Rather than toning the bitter partisanship that divides the nation as he promised during the campaign, Barack Obama is issuing a new mobilization order to the activist faithful. The obvious conclusion is that the new administration’s legislative agenda will be backed by organized campaigns of activist agitation at state and local levels throughout the country.

McClatchy:

President-elect Barack Obama’s 3 million campaign volunteers got re-enlistment notices this week.

Campaign manager David Plouffe, in a mass e-mail sent Wednesday to former workers, asked how much time they can spare for four missions integral to Obama’s effort to transform his victory into a broader political movement. …

“Obama’s building a political machine,” said Stephen Hess, a presidential scholar at the Brookings Institution, a center-left Washington research group.