Left In Lowell

This must strike fear into the hearts of Obama’s opponents (bold mine).

Obama aides and allies are preparing a major expansion of the White House communications operation, enabling them to reach out directly to the supporters they have collected over 21 months without having to go through the mainstream media.
…
The nucleus of that effort is an e-mail database of more than 10 million supporters. The list is considered so valuable that the Obama camp briefly offered it as collateral during a cash-flow crunch late in the campaign, though it wound up never needing the loan, senior aides said. At least 3.1 million people on the list donated money to Obama.

Millions more made up the volunteer corps that organized his enormous rallies, registered millions of voters and held countless gatherings to plug the senator to friends and neighbors. On Election Day, they served as the backbone of Obama’s get-out-the-vote operation, reaching voters by phone and at the front door, serving coffee at polling stations and babysitting so parents could stand in line at voting precincts.
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Once Obama is sworn in, those backers may be summoned to push reluctant members of Congress to support legislation, to offer feedback on initiatives and to enlist in administration-supported causes in local communities. Obama would also be positioned to ask his supporters to back his favored candidates with fundraising and turnout support in the 2010 midterm elections.

Sounds like President-Elect Obama is taking a page out of Governor Patrick’s book, though I would say that Patrick has found it harder to achieve than he may have thought. Though citizen governance is a difficult thing in times like these (people are so busy trying to make ends meet they can’t take the time, you lose supporters once you make some decisions because you can’t please everyone, etc) I think it’s a worthy use of the mandate that Obama has achieved. Sign me up! (I already am, of course.)

And, as an aside, how sweet it is to add the category, “Obama Administration”!