My new report on the first year of Organizing for America is yielding some interesting responses, including notes from politicos who want to remain anonymous. Here is an email from a seasoned Democrat that suggests a broader context for Internet politics, and argues Obama's political operation has undercut its own ability to innovate:

Since OFA is a coherent organization, one can point to it and say 'this is unprecedented, and they are doing a great/good/bad job', but a post-Presidential period has happened before, forty something times.

It would be interesting to informally benchmark what's happening now against previous Presidential campaigns and what came out of them. There were a lot of important spinoffs of the Goldwater and Reagan campaigns on the right, not just generations of talent but new organization models like corporate PACs, direct mail, and New Right structures. In 2004, a lot of progressive activists on the various Dean, Clark, and Kerry bandwagons came into politics with a very specific set of initial searing experiences. And the people who ran the Obama campaign at the top came out of various campaigns from the 1980s and onward. Some campaigns held onto talent long-term, some didn't. Some had highly charged electoral energy, some didn't. Some were centralized, some weren't.

Our goal for this panel is to spur some cross-partisan discussion of what it's like to organize online and gain traction for your issues when your side is in power and when your side is not in power.

OFA launched a new email and petition drive on Tuesday afternoon, ratcheting up pressure on Congress to pass the President's health care plan. Huffington Post's Nico Pitney reports on the move's political significance:

A first shot, of sorts, is being fired in the Obama-era battle for health care reform. Organizing for America, President Obama's political arm, is blasting out an email to its massive list of supporters urging them to join an "Organizing for Health Care" campaign.

A DNC official says the message is significant because it is "the first email" that is "going out from the OFA and DNC lists organizing for health care." The declaration drive will culminate, the official added, in a supporter list that organizers "can deliver to members of Congress." But there are some problems here.

It is early, but so far, these OFA legislative "organizing" efforts run the risk of being boring, vague and redundant.

Organizing for America is suddenly getting lots of attention. It almost feels like the traditional press discovered Obama's post-campaign organizing effort this month, even though there have been national gatherings and communications ever since the transition. It is worth noting, however, that many reporters are responding to a recent press offensive by OFA staff.