With no candidate to reelect, Obama for America has morphed into Organizing for Action, an issues advocacy group.  OFA will, to quote its website, “support President Obama in achieving enactment of the national agenda Americans voted for on Election Day 2012.”

There’s just one problem: What if President Obama backs away from the very agenda that his campaign is pushing?  That might be happening.

In his second inaugural address, President Obama proclaimed: “We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations.”  Yesterday’s New York Times, however, suggests that the President is not going to live up to his own rhetoric.  If the Times’ interpretation is correct, the President is inclined to approve the Keystone XL pipeline, a move that will be considered a big stick-in-the-eye to environmentalists who helped reelect him.

But while the President might be getting wobbly on climate change, his grassroots campaign supporters are not.  And they are getting organized.  Last Saturday, I joined hundreds of pro-Obama activists meeting in midtown Manhattan as part of the effort to shape New York for Action, a local branch of OFA.  (I’m talking about the people who hand out the literature and get out the vote, not the ones who are always emailing and asking for $56.)  Delving into the issue at the meeting’s Climate Change breakout session, OFA members were lined up against Keystone, understanding that using the pipeline to tap the Alberta Tar Sands (and billions of tons of carbon) moves us in the wrong direction.

But the point of the OFA meeting was not just to talk about issues – it was to begin building the infrastructure needed to advance progressive policies.  Assuming OFA’s rich database and online organizing tools are provided to OFA members as promised, these assets will soon be put to work changing public opinion about critical issues – and presumably a good amount of this work will be to oppose Keystone.  It won’t just be environmental groups taking on the President, it will be his own campaign.

What is one to make of this situation? Well, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s remarks at the opening of the OFA meeting were right on point.  Schneiderman spoke of the importance of “transformational politics,” the changing of the hearts and minds of Americans.  One has to give credit to the contemporary conservative movement, he noted.  Over the past thirty years, they have moved Americans into a mindset of thinking that “all government is bad.”  One might not like their views, but you cannot deny that by waging a constant campaign of ideas, conservatives have had a big influence.

While not as effective as conservatives during recent decades, the progressive movement has had at least some success.  Schneiderman highlighted the sea change in opinion over marriage equality, pointing out that “transactional” political progress (i.e., legislation) is only being made because of the transformational politics that preceded it.  (Let’s remember, that with respect to marriage equality, Obama himself was rather late to the party.)  Schneiderman urged OFA members to push for political transformation on other issues, assuring the group that elected officials will follow the progress made on the transformational political front.

And so the stage is set for Obama for America, er, I mean, Organizing for Action, to take on Obama over Keystone.  As a former staffer for Howard Dean’s presidential campaign, I see this development as a continuation of the political experiment that began with Dean’s heavy focus on using the internet to empower supporters.  Dean campaign manager Joe Trippi’s obsession with giving Dean supporters the tools to organize on their own (and not just within a formal campaign hierarchy) appealed to many of us not just because it was smart, but also because it was a little bit dangerous.  If you empower supporters, you lose some control of your message and your campaign.  What if your supporters turn against you?  With OFA becoming an issues advocacy group, the risk is even higher.  After all, OFA members are not just choosing between two candidates, they have myriad policy options before them.

OFA’s evolution might not carry the same self-consciousness that the Dean campaign’s “internet revolution” had, but it too marks a new phase of the great American experiment.  Members of this progressive coalition will probably be well served by reflecting on the situation and thinking about how to use OFA to help bring about transformational change.  When it comes to climate change, will Obama be more inclined to listen to members of his own campaign who speak out against Keystone than he is to listen to “outside” environmental groups?  Perhaps.  And it might make for an interesting political brouhaha.  But if Schneiderman is right (and I think he is), we need to be thinking about how to leverage OFA’s resources to change hearts and minds over the long-term, not just to pressure the president over the short-term.  I’m not suggesting environmentally minded OFA members let the President off the hook on the issue – just that we keep the ultimate goal in mind.