Apparently the Democratic National Committee had difficulty drumming up support even amongst its grassroots for Barack Obama’s $3.6 trillion budget monstrosity. What is a Democratic organization to do? Why, lie shamelessly of course.

At Democratic National Committee headquarters yesterday morning, party workers were loading minivans with Xerox boxes, each addressed to a different congressional office. It was a classic campaign canvassing operation — except that the next election is 19 months away. “Supporters of President Obama’s Budget to Hand Deliver 642,000 Pledges Gathered from Around the Country to Capitol Hill,” announced the Democrats’ news release.

CNN and the Huffington Post dutifully reported the DNC’s claim of 642,000 pledges. Network cameras and the BBC showed up to film the operation. “We had one of the big printers downstairs smoking last night,” party spokesman Brad Woodhouse said.

In fact, the canvassing of Obama’s vaunted e-mail list of 13 million people resulted in just 114,000 pledges — a response rate of less than 1 percent. Workers gathered 100,000 more from street canvassing. The DNC got to 642,000 by making three photocopies of each pledge so that each signer’s senators and representative could get one.

I can understand making photocopies to send to a signer’s Congressman and two Senators, but the “642,000 pledges” claim was intended to make people believe that 642,000 people signed on to the budget plan. Less than 1% of Obama’s email list actually responded, however, and that wouldn’t have looked good for PR purposes. So the DNC intentionally mislead the media and public about support for a $3.6 trillion spending plan.