so we ll see how he gets through this. but, you know, presidents go through this at the beginning of their second terms. you saw it with bush, you saw it with clinton. so we ll see how he navigates this, really. 2014 is right around the corner. and that seems to be a deadline. alahai, organizing for action, the former obama campaign machine, it was going to use its clout to try to move the president s agenda forward. but according to politico, group failed at its first major effort, the senate s gun legislation. quote, the group didn t sway a single vote for the background check proposal and so far it has not been able to make any of those who voted against it feel any heat. what s happened to ofa? well, gun control is a very interesting first issue for them to try and tackle, because they re going against the gun lobby, like the nra, and their ground game has been perfected over the years. they re not just a well-funded lobby. they ve got a passionate base of supports and members
senators who voted against new gun measures, but according to politico, ofa has so far been less than successful, politico saying in part, the group did not sway a single vote for the background check proposal and so far, it hasn t been able to make any of those who voted against it feel any heat. how badly did gun change advocates misjudge what lawmakers would do? i think the problem is that the main way you strike fear into lawmakers is you make them afraid of losing their next election. and with senators, of course, they only run every six years, it s not like members of the house, the vote was in the senate, gun control vote was in the senate, i will take as a case study senator mark begich of alaska. aid long talk with him in his office, a sit down interview just before the gun vote. we talked fairly intensely about gun control he is from alaska. it s the last frontier state.
them. i get what you mean. a perfect world, a lawmaker would vote his or her conscience. he have not voted a perfect union yet. rachel, your organization, plight coker i understand is not going to be sold, there s a i had to work that in. thank you for that how the ofa, organizing for america, not off to such a great startle. this is a snippet from the article, almost no successes to point to the group didn t sway a single vote for the background check proposal and so far, it hasn t been able to make any of those who voted against it feel any heat. how big of a blow to the president is this? an early blow for this group, our reporter, reed epstein, has been following the issue closely, doing good work on it
how accurate is that? how accurate is that ad? i think that the overarching idea here is that in the first 100 days, president obama has suffered some legislative defeats. of course, there s some truth to that. most remarkably, the gun bill, this was an overwhelmingly popular measure, i saw on your segment earlier, you attribute it had to cowardice on the part of lawmakers, which certainly, i think there was some of that there, lawmakers who received tremendous pressure from the gun lobby, at the same time, there was a lot of criticism for president obama for not rallying the troops the way he has been known to do also, you know should the troops have to be rallied all the time? which troops are we talking about? what congress needed if you re a gun controlled a vo cat, what you needed to happen was for ordinary people, constituents, to call their congressman and say, vote for this gun bill, right? that just didn t happen on a large enough scale to pressure