One further note on cold hard cash money from last night's session in Manhattan that had to do with the future of the left's grassroots in the Obama era.

A question from the crowd asked just how grassroots groups can get funding these days. Demos' Ben Barber made the point that social movements depend on social capital more than capital capital. Still, money's nice. The Nation's Katrina vanden Heuvel namechecked ActBlue as a model that has worked on the electoral side of Democratic politics (to the tune of $122 million since 2004 and counting). KVH suggested that a similar model might work for grassroots/non-profit groups. You might also see a distributed, small-dollar model work for progressive media outlets -- in a few clicks, for example, you might drop five bucks for the Nation, Talking Points Memo, what have you. (It would, in theory, also work on the right side of the spectrum, though there's no ActBlue equivalent in conservative circles.)

It's worth keeping in mind that, as ActBlue reps will tell you, the point of ActBlue isn't to be the PayPal of progressive politics. It's to, to borrow a phrase from them, normalize the act of small-dollar online giving. It becomes something you do online -- you tweet, check Facebook, email some folks, and make a small donation to the politicians/groups/publications you support.

Reps from ActBlue, though, will also tell you that they're going to be consumed by the election through November, so don't necessarily expect something like that to come out of their shop anytime soon.

Credit: The White House

The theme of last night's event at the New York Society for Ethical Culture's elegant building just west of Manhattan's Central Park was, officially, the somewhat objective question, "Obama: Change We Can Still Believe In?" But the vibe of the evening turned out to be more about relationships than distanced assessments. Whether by providence or a bit of good stage setting, the song that was playing when panelists Katrina vanden Heuvel and Ari Melber of the Nation, the New York Times Gretchen Morgenson, Politico's Ben Smith, and Demos' Ben Barber took to the stage actually seemed more on point. "You've got a friend..." sang James Taylor. On this night, to consider the future of the Obama years, the question was, well, does he?

He does, was the consensus of the evening. And Barack Obama has the poll numbers to prove it. But the sentiment on stage and in the crowd was still that Obama hasn't been much of a pal to the progressive movement in his first 13 months in office. Of course, we've talked here about this question of whether and why all the considerable momentum of the Obama campaign, ginned up and harnessed by the Internet in large part, was allowed to float off into the ether after Election Day. There was a rehashing of that last night, for sure. (13 million names! And for what!)

But Demos' Barber offered a newish take on the question of just where the grassroots aspect of the Obama enterprise went off course. "Narrative is a way of explaining to ourselves the nature of the world that we live in," he suggested, and argued that Obama has failed to provide one that would give his progressive allies a story book to go by. And the web, in particular, loves a good story...

Credit: iTunes Store

One step closer to the dream of canvassers everywhere to have a two-way, digital, portable voter file in their pocket is MiniVAN Touch, the just-released iPhone app version of the Voter Activation Network data program used to power a great deal of Democratic campaigns and the field organizing efforts of a wide range of progressive groups. The target audience: existing VAN clients, as it requires users to already have a way to log into the VAN.

"We definitely feel this has a broader audience than the Palm app it replaced," VAN new media director Mike Sager tells me, "because it is so easy to use and troubleshoot. We think lots of candidates themselves will carry the app when they go door to door."

Are we nearing the promise land of the paperless campaign? Perhaps not quite yet, but Sager says that the iPhone version of VAN can at least cut down on the vast amounts of time and effort that can get wasted during the course of a campaign's pounding of the pavement or working of a crowd. "The app is dramatically more efficient than walking with paper lists," says Sager, "as it eliminates all the follow up data entry -- press one button, and your contacts are recorded in VAN."

Credit: Pavlov Museum

While, at this moment in early 2010, a vast majority of Americans believe that the American system of government is broken -- 86%, according to a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll that came out yesterday -- only one in 20 Americans believe that the damage to institutional democracy in the United States is irreparable and the democratic experiment hopeless. Where does that hopefulness find its footing? Of course, the great promise of online politics was, is, that by tapping into the distributed world that the web has helped to cultivate, the channels might open up between the electorate and the elected, and great waves of participatory democracy might gush forth. Maybe the very nature of representative government isn't altered as a result, the thinking behind distributed democracy goes. But in this new world order, Congress and others in office would be forced into a relationship of greater accountability. Good, responsive members of Congress would flourish in a system of incentives that wasn't so dominated by the wealth-funded interests of a few or the hollow arguments of those with the establishment standing to get their voices heard.

Credit: GRITtv

Yesterday's episode of Laura Flanders' daily GRITtv program was on the topic of whether or not the United States Senate has outlived its usefulness, and whether it should be done away with like past American traditions like powered wigs and shooting squads. Discussing the topic was the New Yorker's legendary political writer Rick Hertzberg, Harvard and Change Congress' Larry Lessig, and your humble writer who focused on the possible grassroots aspects of the topic. It was exciting to discuss the prospect of blowing up the Senate, figuratively speaking of course -- not because it's a good idea on its own merits, necessarily, but because it speaks to a bigger conversation about Americans approaching their institutions of government not as reverent, impotent observers of a stage play about nation governing that has gone on for more than a 200 years, but as tinkerers. Open-sourcers. People who see the world as it is and say, "hmm, well why not something else?"

And as a former congressional staffer, I have to admit that that sort of talk is thrilling, naughty even, and downright exhilarating. (Though the fact that my place of employ was the House might have something to do with the charge it gives me to think about overhauling that other chamber on the other side of the hill.)

If you'd like to watch video if that discussion, it's over here. But there was one exchange about how changing Congress could come about, in some small way, through, yes, congressional staffers that I'd like to highlight here...

Today we are publishing a techPresident special report on the first year of Organizing for America (OFA), drawing on new interviews with congressional staff in both parties, former Obama campaign staff, and 70 activists from the OFA grassroots. This report -- the most comprehensive review of OFA’s work to date -- is authored by The Nation’s Ari Melber, (www.arimelber.com) a longtime techPresident contributor who traveled with the Obama campaign in 2008. Barack Obama entered into office of President of the United States in January 2009 with an unprecedented base of digitally-networked supporters and volunteers. As we reach the one-year anniversary of OFA this weekend, this is an important time to have a detailed and open discussion of its work, and its future.

“Year One of Organizing for America; The Permanent Field Campaign in a Digital Age” can be viewed on Scribd, downloaded as a full PDF and read online at techPresident.com/ofayear1. To advance the discussion, we will post reaction and commentary on the report page, and we invite readers to engage on Twitter with the hashtag #OFAyr1.

We recommend you dig right into reading the primary source, but here are a few highlights...

Cross-posted at Huffington Post

Micah Sifry has written a widely discussed essay about the denuded Obama grassroots movement, touching on a broad range of issues, from the campaign team's exertion of top-down control to their missteps post-election to the myth-making and marketing of hope and change. There have been a couple of extended critiques and Sifry has written a series of follow-ups to address questions raised by his thesis.

I'd like to focus on one important aspect of the original essay, namely the motivating factor(s) behind Obama's grassroots support.

"Where the Road to Health Reform Began" is the banner headline on a White House blog post added to the official blog of the Executive Office of the President of the United States almost perfectly a year to the day after Americans were asked by their new president, Barack Obama, to gather around their hearths, kitchen tables, and folding rec center tables to hash over their vision for overhauling the American health care system to better meet their needs, and their neighbors needs.

Was it all for naught? No way, says the White House. The health care package emerging from all of Capitol Hill's legislative wrangling contains solutions to the very problems with health care that those 9,000 willing volunteers identified. Frustrated will the trouble you have carrying health insurance coverage from one job to the next, as a participant in 2008's Health Care Community Discussions from Wallingford, Connecticut was? Good for you that the Affordable Health Care for America Act, blogs the White House Office of Health Reform's Jen Cannistra, "will ensure that Americans always have guaranteed choices of quality, affordable health insurance whether you lose your job, switch jobs, move, or get sick."

"[A]s we move into the final stretch of this road towards the historic passage of health insurance reform," Cannistra writes, "we wanted to take a look at how the legislation we’ve seen emerge from Congress addresses many of the concerns, questions, suggestions, and solutions we heard about a year ago." You can read the post for yourself here.

Of course, there's a little bit of bait and switch at play. Did average, eager Americans have much to say about what was in the final Senate health care package? Cannistra isn't exactly saying so, but it's certainly the fuzzy feeling the Obama Administration would like to leave us with. Drawing a direct line of cause and effect between the grassroots organizing efforts of the Obama presidency's early days and the contortions of the legislative process is something the Obama Administration needs to do if it is going to win the war of public opinion over whether it is a networked presidency of the Internet age. Provisions like portability, though, aren't exactly brand new ideas in the health reform debate, or the sort of pragmatic thinking that only the populace is capable of. The health care legislation the Obama Administration pushed was responsive to and reflective of public desires. But that, of course, is what politicians do. The good ones, at least. Posts like this help Obama make the case that he is a good politicians. The more open question is whether they make him any different than the good politicians who came before him.

If there was anything on display at yesterday's Organizing for America "National Health Care Forum with the President," it's that this operation is punctual. At precisely the appointed hour of 2:45pm ET, Barack Obama bounded into Democratic National Committee headquarters, took off his jacket, rolled up his sleeves, and delivered his message to those selected volunteers in the auditorium, those watching online, and those listening over the phone. That message, in essence, is that the primary job of supporters during the health care debate is act as surrogates and advocates armed with information. Said Obama: "The best ambassadors for true information, factual information, is all of you. You have more credibility than people on television."

If you stop by our part of the Internet often, you'll know that here on techPres we've been interestedly tracking what would become of the energy, momentum, and -- perhaps most importantly -- the networks of people that drove the historic Obama presidential campaign. Recently, President Obama himself and senior campaign officials provided part of the answer by announcing the creation of Organizing for America, a "grassroots" organization that would continue to seek the change that powered the campaign.

But you can't help but notice something happening -- or rather, not happening -- this week. As Obama faces a major legislative battle over a multibillion dollar package intended to stimulate the struggling economy, his allies are not OFAers but congressional and business leaders. Those grassroots supporters haven't been called on to help craft or pass a bill that will likely shape America's economic future for decades to come. The message coming from Washington is a distinct, "No worries, we'll take care of this." Why is that?