I know the Obama 2012 campaign has started because I found myself writing the phrase “white working class voters” here yesterday. Oh, for God’s sake, not that again. In any event. However. There will be all of that chatter, and then there will be a campaign that is actually going on in states and cities.
Here’s the first Ohio HQ opening:
Chillicothe on Tuesday was the epicenter of President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign in Ohio. Campaign staffers and volunteers gathered at 149 W. Water St. to celebrate the opening of the campaign’s first field office in Ohio.”We came to Chillicothe because we know the importance of this area in this state, a swing state. … We’re not ceding any votes,” said Greg Schultz, state director for the Obama campaign.
And here is what politically obsessed rank and file Democrats in Ohio are talking about:
Obama’s grass-roots operation in Ohio already has been kicked into gear for the 2012 campaign, backers said. Over the past eight months, Organizing for America, an Obama campaign arm, held 3,500 events across the state in successful efforts to gather signatures for referendums challenging Senate Bill 5 and House Bill 194, GOP-passed laws to limit collective bargaining and voter access to polls, respectively.“They really got an opportunity to test drive their operation,” said Timothy M. Burke, chairman of the Hamilton County Democratic Party.
I hear “test drive” over and over, because the Issue 2 campaigns and the HB 194 effort were huge, and people are wondering if that will be an advantage in 2012.
Issue Two was labor-led and then gained crazy-good momentum out in the wider world of voters, but the petition drive to put a repeal of the voter suppression law on the ballot was different, to me.
There, OFA succeeded in organizing on an issue that not enough people care about: voting rights. We’ve been harping on voting rights in Ohio since the first suppression law went in (2006) but voter protection has always, honestly, been left to the lawyers. Volunteer lawyers, paid lawyers who bring election-related litigation, interest groups that specialize in voter access, great that we have all these lawyers, but voting should be a core issue for everyone who votes or wants to vote. It can’t be shunted off to the pros. People have to engage on it and think it through, because media coverage of actual nuts and bolts voting process is horribly misleading and confusing, and there’s a whole Right wing pundit sector muddying the water by accusing random people of unlawfully voting.
We don’t need more lawyers on the access side of the fraud v access battle. We have hundreds. We need more voters on the access side of the fraud v access battle. The petition effort on SB 194 took it out to voters, and made us all talk and think about voting process and access, and that’s where it belongs.
Benjamin Franklin
I understand why righty blogs are ignoring the news in which Iranians, ala ’79
have stormed an Embassy (UK). It is counter-intuitive to their War Drums. If the sanctions are working, bibi, who must have roses strewn on his path to war, has to experience some coitus interruptus. We can’t let the momentum reduce one iota.
But, why do I not see it in the thinking blogs?
Napoleon
Chillicothe?
OK I was going to write something snarky about there being perhaps dozens of Democrats in Chillicothe but they actually have a surprising number of Dems in the city government for where it is at in the state.
(OT – amazingly Chillicothe’s Wiki page seems to not mention that Tecumseh was born there).
Tata
When I read “white working class voters” it always means white guys with white guy issues and never, never means white working women with working woman issues. Let’s be more precise and not help other people render us invisible.
gogol's wife
Thanks for all your work in Ohio. I really hate the electoral college system. It means I have to think hard about Ohio and Pennsylvania every four years, and I don’t want to (sorry).
kay
@Napoleon:
It’s a “bellweather” city for the state, because of income and demographics.
Linda Featheringill
@Tata: #2
You have a point. Perhaps we should explore this.
kay
@Linda Featheringill:
I’d love it if they’d do a breakdown: white working class men/women.
That’d be interesting, unlike the incessant blather on “lunch buckets” and such.
burnspbesq
@ Kay:
Blasphemy!
;-)
Willard
Make Romney own his support for SB 5. I kept the video of him stating his 100% support of Issue 2, if you need it.
I think the image of Romney as CEO-in-chief will hurt him in Ohio.
trollhattan
O/T in Washington state, macing–out, Tasering–in.
seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2016881758_legislature29m.html
Donut
Thanks for this post, Kay.
Whocouldanode that a defeat (the 2010 GOP wave) could be flipped and turned into a strength, not only in the immediate sense of countering the destructive legislation, but also in the sense that a situation that was recently perceived as Democratic weakness could be used to organize for the next election. The counter punches have landed, and now this is offense time coming up. Nice.
kay
@Donut:
If you’re interested in this, there’s a BJ reader and sometime commenter in Wisconsin who sent me a really good first hand analysis of what they’re doing there. I’m going to try to post it tonight, when he isn’t working and can (perhaps!) actually comment on it.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
And the rest of us here in Ohio are very grateful you’re helping get those voters to inform them. Those I suspect a few of us wouldn’t mind being among the lawyers.
ETA: Just saw at TPM that King John doesn’t enjoy reading OH press. Ha ha ha.
rikryah
thanks for the update, kay
Eric S.
His campaign HQ (in Chicago) is located three floors above my office. Despite sharing an elevator bank I’ve got no insight of any consequence to add. They’ve been up there for several months. The only thing I’ve been able to discern is that 40 years of age I’m at least a decade too old to work up there.
Napoleon
Kay,
OT but Ed Kilgore channels my comments that I made yesterday in the thread regarding “abandoning” the white working class:
thedemocraticstrategist.org/strategist/2011/11/a_vote_is_a_vote.php
kay
Thanks, Napoleon I’ll read it
I don’t know why this whole subject makes me so cranky, but it does.
I think I’m tired of what I perceive as “marketing”, to select groups of people.
I’m tired of being marketed to, or AT, and I can’t be alone in that :)
debbie
There’s good marketing and there’s bad marketing. The DNC ran the “Mitt vs. Mitt” ad for the first time in central Ohio during the local 5:00 news. It was more than enjoyable to watch, considering that Crossroads and NFIB ads have been a constant.
BruinKid
So you think it’s a good thing OFA was able to help get enough signatures to stop Kasich’s voter suppression law, right? Or are you saying they should have been able to do more?
kay
@BruinKid:
Honestly, I had given up persuading people. It’s hard. There’s been this massive misinformation campaign.
“Voter impersonation fraud” (which is the one and only thing voter ID prevents) doesn’t make any sense. But to get there, you have to walk through voting, as a process, and people skip that. I think they skip that because media and conservatives muddle the whole freaking thing, and make it sound arbitrary and chaotic, and it’s just not. It’s rule-bound and orderly.
So, I’ve been really heartened that people seem to be saying “you know, this doesn’t make any sense, now that I think about it”.
I think it’s great, and I was amazed they did as well as they did.