So, do you want to know what the Obama ground game looks like in action? Read this memo from Mitch Stewart, Jeremy Bird, and Marlon Marshall. It is enough to strike terror into Karl Rove’s heart. When you are done reading it, contact your local OFA and get involved. There’s no better way to spend Election Day than doing work in the field. And you’ll be able to tell your grandkids that you were part of the greatest grassroots turnout effort the world has ever seen.
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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I was just reading this BooMan.
If Obama wins, Dems will be fighting to get their hands on the brain trust info at OfA…damn.
Amazing. Even doing phone banking for years, I somehow never got the hugeness and precision of the ground-game undercurrent that makes all those waves on the surface. Makes me feel better about our prospects as organized humans.
It all sounds brilliant, and right in line with what behavioral science tells us about changing behaviour. But I see no mention of down ticket races. Obama needs a congress he can work with as much as he needs the Presidency itself. Why doe OFA have a blind spot about this?
Yes, this is the Democratic problem. OFA needs to be DFA. We didn’t see much of OFA in 2010 – we need to see the same GOTV – with constant improvements – in every year going forward.
Well, this is Obama’s campaign org, after all, so that’s going to be their focus. I never worked directly for OFA, but assume they’re including local/state candidates in their pitches.
What’s extra amazing about these stats is that they don’t even include what local parties and candidates, state parties, and outfits like DFA, MoveOn, the unions, and tons of others are doing. In my experience, MoveOn is super tech slick, but the whole thing could be more efficient with more coordination among organizations — especially shared contact lists. But that’s too obvious for them not to be working on it.
The GOTV scripts for phone banking do ask people to vote (D) in down-ticket races – at least in Vermont. I assume it’s the same elsewhere.
We’re running a coordinated campaign here in Indiana. OFA, state and local candidates are sharing pretty much everything and DFA has been here with us for quite a while as well. Its working beautifully so far.
That’s great to hear. I would have preferred an explicit and high profile “GIVE ME A CONGRESS I CAN WORK WITH” message from Obama – capitalising on the unpopularity of congress, and implicitly putting a lot of the blame for lack of progress on a “do nothing congress”. It would also help to undercut Romney’s message that he could work better with a Dem Senate than Obama could with a Republican Congress.
I’m sure the OFA strategists have their reasons for not going with that message – perhaps they have market/focus group research which says that message would not go down well. However I do hope it’s not just a case of “I’m running my campaign my way and focusing exclusively on my re-election” because that would be short sighted in the extreme.
Perhaps a low key approach, focusing on cooperation at ground level will work just as well and avoid raising fears of the Dems dominating all branches of Government. Perhaps also different approaches are required in different states.
In Indiana, for example, Donnelly seems to be polling better than Obama, so why risk a senate win for an unlikely and unnecessary win in the Presendential race by tying Donnelly too closely to Obama… In Nevada, on the other hand, Obama seems to be running ahead of Shelley Berkley, and she could probably do with the public linking her campaign to his as closely as possible.
Setting up these staging locations–and training the volunteers is one of the things that I do as a volunteer. It has been wonderful to be a part of OFA.
Knocked on doors for six hours today. Until the sleet and rain ran me off. Back at it again at 9:30 tomorrow. Gotta make hay while you can. This is fun shit, people! Am I a sick puppy, or what?
A Diary on the responses you’ve been getting would be interesting! Might encourage a few others to do similar.
A very cool idea. Thanks!
It would be really cool if you wrote about it.
We’re heading out to do our part tomorrow, and I’m looking forward to it. It is fun.
For what it’s worth, a diary is done. Can’t be held fully responsible, though. I warmed up with a bit of bourbon after the rainy, cold canvassing. 😉
Knocked on doors in Dayton for a similar amount of time. Spent a decent chunk of time running around in shitty cold weather with rain and hail coming down – but you can’t stop this ground game.
Keep grinding it out, neighbor. I’m covering areas north of Cincinnati.
Boehner’s district? hopey hopey
Regrettably, no. Adjacent to Boehner’s district.
Have you run into anyone from Indiana? Part of our team has been working in the Dayton area.
I have seen in in action, and it is beautiful to behold.
But it’s going to take turning out these folks in mid-terms to get the changes in Congress we need.
Amen to turning out the vote in mid term elections! I also think that we have to toughen up as progressives and stop flirting with this “woe is me I’m so disappointed” nonsense. Successful progressive movements able to create sustainable, meaningful change do the work. It is not enough to vote for politicians and then sit back and critique them, we have to keep organizing around the issues and legislation we care about.
rayne made the same point on emptywheel this week.
Kinda OT: the banner at the top of this page (for the moment) has a Romney ad: “Obamacare is wrong, and I’ll repeal it”. Astoundingly wrongheaded for the endgame, seems to me. From an outfit called Romney Victory, Inc out of Boston. Usual payment stuff, and at the bottom, you can win free airplane rides if you participate.
I have to wonder if this is a scam (I mean more than all Romney ads), a Dem plant, or just stupid? But I’m sure they’ll find multiple thousands of voters here waiting only to be reminded of Mitt’s brilliant plan. They’d do well to place at least 50 times more ads on this blog.
I wish I had a way of knowing just how much money Romney has spent advertising on this site, but it’s more than any other single advertiser, ever.
Well, Romney is a businessman, after all, and knows a good bet when he sees one. I’m sure ads on this site can put him over the top if he just ups the ante enough.
Agree, excellent point
Some downticket motivation from Nancy Pelosi:
I knew we were gonna win in 2008 when the day before the election we went to our neighborhood coordinator’s house to pick up door hangers. There was a long line of cars parked on the street with plates from all over the country…I mean, from everywhere, and they were all there to help.
Brought tears to my eyes, and I don’t think I’ll ever have that feeling again in my lifetime. It was beautiful.
I don’t complain about Obama much, but why he let all that energy after the election just dissipate and go largely unused I’ll never understand.
When the dust settles on the election we can revisit the discussion over the good and bad of Obama’s first term. But I don’t think there can be much argument that if somehow they’d gotten a more effective stimulus (either bigger, or the same size but 75-25 spend/tax cut ratio instead of closer to 50/50) we’d already be prematurely celebrating now as the economy would be in much better shape. Likely we’d also not be dealing with incumbent Senator Scott Brown and if the House were GOP their margin would be much smaller.
I know there is argument about whether that would have been possible … and indeed I can’t say that it would have been. But there is a very important lesson there, as the best progressive economists at the time were arguing for a bigger stimulus, so it’s not like this was not foreseeable.
No surprises here. I was on the phones at HQ in Chicago in 2008 and the way the organization focused on the ground game was amazing. Focus and discipline. It’s not that it takes brilliance. It takes hard work, the ability to plan the contingent paths to victory and then focus and discipline.
The fact that Obama has community organizing in his blood didn’t hurt. I sometimes wonder if Gingrich, Rove and others regret making fun of Obama the community organizer. It is FACE time, visiting with neighbors, and canvassing that get results. Too many “pundits” thought it was all about the technology in 2008. Perhaps more are clued in a bit now.
I’m concerned about 2014 and I wonder how OFA will survive after Obama leaves office in 2016 and I wonder what role Obama will take in the Dem party in the future. I hope other Dems have learned from this. Certainly there are many of us in the OFA grassroots eager to continue being active.
As I’ve said in the past, I’ve been volunteering since last December in Va. When I moved to a hub in Chesterfield, where we’ve been focused on just keeping Romney’s numbers down in the county, the growth over the past many months has been amazing. We were split into neighborhood teams, but recently reconvened with new members in another hub. Last weekend began the big push for canvassing where 1 million doors were knocked in VA.
Last night, Friday, we were still calling volunteers for the final critical days. I signed up 5 volunteers in two hours, one of whom was a 72 year old man whom I was hesitant to call. I was just thinking how many new people, especially older people, are we going to find in three days before the election? To my surprise, he said, “I’d love to help!” Two young men showed up who had just come in from Washington; they had worked on the 2008 campaign, and together, were committed to knocking on 150 doors on Saturday.
We had 80 shifts scheduled for Saturday in our area. We are, at this point, integrating with the Kaine campaign, but we have been including Kaine in our phone banking. Now, with the integration for the last push, people from both campaigns are helping to fill in areas of need for the other.
All of my calls for the past several months have been to people in the same county. Everything is laser-focused on tighter and tighter geographical areas.
The last calls we make will be rides to the polls and ensuring everyone gets out to vote. There is some very sophisticated coordination going on that I don’t remember from 2008, and it will be firmly in place on Election day as precincts report up the chain to Messina. Volunteers will be moved from location to location as needed within an hour of reporting.
I have spent the last 2 days doing the final pass through my district in SD. My house colleague is doing her home portion, I am doing mine. We are dropping either a GOTV hanger or additional persuasion material, depending on the person. It’s been 12 hours this weekend, tomorrow for 6 hours, and Tuesday on the phone. We’ll see what happens Tues.