6/23/09- TWD's Agenda For The Day: Taking The Fight Back Online

The Internet of course played a pivotal part in Barack Obama's election. And it may play a pivotal role again in a health care reform fight that should have never gotten to this point.

The tireless Greg Sargent reports this morning that the White House will use their websites and online savvy to create massive databases of health care stories.

The new “health care story bank” — as it’s dubbed by Organizing for America, Obama’s reconfigured political and campaign operation run out of the DNC — is perhaps the most ambitious test case yet determining whether the technological apparatus that fueled Obama’s campaign can succeed in driving Obama’s governing agenda.

The new initiative, which will be announced and go live later this morning, comes at a moment when many Democrats are asking what Obama plans to do to campaign for health care reform. OFA officials view it as a major technological and communications component of their push to make reform happen.

Sargent says that the White House has been in ownership of these stories for a while, but have shown patience in releasing them

These stories, which OFA had been collecting on its Web site but had not released, will be disseminated to the massive OFA email list, in hopes that campaign-style organizers around the country will use powerful first-hand anecdotes to argue the case for reform — and to push back on opponents’ talking points. There will also be a tool that allow users to flag particular stories as deserving of more attention.

Sargent said the link will be up later, so I'll try to keep you heads up on that.