This is really an excellent read, and an inspiring story:
Of all the things that went right for Patrick Tuesday, one big one was Menino’s legendary machine. By the end of the day, more Bostonians had voted than in 2006, supplying Patrick with vital support in the state’s most important Democratic stronghold. Help from labor unions, particularly the Service Employees International Union and the building trades, provided critical muscle on the ground. Neighborhood organizers with decades of political experience lent their expertise and personal networks.
But Menino’s operation did not make the difference alone. A new generation of political activists worked side-by-side with Menino volunteers, particularly in heavily minority neighborhoods, using everything from text messages to fliers on windshields to lengthy discussions to get out the vote.
etc. etc. It's all about the “social capital”, and meeting people face to face. We have those networks in Boston, and in Massachusetts generally; we should appreciate how special that is.
Also see John Walsh's comments, to the effect that after Scott Brown, simply calling land lines wasn't working anymore – we had to do the door-to-door.
Dear Democratic National Committee: If you want someone who can show you how to do winning politics … give Mr. Walsh your careful consideration.
I got the sense that the GOTV effort was really spurred by the Obama visit. They certainly took the opportunity to plug the GOTV effort to the large crowd.
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p>Are there any numbers to show how effective that was? How many signed up in the days following the rally at the Hynes?
The campaign has repeatedly claimed that 7,500 people signed up to volunteer at the rally itself:
http://dailycollegian.com/2010…
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p>Seems like typical campaign puffery to me but the rally does seem to have inspired at least a few thousand people. And who knows what the residual effect was in the days following and in light of the rally effect.
15000 attended the rally? I doubt there were that many inside – maybe half that. I don’t know how many in the line didn’t get in.
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p>And 7500 signups? They’re saying HALF the attendees signed up? That has to be smoke. I was thinking they got 1000 or so, which would be a GOOD number.
But we did get a lot of volunteer contacts from that event that we otherwise would not have gotten — people other than the usual progressive suspects. We were able to convert some of them to volunteers, but I can’t say what percentage we actually activated.
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p>As someone who’s always looking to plug people in to the ‘permanent’ progressive infrastructure locally, if we get just a handful of people to stick around, I’m happy.
…and hire back Howard Dean.
John, smart as he is, didn’t reinvent this style/organization of campaigning. Neither did Howard Dean for that matter, Paul Wellstone did. But the point is valid that John, Governor Patrick, the State Party, and all those organizers and staff who put this together are on to something that every other Democrat can learn from.
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p>We don’t have, with rare exceptions, the day-to-day organizations that we relied on for so many years: unions, women’s groups, civil rights groups, student groups. They provided a lot of the foot soldiers, so did urban machine’s like Menino’s. The right has these organizations, especially the fundamentalist churches.
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p>We are forced to recreate this effort/energy/organization every cycle. We need to find a way to keep this energy/organization going between cycles, that’s when we’ll start having a real impact.
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p>I lot of people from 2006 didn’t want to do much this time for the Governor because they felt abandoned after that campaign. Together We Can became another old bumper sticker. Same with Obama. People were fired up, we’d learned how to do the organizing, we made connections, built a community. We wanted to keep going to get things done. We didn’t just vote for a guy, we worked and voted for ideas.
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p>If we can get him, and all the others, re-elected in this environment, we can get his agenda passed. But we need to keep this going. That’s how you go from campaign to movement to government.
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For DNC Chair!
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p>I would faint with joy.
The people who pay the bills for the Democratic and/or Republican Party have no use for Dean…he’s a “loose cannon”.
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p>But I agree wholeheartedly that we need to fire Kaine’s sorry rear.
When I went to the GOTV meeting for my area, I was skeptical. I thought it was a GREAT idea, but I thought there was no way we were going to have enough bodies to meet the logistics. When I came in from poll checking at went to the local office, about 20 union guys walked in behind looking for their packets to go door-to-door.
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p>I took one look and said out loud “Enthusiasm gap my a##!”
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p>Great job by everyone, but we CANNOT sit on our heels now.