Part Two of a six-part series, cross-posted on e.politics

Structure isn't sexy -- but to talk about the critical online tools of 2008 without discussing the framework that governed their use would be missing the most important part of the story. ANYONE could employ (most of) the technology the Obamans used, but very few online communicators have ever done so either as effectively or on such a scale. One important lesson from Obama: the tools don't matter as much as how you use them.

The political world is abuzz, wondering whether the first big ask from Organizing for America to its multi-million email list is going to produce a shift in the battle over President Obama's budget proposal. It will take awhile to tell, of course, and the real measure will be in how Members of Congress respond to phone calls from their constituents, and indeed whether OFA can generate a big wave of grassroots pressure.

Organizing for America brings out the big gun: the President, who is featured in this morning's email blast to his campaign list and via YouTube video. "Passing this budget won't be easy," he says, as the video closes with a big ask. "That's where you come in. That's why I'm asking you to head outside this Saturday to knock on some doors. Talk to some neighbors and let people know how important this budget is to our future. And that's why I'm asking you to stay involved in the days ahead. By writing letters and making phone calls and summoning the spirit that first gave us this chance for change. Now is our moment to seize that chance."

Organizing for America rolled out its "Pledge Project Canvass" this past weekend, and reports about 1200 groups went door-knocking across the country seeking signatures in support of President Obama's budget priorities. Considering that OFA boasted somewhere between three and four thousand house parties back in December, when the Obama campaign was gathering information from grass-roots activists about what they wanted to do next, this is a significant drop-off. The Washington Post reported that

"the organization remains skeletal, and the Pledge Project does not nearly cover the 435 congressional districts. The organization aims to develop a structure -- including at least one paid staffer in each state -- in time for larger fights over health-care, climate change and education legislation. "'This is all being driven by volunteers. It's an extremely exhilarating process, but also nerve-racking,' an Obama veteran said. 'We have a very, very scaled-down staff as of right now.'

While a few of us pointed out last November/December that the Obama campaign was missing a huge opportunity to keep its momentum going, it's also clear that community organizing has an ebb and flow, and clearly now OFA is in a (re)building period. It is also operating in uncharted territory with what, at best, is a really tough challenge (organizing support for a broad legislative agenda) and, at worst, is "an entirely unengaging project, where all the decisions are made for you in advance," in the words of Dean campaign veteran Zephyr Teachout.

Organizing for America has begun hiring some state-level staff and is quietly beginning a series of "listening tours" aimed at engaging local volunteers, discussing the group's national program, and drafting state organizing plans. As some of the online invitations going out say, "The purpose of this tour is to reconnect, reengage, and reenergize volunteers to continue the mobilization of change started with President Obama’s campaign. We want to solicit feedback and comments from volunteers on the ground for moving OFA - [state] forward from both a statewide and local perspective. These events are a crucial part for laying the ground work needed to recreate a strong volunteer network designed to support President Obama and his broad agenda of change."

Jeremy Bird, the deputy director of Organizing for America, was back in South Carolina for the Democratic party state convention. In this video, shot by a local activist, he talks about the intensive community organizing model that was "in many ways started here in South Carolina" during the campaign, and promises that OFA is going to staff up across the state and cover "every county, every precinct, every block, every neighborhood." That's an audacious goal, reflective more of the Obama campaign at its height than anything the Democratic party has had in the state (or in just about any state) in the past.

Organizing for America, the citizen-organizing wing of the Democratic National Committee that was created to capture the momentum -- and mailing lists -- of the successful Obama campaign for the White House, held what it called its "Health Care Kickoff" this weekend with thousands of house parties across the country.

This weekend's OFA events were no grassroots experiments in collaborative legislation writing. As Matt Bai detailed in a piece in the New York Times Magazine this weekend, the Obama White House is desperate to avoid the mistake of the Clinton Administration: delivering onto Capitol Hill a fully-drafted health care plan, only to be stymied by a willful Congress not eager to take precise marching orders from the president.

And so, the eight-minute video sent to house party organizers to show at their events dedicates even time to highlighting the president's passionate public messages the fierce urgency of health care reform and specific guidance from OFA's political director on how supporters can buoy the president's plan. Health reform advocates, he stressed, should work on refining their personal health care narratives, a persuasion technique widely used by the Obama field campaign. And they should be committing to memory the president's three general principles on health care reform, which we might call the four Cs: cost, choice, and complete coverage.

Reuters' Carey Gillam has scenes from an OFA Health Care Kickoff meeting in Kansas City -- which is likely a good rough guide to how other house party events went, given that the two-hour events were largely scripted by OFA.

As per usual with OFA promotional films, there is a strategy maps hanging in the background of this weekend's health care video. A close look might reveal just how Obama plans to carve up the country when it comes to selling health care reform. The U.S. is divided up into six sections: the west coast and mountain states, the central south, the midwest, the Great Lakes states and a bit of the mid-Atlantic, the northwest, and the southeast U.S. Over each section hovers the name of an OFA organizer. Have a peek at the five-minute mark. (Photo of OFA health care kickoff meeting in Shippensburg, PA, courtesy of OFA)

For a lazy summer weekend, the 404 561 local organizing events being advertised on Organizing for America's health-care action page look like a healthy (ahem) turnout for what some have called "President Obama's field operation."

Today, President Obama is doing something no sitting U.S. President has done before. He is using his massive network of grass-roots supporters, which has been undergoing a reboot since Election Day, to go between the legs of Members of Congress and generate pressure from below on them to pass health care reform. Today is a big test of Organizing for America (OFA), Obama's political arm at the Democratic National Committee. OFA's leaders are calling on its supporters to generate a massive wave of phone calls to Congressional offices and district offices--100,000 or more in one day. They've got a barometer up showing more than 1,100 2,468 28,000 calls so far. (It jumped 1,300 in the 15 minutes since I started writing this post. And about 25,000 more in the last hour.) Will they succeed? And will the calls sway any wavering Members?