With the last debate over, an Obama lead strongly established, and GOTV being the biggest thing left for the campaign to do, the Players- inside the campaign and out- are beginning to maneuver in earnest for power in an Obama administration. Hell, this kind of maneuvering was happening in the Gore campaign, who was down in the polls, and the Kerry campaign, who was essentially tied, so you know it's happening in Obamaland. It's just in the nature of politics, and while the distance between pre-election and post-election is in many ways a million miles apart, chronologically it's only 2.5 weeks, so while an old campaign guy like me cringes at this kind of thing going on before the election is done, I understand it at some level.
It is extremely good news in my view that John Podesta- who has never been involved in the day-to-day campaign, and who was in fact a Hillary supporter, and who has the stature to not be at the mercy of the daily campaign power struggles- is in charge of the transition. It means there is some steadiness and heft to the process, and that there is another forum for power jockeying besides the Chicago campaign office. Hopefully, that will enable the folks in Chicago to be more focused on finishing off the campaign itself.
A lot of progressive organizations are also busy making transition plans, which is good. I've been doing a lot of workshops, speeches, and Q&A sessions with organizations about transition strategy, and it's been interesting- some of them really have thoughtful ideas about it, others are working on completely useless sets of ideas. It will be fascinating to see what the bigger progressive community does in the transition period. In 1992, progressive groups were poorly organized and had no coherent, integrated strategy whatsoever. I hope it's different this time.
For my part, I hope like hell that the Obama-ites in Chicago and around the country keep focused on the election, understanding that if they do their electoral work well, they will be justly rewarded (and, by the way, for my part in 1992, that was absolutely true- I spent no time pre-election doing any jockeying for position, and I got a great job in the White House). We can't afford to have the campaign draft and lose momentum because the folks running it are worried about what cool job they will get in the White House.
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