Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. With help from Allie Bice and Daniel Lippman. Send tips | Subscribe here | Email Alex | Email Max When President BARACK OBAMA entered office in 2009, he and his team warily eyed the Democratic National Committee, viewing it as part of the establishment they had just defeated and full of HILLARY CLINTON sympathizers. Rather than work through the committee, they decided to stand up one of their own. The result was the political organization Organizing for America (OFA), which played an outsized role in organizing around the 2010 midterms and, later, the 2012 re-elect. President JOE BIDEN has taken a markedly different approach with both the DNC and his own outside group, Building Back Together (BBT). Under his watch, the DNC, not BBT, has taken the lead role in political organizing and — still hypothetically — re-elect conversations, people familiar with the inner-workings told West Wing Playbook. That’s removed any potential uncertainty about how the party’s infrastructure would be deployed. If Biden decides to run for re-election and there is a primary challenge, DNC executive director SAM CORNALE told us: “We’re with Biden. Period.” When OFA was launched, it was under the belief that the Obama movement was geared around the candidate and not the party. Obama fashioned himself as an insurgent running against the party establishment who had a cult following beyond the DNC ( he chose “renegade” as his secret service code name after all ). OFA, in turn, focused its resources on field organizing —Obama’s pride and joy — which many DNC members felt was duplicative. Biden is a product of and ran as a candidate of the party establishment, and BBT reflects that. The group does not have a field program and has instead centered on convening the progressive diaspora and spending over $35 million in advocacy ads promoting the Biden legislative agenda. “It's just so clear that each created an org that mirrors who they are,” said one Democratic strategist working on 2022 race. The strategist was skeptical that BBT has made a huge difference but said that it is net-positive. “Unlike Organizing for America, it hasn’t hurt the Democratic Party,” the person said. ADDISU DEMISSIE, OFA’s national political director from 2009-10 and now an advisor for BBT likewise conceded that “some corrections in both concept and execution” have been made based on the experiences of 2009. “We knew we wanted to be separate from the DNC as opposed to how OFA was and the core functions were going to be ads and coordination,” he said. “You don’t need to recreate the wheel. It’s more important getting everyone to row in the same direction.” Many progressive organizations agree that BBT has been useful in coordinating the occasionally unwieldy assortment of progressive advocacy groups who focus on labor, climate, health care, care, jobs, the economy, racial justice, immigration — and more. There was a standing “war room” call with those stakeholders every day until the recent passage of the large reconciliation package that participants said helped keep Democrats in array, though some Democratic operatives have complained that the sessions didn’t give good insight into White House messaging or strategic thinking. The calls continue, just with less frequency. “I think they created a safe space for information sharing, for collaboration,” said LORI LODES, the executive director of the advocacy group Climate Power who also worked at the SEIU in 2009-10. “It was much more about ‘what is our value add?’ versus dictating the direction things would go.” The $35 million-plus in pro-Biden advertising is certainly not the biggest investment this cycle. But it helped promote the president’s agenda and had the side benefit of being booked through firms and consultants who had worked with Biden before, like Blue Sky Strategy, 4C Partners, and 50+1 Strategies. The DNC has been happier, too. It says it has raised $255 million this cycle — a record at this point in a midterm election cycle. It’s still unclear what role BBT will play in 2023 and 2024 although officials say it will keep going after the midterms. Given that it’s registered as a non-profit, the group is not required to disclose its donors and did not disclose them when West Wing Playbook asked ( they have previously said they wouldn’t ). Even with such transparency issues—or, perhaps, because of them — BBT’s advisers are confident the group won’t be the last of its kind. As Demissie put it: “Whoever is the next Democratic president will need its own BBT as well.” PROGRAMMING NOTE: West Wing Playbook will be taking a week-long break starting Monday, Aug. 29. We’ll be back in your inbox on Tuesday, Sept. 6. We hope our absence makes your heart grow fonder. MESSAGE US — Are you ALICIA O’BRIEN, senior counsel and special assistant to the president? We want to hear from you! And we’ll keep you anonymous if you’d like. Or if you think we missed something in today’s edition, let us know and we may include it tomorrow. Email us at westwingtips@politico.com.
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