Kevin Donohue was a field organizer for Barack Obama’s campaign last year in Wyoming County, Pennsylvania. He came to Washington, D.C. in January to continue working for change. At first, Donohue took an unpaid internship with his congressman and waited tables, hoping like many former Obama staffers to get a job in the political process. But the outlook for Donohue was bleak. After getting rejected from three jobs on the same day, he finally took a temporary offer from the Washington Kastles, D.C.’s professional tennis squad, where he works with charity organizations and occasionally dresses up as a huge fuzzy tennis ball to cheer on the home team. There is no union, no health care coverage, and a finite period of employment. Donohue isn’t alone. More than 6,000 people worked on the campaign for Barack Obama. There are many that are either unemployed or uninsured, or both.
Most, if not all, of Barack Obama’s Campaign for Change veterans were among the 350,000 applicants for a few thousand jobs in Obama’s Washington. For those who didn’t have connections in the inner sanctum (or expansive resumes), the odds weren’t great. Some staffers who did not want to move to Washington, D.C. were depending on contacts made during the campaign for future opportunities. Now many of them are not only unemployed, but in the season of health care reform, they help comprise the 80 million under- or uninsured Americans (although the campaign cushioned the blow by extending health care benefits until the end of 2008).
“On Nov. 4, 2008, I realized our problems weren’t going to just go away; it would take time, compromises have to be made,” Donohue says, but he admits it isn’t easy. “I don’t have a job right now and I am struggling. But as an American citizen I respect the fact that statesmen can’t snap their fingers and turn out a perfect health care policy. Eventually, they will make a positive difference for the majority of people.”
The stories of former unemployed Obama staffers stack up. Benjamin Freed is a 25-year-old working as a temp in Washington, D.C. “I had an active role in shaping the communications strategy of one of the most heavily contested states in the country [Pennsylvania], on health care, on everything,” Freed says, while sitting in a coffee shop a couple of hundred yards from the White House. “And then on Nov. 4, around 11 p.m., they called the election. And that’s the last time I had a job.”
Surviving on money he earns from temp just isn’t enough to afford an individual health care plan. “I don’t have insurance—it’s too expensive,” Freed quickly answered. “I just have to be careful and stay healthy.”
It's hard to keep up with the daily progress of ObamaCare as it slithers through the bowels of the Corporate Chamber of Wholly Owned Subsidiaries. It started out as RomneyCare with a vaguely defined public option — much like President Obama himself. Now it's one of those 1-900-DIAL-A-BILKING things, with the revenues flowing everywhere but into delivery of healthcare. I don't have much on which to base it, but I'd bet HillaryCare would have been slightly better. Not sustainable, by any means, but able to get a few people patched up before it imploded. ObamaCare looks like it will be delivered imploded and worthless.
It's easy for me to draw a bright line between shoe-horning Obama into office and Donohue's and Freed's vicissitudes. There's nothing personal to it. I doubt Obama is aware of their existence. That's how slick operators treat the help. Awareness of this social reality usually comes in middle school. Only a cultivated ingenuousness can stuff it back into its box.
Comments (10)
A much deserved
Blasting
I suspect corporate america
At the one by one level
still wants to off load the admin and such
Of this bit of the nation's social net
Even
Though
At the collective corporate level
cuffing
Health coverage to jobholding
has huge systemic advantages
Ideal single payer
Funded out of payroll tax
Availible only to
The gainfully jobbled
But thats
Just an executive suite dream alas
Posted by op | July 23, 2009 12:24 PM
Posted on July 23, 2009 12:24
I have some pity for those kids. It's got to really suck to be drained and tossed away like that. Then to watch as the hope for a tiny bit of relief turns into, “I just have to be careful and stay healthy", without even the nasty opportunity of refuge in corporate feudalism on the horizon.
You're right about the dreams of corporate America. Individually they all want to offload and maybe, oh golden day, tie every last little thing to corporate noblesse oblige. But the hive mind always says fear and immiseration right now is better for them. And there's no end of suckers eager to drive that forward, for free.
Posted by Al Schumann | July 23, 2009 12:53 PM
Posted on July 23, 2009 12:53
Fortunately some folks don't get fearful or just plain miserable
They get furious
Too
But the pot has heated up enough yet
T'would seem
Yes as u note
The useful boob
self trained
Bright side only seers
Face a cruel fate
Not being any part of one soulwise
I can't empath
They seem like emotional mutes to me
Posted by op | July 23, 2009 1:20 PM
Posted on July 23, 2009 13:20
Al, I dont see, necessarily, how this disillusioned Obama worker is any different from the young Republican idealists we used to scoff at. Aside from the really qualified ones, like Rove, who knew how the political system works and how to claw/murder they way to the top, most of them were just along for the political wet dream. Believing in "change" and "hope" is about the same as believing in "a new dawn for America." These aren't folks you really want to have a serious conversation with.
Posted by hce | July 23, 2009 1:23 PM
Posted on July 23, 2009 13:23
Indeed. There's no difference. The vituperation and scorn they've directed at the Republican kids outdoes ours a hundredfold. I'd bail on a conversation with any of them, probably as rudely as I could manage, but I still want them to have healthcare. I'm not sure why I want them to have it, as they'd sabotage me in a heartbeat, but I do. Maybe it's something to cling to, eh? A little gesture towards humanity.
Posted by Al Schumann | July 23, 2009 1:30 PM
Posted on July 23, 2009 13:30
Well, Kevin's comments really drive home the horror of the fact that we don't even provide insurance to the obviously severely brain-injured among us.
I believe one's willingness to use the word "statesmen" in any capacity is now considered a diagnostic test in the forthcoming DSM-V. Using it in connection with any figure holding office in the United States is prima facie grounds for involuntary commitment.
Posted by Michael Dawson | July 23, 2009 3:22 PM
Posted on July 23, 2009 15:22
The bootlicking is pretty intense. It's not going to do the poor bastard any good either, more's the pity, and worse still that's always been a lesson lost on the pwoggier folks.
Concussed, humiliated and stuck in the middle of road rage traffic, they're convinced one more effort is worth it.
Posted by Al Schumann | July 23, 2009 4:52 PM
Posted on July 23, 2009 16:52
I wonder if this fate befell the sweet young guy who stopped by my house one day last summer from some AFSCME think tank to discuss Obama. It seems likely. We don't have many big-time sports franchises in this town, but the furniture-liquidation spots are always seeking some poor slob to risk heatstroke on the freeway holding up some sign about marked-down mark ups.
In other news, I have a temp job in a warehouse. Very exciting. Can somebody tell me who the fuck in this country can actually afford to spend $54 on a pair of spandex shorts and $25 on a water bottle? If my friends and acquaintances are in that category, none of them dare admit it to my face.
Posted by ms_xeno | July 23, 2009 9:24 PM
Posted on July 23, 2009 21:24
I have a spandex beanie, with a quadruple propeller. In a high wind, the propeller can be used to power an iPod. It doesn't come with a bottle however.
I am not ashamed.
Posted by Al Schumann | July 24, 2009 12:30 AM
Posted on July 24, 2009 00:30
Schumann, when our national anthem is finally supplanted at sporting events by that Bobs song about honeymooning at the outlet malls, I'll pause for a moment and think of you.
Posted by ms_xeno | July 24, 2009 9:43 AM
Posted on July 24, 2009 09:43