustration that he’s seen. “
Well there ya go.
TIMELINE:
Jan 24 = the return of Plouffe.
Jan 25: CPM hits the ground running.
Here’s a February 26th piece at Washington Post … Washington Post??? okay:
Coffee Party activists say their civic brew’s a tastier choice than Tea Party’s
Furious at the tempest over the Tea Party — the scattershot citizen uprising against big government and wild spending — Annabel Park did what any American does when she feels her voice has been drowned out: She squeezed her anger into a Facebook status update.
let’s start a coffee party . . . smoothie party. red bull party. anything but tea. geez. ooh how about cappuccino party? that would really piss ’em off bec it sounds elitist . . . let’s get together and drink cappuccino and have real political dialogue with substance and compassion.
Friends replied, and more friends replied. So last month, in her Silver Spring apartment, Park started a fan page called “Join the Coffee Party Movement.” Within weeks, her inbox and page wall were swamped by thousands of comments from strangers in diverse locales, such as the oil fields of west Texas and the suburbs of Chicago.
I’ll add other relevant info here as time permits. There’s also ongoing conversations today about this at GOS, FDL and Im sure elsewhere. It seems to be a very hot topic.
Okay. Call me cynical but I ain’t buyin it. My gut instincts say it’s yet another hoodwink. I’ve got Hope & Change (TM) PTSD I guess. That said, I do think there’s some potential there, it’s worth exploring further, but progressives will have to go in with eyes wiiiiiide open and very conscious of what we’re doing, how to make good use of it rather than getting used by it.
Meanwhile, the real party should be over at jeff’s place. heh.
Monday morning UPDATE: Okay. I’ll go if you go.
Switching over to “I talk in movie quotes” mode.
.
And the Captain’s response (kinda reminds you of Buhdydharma, no? lol):
Jack Sparrow: Cuttlefish. Eh? Let us not, dear friends, forget our dear friends the cuttlefish… flipping glorious little sausages. Pen them up together, and they will devour each other without a second thought… Human nature, in’it? Ooor… fish nature…
So yes… we could hold up here, well-provisioned and well-armed, and half of us would be dead within the month! Which seems grim to me any way you slice it!
Or… ahh… as my learned colleague so naively suggests, we can release Calypso, and we can pray that she will be merciful… I rather doubt it. Can we, in fact, pretend that she is anything other than a woman scorned, like which fury Hell hath no? We cannot.
Res ipsa loquitur, tabula in naufragio, we are left with but one option. I agree with, and I cannot believe the words are coming out of me mouth… Captain Swann. We must fight.
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Coffee Party is Grassroots? How about Astroturf!
Maybe they could call it the Coopt Party?
Google “annabel park Asian Americans for Obama“
… I think it’s becoming clear that there is a strong element of astroturfing in this group. Certainly no disclosure by the founder.
I don’t want to participate in demonizing Parks … I disagree with the goals of OFA but I also think there’s a lot of folks who are in it in hopes of making the world better.
jeffroby gave a challenge about this which I think has merit, especially this part:
(Emphasis mine)
So if this turns out to be true, then what should we do? As bloggers we do have a great deal of power here to shape the conversation.
at GOS diary now on “wreck list”. Interesting crosscut of the users who recommended. Only one or two commenters who recognized or checked out Parks.
Too bad about the grassroots/scattershot citizen uprising centrist bullshit. Kind of takes the wind out of it for me.
There is money behind this.
Everything is too professional looking.
A lot of people probably think it’s a real live grassroots progressive movement. We could slide in and try to scrootch them leftwards.
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over at FDL/The Seminal worth a look.
The one that starts, “Yes We Can”, etc., it mentions “change” in four places,….”change” has no description, not “change” in stopping torture, not “change” in having a public option, just a vague “change” that for me brings back bad memories of Obama’s duplicitous campaign.
Bottom line is I am wary of this “movement”…… hopefully I am wrong, just keep eyes wide open.
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The Rachel Maddow Show blog Only 9 comments. Looks like 7 of the 9 are CPM cheerleaders. The #7 comment is worth a look.
The now compromised military might of the people exploitation arm of the US Federal Government is the enemy of humanity on a global basis. As we tazer grandma, frisk my wife because corporate says then can and escapees of high government callout swine vaccines as a depopulation program then thing are well beyond fucked up.
For the coffee set to say the US government is NOT The premier enemy of all humanity is galactically beyond delusional astroturfing.
It’s fascinating to watch the trepidation on the verge of a fight we’ve needed to have for decades. Ironically, the hard-core Democrats may force upon us a level of organization that we’ve been unhable to achieve on our own.
stated principle far, far too vague.
i suppose it is interesting that people are mad enough to do this and join this.
however, without some clear principles, they are nothing more than a collection of miscellaneous disaffected people.
exactly what has them disaffected is the point. just loathing tea baggers is not nearly enough.
Here are a couple of links from the “coffee party” site.
As I read these it felt like someone with a PR background was writing them, especially the very vague “health care one. The sentences are almost too cleverly crafted….
Whaddya think?
http://coffeepartyusa.com/cont…
http://coffeepartyusa.com/cont…
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Weird psychology in all this…
A: “Are YOU gonna go?”
B: “Not sure, maybe. You?”
A: “Well, I might…”
B: “Well, I’ll go if you go.”
heh.
… me personally, I’m a wuss, as I say here fairly often. IRW, Im kind of shy at first and not very outspoken until I get comfortable… then I’ll blab your ears off. I confess, Im quite content with my “armchair activism”. But… where does that get us? Imagonna hafta go outside my Comfort Zone sooner or later.
I’m still thinking this over, but I am willing to give my local group here a look-see. Ive joined that FB group and they are talking about trying to set up the first meeting sometime in the next week or so. I will also call a couple of people I know and see if I can lassoo some brave soul to go with me. Id love to go with TheMomCat! lol
I think I’ll UPDATE this essay…. got my favorite POTC video cue’d up. Its not even Captain Jack either.
This CPM has potential. We whine a lot about not getting “a seat at the table”. Well, here’s a chance for us to pull up a chair.
a dead giveaway:
Recycled election 2008 slogans. Ugh.
… on whether we can get away with denouncing Obama or Plouffe. That’s not really the issue.
When I was a kid I had a friend who had a dog. If I made a gesture like I was going to attack him, the dog would snap and snarl at me. AND if he made a gesture like he was going to attack me, the dog would do the same toward him.
My point being that people are similar. In general they are put off by aggressors. A better approach is to put forward what we want, what we need, and let the Dems attack us for our utopian desires.
The danger in a situation like this is that, if there is any popular base, it can easily be driven away by infighting. Thus the Dems can provoke it in order to kill an organization, since they don’t care, while that popular base is the main reason for our being there at all.
not to have the backing of money
Take a look at the other videos. I have no problem with the movement per se, but be honest about your funding and who is backing this.