From Talking Points Memo
The Obama campaign is moving to get a quick start on the general election, and is moving ahead with a plan to send 3,600 volunteers to 17 key states this weekend. The volunteers will work full time for the next six weeks, referred to as “Obama Organizing Fellowships.”The Obama campaign appears determined to avoid the pitfall of letting their grassroots enthusiasm dissipate after a major victory — namely, winning the nomination — while there is still even more work to be done for the general election.
The 17 states are :
Colorado
Florida
Georgia
Iowa
Michigan
Missouri
North Carolina
New Hampshire
New Jersey
New Mexico
Nevada
Ohio
Oregon
Pennsylvania
Virginia
Washington
Wisconsin
If this is Obama’s idea of a beginning, I cannot wait for the middle and the end of this campaign. We here at BMG, and other progressive Democratic blogs, have been waiting and working for a national campaign that could energize, organize, and mobilize the grassroots like this. We may have found it.
In my opinion, a major reason Obama beat Clinton is that he ran a better campaign, from top management to online to field. A lot of winning political campaigns is execution: infrastructure, management, details. These organizing fellowships were launched several months ago, when they asked for applications, and now are being implemented. This kind of thing is as important as policy positions in the drive to 1600 Pennsylvania, I think. Cf: Deval Patrick campaign for Governor, 2006.
They historically haven’t been all that active politically, but got started (at my wife’s behest) with Patrick Murphy’s 2006 House campaign (he won). This year, my father-in-law (a Korean war vet) went door to door for Obama (alas, Obama ended up getting destroyed in Bucks county).
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p>Though it didn’t show up in the primary results, Obama’s organization was very impressive in PA. I like his chances there in November.
I’d bet he adds a few more in a few weeks: Mississippi, South Carolina, Nebraska (CD-01, CD-02), Indiana, and possibly Arkansas and Alaska.
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p>Mississippi is winnable if he can turn out blacks at a higher rate than the historical average and if he can win 40% of the white vote. South Carolina isn’t a likely win, but they’ve got a senate race and Lindsay Graham is perfectly capable of screwing up on the campaign trail. NE-03 is landslide GOP, but CDs 1 and 2 aren’t, they’re close to Iowa and Missouri, and forcing McCain to play defense in more places spreads his thin money even thiner. Indiana goes red for the POTUS, but is more moderate than that with 5 of 9 House seats blue as well as a senate seat. Again, use volunteer hours to force McCain to spend dollars. Arkansas, with a popular Dem up for reelection in the senate and 3 of the 4 House seats could play in his favor if and only if HRC will go high profile for BHO in AR. Alaska has an unpopular GOP senator and could work out like South Carolina — if volunteers are willing to travel out there, it might be worth it.
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p>I’d have suggested Louisiana, but I’d bet Landrieu prefers he stay out, so he just might. Finally, if he’s feeling cocky, he might put more resources in Minnesota. Sure it’ll likely go BHO, but the closer he is to 60 senators the better off he is, and Minnesota is likely to have a tight race for the seat currently held by Coleman.
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p>Some states I expect he’ll soften his interest in: Washington, Oregon, New Jersey, and Georgia. The first three will firm up their support of BHO, and the fourth will likely firm up its support for JMcC.
is a very divided state. The dem governor only won by about 130 votes last time, and is up for re-election this fall. She is reasonably well liked but not wildly popular. The opponent this fall is the same guy who lost last time. He’s an ass, but he’s all the gop has and has great name recognition. The problems with organizing in WA is that most liberals are concentrated in the Seattle-Olympia area, a tiny part of the state. The rest of the state is largely dominated by republicans.
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p>I’ve heard some conjecture that WA governor Gregoire may be on the Obama VP list of possibilities. Well he can’t have her! I don’t think there are any other dems who could jump in on short notice and win the gubernatorial election. Given how closely divided the state is, it would be devastating to even mildly liberal goals to lose Gregoire. For one, marriage equality (or some beefier facsimile thereof) is on the line.
Firstly, divided or not, the state is huge for BHO. From pollster.com:
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p>That’s pretty dang substantial — a 16 point gap and widening.
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p>Secondly, while it’s true that most liberals are concentrated in Seattle-Olympia, it’s also true that (a) most Washingtonians live in the Seattle-Olympia area, (b) it’s easier to organize dense areas since travel time is shorter and transit options are wider, (c) of the 9 US House members, 6 are Dems [and their area is the Western 1/3rd of the state], (d) both US Senators are Dem, (e) the state House of Rep is 63-35 Dem, and (f) the state Senate is 32-17 Dem. The gubernatorial race is in fact the only statewide race that’s been close in recent history.
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p>Washington isn’t divided per se. It just contains large rural areas, and large rural areas tend to be GOP territory nationwide. They “dominate” the rest of a largely unpopulated state, no different than rural Oregon, California, etc.
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p>If BHO loses Washington, he’ll have lost the POTUS election in a landslide, and no amount of volunteers in the state will be able to stop it.
is in the seattle-bellevue-tacoma-olympia complex of cities, and much of this area is strongly gop. i’m not saying that obama doesn’t have a decent chance in taking the state, but it would be utter foolishness to think that organizing here will be a cake walk. if obama wins, it will be as much because disgruntled paul & huckabee supporters stay home as because people come out for obama.
i should say that some of those republicans that won’t come out for mccain will come out for obama. i met several in my local caucus. on the flip side, i have yet to meet a single dem who is not planning on voting for obama.
If so, Barr could have a much more pronounced effect on McCain’s chances than Nader will have on the Obama’s.
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i’m not sure yet how the paul-barr thing will shake out in WA state. but one think is certain, there is still real and significant support here for paul (and barr?), but NOT for nader.
had a lot to do with the poor campaign she ran. John Kerry got a way bigger percentage of the vote than she did.
i don’t know about how she ran her campaign, as i wasn’t here then. however, Gregoire and her repub opponent are currently consistently polling even. let’s be clear: WA is NOT a slam-dunk dem state when it comes to governor and president. if you want this state, don’t take anything for granted and learn how to appeal to the libertarian mindset that inhabits as many dems and repubs as it does actual libertarians. hey but i only live and vote here – don’t mind me. đŸ˜‰
but frankly, if BHO loses Washington, McCain will have gotten himself 350 EVs or more. All of the data suggests BHO will win Washington by 10 points or more. Your opinions, while important and interesting, simply aren’t supported by the mountains of data which suggest that Washington will go blue unless BHO suffers an epic collapse.
good luck, and don’t say i didn’t warn you.
This thing is updated daily as poll data come in. Perhaps a bookmark on this might help you feel more confident? There’s really nothing going on to indicate that Washington will all of a sudden turn red, really. Pollster’s graph corroborates this, too.
Fivethirtyeight.com is another site worthy of everybody’s attention. Rather than just look at the most recent polls, he tries to do a much more sophisticated statistical analysis of the last N polls, where each poll is weighted according to age and the pollster’s “reliability” (as determined in previous elections and during the primary season just past).
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p>Very interesting site, and I will be paying close attention to it throughout the coming months.
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p>FWIW, 538.com rates WA as 95% likely to go for Obama.
Bookmarked for future reference.
After a bit more browsing the web and blogosphere, as this story has emerged, this is just phase I of the 50 state strategy.
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p>It also shows the difference between organizing and fighting in every state and campaigning / spending money in every state. A grassroots / netroots campaign doesn’t need as much money and staff as a top-heavy money/media campaign run by empty Armani’s in DC. Democrats made their comeback when we figured that out. McBush doesn’t have that, in fact many Republican grassroots activists will probably sit out this election because they don’t like McSogynist.
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p>I’m glad we’re finally playing offense. Defense sucks, unless it’s Paul on Kobe.
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With any luck, BO will match his results in many of the primary states where the headlines the next day were “OBAMA DRAWS 75,000 people to stadium” and then in small print “Hillary wins 57% to Obama 41%”.
75,000
Obama 59%
The practical political point of a “50 state strategy” is not to build up the largest possible popular vote margin. At least under our current electoral college system as constituted that doesn’t matter (please don’t use this as another opportunity to tout the value of National Popular Vote, just start your own thread). States like Massachusetts that are safely and predictably “deep blue” are only worthy of an investment of limited campaign resources for other (still important) reasons.
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p>I begin with the premise that if Barack Obama isn’t going to carry Massachusetts in November by a healthy margin we have some pretty horrible political problems and some very bad times in store for us.
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p>In my mind the point of building an organization for Obama in MA (and elsewhere in non-battleground states) has to be to extract other benefits for the campaign. Those benefits might be broken into four basic elements: money (legal campaign contributions are always welcome, and money stays green even when it crosses state lines), volunteers (most importantly those who are willing and able to travel to battleground states or to phone bank across state lines), down ticket coat tail benefits for the Democratic ticket (even in MA there are some toughly contested November battles for State Representative or State Senator), and welcoming the newly inspired/motivated and building their political skills and commitments in ways that will pay dividends beyond the race at hand.
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p>This is where Blue Mass Group and the folks who read it can really prove our worth! We can offer our opinions and expert analysis all we want, but if we are not willing to help in these ways, we should stop pretending that we really care about the outcome of this race. We need to organize local meet up groups and to otherwise organize ourselves and other like minded MA residents to make these kinds of contributions to the Obama campaign.
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p>Four years ago many of us, including many of us who were not with Senator Kerry before he secured the Democratic nomination for President (I am grateful especially to the Deaniacs who I met in this venture), organized ourselves in meet up groups and traveled north regularly to assist in bringing New Hampshire into the Democratic column. I know from personal experience that hundreds of folks made this short trip weekend after weekend going door to door in the Granite State. You may recall that New Hampshire was the only state in the country that Kerry carried that Gore had lost four years earlier. If Gore had gotten a mere 7,300 more votes in New Hampshire in 2000, Florida would not have mattered and we would have avoided the nightmare of eight years of Bush-Cheney.
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p>It is up to us to contribute to the Obama victory in New Hampshire this time! At this moment, NH is the only state near here that is considered a toss up. And while we are working to secure four more electoral votes towards an Obama victory we can have an important impact down ticket. Both US House seats in New Hampshire, captured in 2006 by Democratic challengers who are seeking reelection, are battleground districts. And former Governor Jeanne Shaheen is leading John Sununu in the US Senate race in early polls. Capturing a GOP Senate seat and moving the Dems one vote closer to closure of GOP filibusters could be hugely important.
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p>Let get to work!
Amen, and thanks for the reminder.
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p>The Obama web site has plenty of things for us to do. NH and CT are a bit close for comfort at the moment. CT is problematic with Lieberman campaigning for McCheney. Don’t forget that we have two Senate seats we can pick-up in New England: ME and NH. Plus downticket races.
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p>As John Walsh said in his breakout session: Go! Pick a state, any state, where you can help and it looks like you’re needed. Get on the web site, call Obama headquarters, call the state party there; whatever, just go.
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p>Do the math, only a few votes per precinct make the difference in most states. Even a few days, a few phone calls, a few letters, a couple donations; whatever you can do.
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p>It is time for US to get to work and put our money where our keyboards are. Or something like that.
…is, as you imply, to take care of New Hampshire, as we did in 2004.
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p>New Hampshirites made McCain viable in 2000, and brought him back from the dead in 2008. I think there’s a real feel of a personal connection between many independent voters and McCain, and those are the toughest kinds of argument to counter with a rational approach. Better to join in the contest and make those same kinds of personal connections with voters on the behalf of our nominee.
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p>You’ll notice NH on Obama’s list, with good reason. We’ll need all hands on deck in the Granite State.
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p>And money. We’re expected to cough up some real dough.
The good news is that the NH primary taught us most of what we need to know to work in NH. If you want to make a diffence, look no further.
Organizing:
Progressive Massachusetts for Barack Obama
http://my.barackobama.com/page…
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p>Fundraising
Generation Obama
http://my.barackobama.com/page…
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p>You can e-mail me, if you prefer. I can give you more specific contact info. Canvassing has already begun.
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p>John ‘Jack’ Mitchell
sleeping.giant.stirs(at)gmail.com
Clearly they did have a plan. This guy is smart in so many ways it’s hard to even conceptualize how smart he is.