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.

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.

If you're on the Obama campaign email list, by now you've probably received a message alerting you to a special message from President-elect Barack Obama announcing the formation of "Organizing for America," the continuation of the organization that was built during his 2008 campaign.

No president has ever entered office with an organized social movement at his side, with the ability to reach millions of his supporters instantaneously and in as targeted a way as he wants. Nor have we ever been as networked to each other, with the ability to connect laterally by our own interests, as we are today.

It's interesting, then, how Obama's announcement papers over this tension. On the one hand, he says he needs his supporters' "help," that they will "drive" the organization and "must lead the way." Sounds great. On the other hand, he gives no details other than "you'll be receiving more information in the next few days about this organization" and that it will be "partnering" with the DNC. The rest is TBD. More below...

There's a dust-up over network neutrality that we'll do our darnedest to encapsulate in one bullet point. Ready? Let's go. Google, reported the Wall Street Journal's Vishesh Kumar and Christopher Rhoads, has been quietly pushing a plan to create "a fast lane for its own content"...Republican rank-and-file are urging their leaders to embrace technology or face "suicide"...As the cloak of secrecy that surrounded the Obama campaign gets pulled back the slightest bit, we're finally learning the truly important stuff: which Obama logo mock-ups didn't make the cut...and still more.