So this is where a regional Ohio Democratic Party organizer, a regional OFA organizer, and some area county Democratic Party leaders have a meeting:
The Ohio Democratic Party and OFA came to us for two reasons. First, they want local information so the campaigns can tie the national policy and message to local issues. An example of this would be starting with something broad like “rural health care issues and the Affordable Care Act” and then we would help tailor that to three Ohio counties. The CEO of the hospital and medical group here tells the local newspaper constantly that he has difficulty recruiting and retaining physicians in our rural area. Everyone here knows that we have trouble both recruiting and retaining doctors. The local focus then would be to hit those parts of the PPACA that provide incentives for physicians to practice in rural areas. Another example would be, broadly, nationally, “manufacturing and trade rule enforcement.” We have a company here that produces tires. Some of the trade enforcement actions that Obama has taken will benefit that specific tire maker.
Second, they wanted to offer us help with our local Democratic candidates, whether those candidates are statehouse or all the way down to a county commissioner or city council member. As I have mentioned here before I am helping a statehouse candidate with his race. If we were to create or purchase campaign literature for that local candidate the larger ODP/OFA operation would “carry” that lit for us if they’re canvassing in the local candidate’s district or county or town. That’s huge for us because we have nowhere near the sort of blanket coverage and volunteer army that the state and national campaigns have. This sort of coordination is more complicated than I’ve indicated here because there are reporting rules and procedures that have to be followed when federal and state and local campaigns share resources in any manner, but I won’t bore you with the campaign finance reporting side.
It was a really productive two hour meeting, but it could have been an equally productive one hour meeting if some at the table had resisted the urge to play national strategist and/or pundit. I’m sympathetic to this, everyone likes to play national campaign manager, and I’ve certainly been guilty of it myself, but that isn’t what we were there for. They didn’t come for us to tell them what one or another media personality said on Morning Joe and how the national campaign should respond to that, they came to ask us what we’re hearing from the people here. They already know what’s said on Morning Joe. What they don’t know is what people are saying here. These reps from ODP and OFA aren’t managers or strategists at the national level anyway, they’re organizers at the county and state level. They couldn’t act on our advice on national strategy even if they wanted to. Obviously, I love to talk politics and I genuinely like a lot of the local Democrats, but we can (and do) have those sorts of broad hypothetical discussions ourselves all the time. I don’t know why we’d spend an hour on “Obama should….” when we have two people in front of us who want specific and local insight and in return are offering specific and local help.
During the meeting the heat broke and we had a (welcome!) downpour, and it was so cool and fresh when the rain stopped that I walked around the maybe 10 block long city-center area. There is no Romney office and the only Romney “presence” I saw was a Romney sign in the window of a place that sells knitting and embroidery supplies. The Obama office pictured below been open since April.
Brian R.
Love these updates, Kay, and love the work you’re doing. Thanks for both.
Valdivia
As always thank you Kay. It is wonderful and reassuring to hear how the OFA folks work on the ground, and have a presence that wants to incorporate the local issues and have the back of local candidates. Signs of a great operation.
Violet
Love these updates, Kay. Always so informative and interesting. Glad to hear the OFA folks seem to be on the ball.
How’s your candidate doing?
barath
Thanks for doing all this work…really makes me think I need to get active in making some calls for the campaign. I was so active in 2008 and haven’t done anything other than donate this year.
Linda Featheringill
Question: Why hasn’t Team Romney completely saturated Ohio with people on the ground? Romney really needs Ohio.
Kay
@Linda Featheringill:
I don’t know. It might be happening and I’m just not seeing it.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Linda Featheringill: He’s planning on buying the state in October. It’s his surprise.
Origuy
Thanks, Kay. Whenever someone goes on about a third party as a real alternative, I wonder how they are going to build this kind of grass-roots infrastructure. The Republicans in the 1850s had the remains of the Whig Party and the country was a lot smaller.
It sounds like you need an assertive moderator at these meetings. Running effective meetings is a skill that not everyone has.
Felanius Kootea
I really like the coordination attempt for down-ticket candidates because it’s become very clear that winning the presidency alone just won’t cut it. Crazy state governors and state legislators are effective at moving the country back into recession with austerity focused policies.
Valdivia
@Linda Featheringill:
I read somewhere a while ago that the Romney team would be relying on a sort of Mormon volunteer army on the ground to get the vote out. As Kay many times has told us I think the idea that you can just outsource the on the ground part of the election is insane. You need to have the campaign controlling that. Also–the idea of revving up the ground ops after the convention seems deluded to me. But you know Unlimited Corporate Cash=Victory.
Violet
@Origuy: So true. I once worked with a guy who ran the very best meetings ever. We started on time. He had an agenda, which everyone also had, he read through it briefly at the beginning, kept to it, and the meetings ended on time. I always complimented him on how well he ran his meetings. Just amazing. So much got done and everyone left happy.
Xecky Gilchrist
@Violet: I had a boss like this too – it’s sadly rare. I think the key is that they believe meetings are about getting stuff done instead of taking out their own authoritarian fantasies and / or insecurities.
Kay
@Valdivia:
I have to say, though, I think The Mormon Theory (if true) is different than outsourcing. Presumably any Mormons for Mitt would be pretty motivated people.
Yutsano
@Kay: Oh please Willard. Use kids on missions to go out and spread your word. That’ll go over well.
The Mormon church is not a strong enough presence in Ohio (or anywhere on the Eastern seaboard) to create an effective ground game from scratch. Willard is gonna have to get volunteers outside the church. And he still isn’t a favoured candidate by any means.
Valdivia
@Kay:
I agree. I think it will be a combination of both, but motivation alone won’t do the trick I assume. I think what is strange is the (seeming) lack of on the ground campaign presence/actual infrastructure. No matter how motivated your volunteers are if you are jetting them in without on the ground network you control and direct and if there are competing networks trying to get a team to act efficiently will be very difficult.
@Yutsano: I think I saw somewhere (again can’t remember where) that it would be useful in Colorado and Nevada. But even then, my point about an actual campaign on the ground months in advance is hard to foresee how these volunteers actually win it on the ground for him when it is close.
Yutsano
@Valdivia: Ground games are local operations. Flying in a bunch of volunteers from Utah just looks like the Church is trying to interfere in Presidential politics which could open up a huge can of worms for them. Plus even in Colorado Mormons have a large resentment factor. Willard will have a very tough time flipping that state especially with a popular Democratic governor who isn’t afraid of Obama.
Kay
@Valdivia:
This is sort of lofty and philosophical when talking about a “ground game” but I feel as if CEO Mitt and his board members running a national campaign from on-high fits in so many ways.
I think one of the reasons we have such stark income inequality is we stopped valuing the work of the people all the way down on the end of the line. We worship CEO’s and managers, and completely dismiss the contributions of lower-level people in any organization. We celebrate MANAGING the peons. The peons themselves are interchangeable cogs. When you read about a successful company in the US business press, do you ever read a glowing review of the whole “team”? No. You read about the magical, super-genius CEO. It’s like the other people that work there (and had to have had something to do with any CEO’s success) don’t exist.
The Moar You Know
@Valdivia: This actually worked like gangbusters in California during the Prop 8 marriage amendment horseshit, which passed handily. The Mormons were everywhere, entire families and their kids out canvassing and working door-to-door, and they’re really fucking good at both campaigning and GOTV, as witnessed by the Prop 8 results – no way that should have passed in California, even given the embarrassing and total lack of any attempt to work against it.
Southern Beale
This was totally expected:
Shooting a gun in a dark, smoke-filled theater in the midst of chaos: brilliant!
El Cid
I have learned that very, very few people know how to either lead or comply with a meeting.
Setting an agenda, knowing there’s a time limit, agreeing on time limits for each issue, knowing what decisions have to be made…
It’s not easy to do, and lots of people don’t care.
‘We have a lot to do and very little time’ apparently sounds to many people like ‘what we need to focus on is your long dialog about something which concerns you, because all of us are free to be here for the next 10 hours’.
Valdivia
@Yutsano: totally agree
@Kay: and excellent larger point about the idea that it is the magic of the CEO that leads to success as a fetish in our present day.
@The Moar You Know:
I think you can’t say it was exclusively the Mormon GOTV that won Prop 8 no? It’s never in isolation. I mean that you can’t expect this to be disconnected from the local politics of the presidential campaign. I think it’s a mistake to think the Prop8 drive and the Ohio ground game for the republicans is the same thing.
Linda Featheringill
So I can look forward to the population of Ohio suddenly increasing after Labor Day? Goody!
Of course, I live in a reliably Democratic area so maybe I’ll miss some of that.
El Cid
More corporate communist underminers.
Clearly he does not understand business and how the market works and how to reward the jobkriyaturs.
First you destroy the company, and then you collect your bonus and, and then you whine about how unappreciated you are.
slag
@Kay:
See also: Why we don’t value government.
Support structures, operational infrastructure, all the other organizational “cost centers”…we, on a fundamental national level, have a much harder time valuing that stuff. The swaggering, paradigm-shifting Steve Jobs is at the heart of our national identity while the nameless, functionless Maytag Man sits idly at his desk.
El Cid
@Southern Beale: Not just smoke-filled, tear-gas filled.
So, you’ve got a bunch of non-professional non-law-enforcement types, in a dark theater, with their eyes burning and barely able to keep them open, with people running in every direction, the movie playing and flickering, movie noises, screams, people running by you and bumping you and climbing over you — yeah, we need you to fumble with your holstered weapon, get it out, undo the safety, and in the midst of trying to open your burning eyes, just try and shoot in the darkened direction where you are pretty sure you last saw the killer.
And then, remember there are others like you, in that situation, and then they’ll think you’re the killer, and you might be, given that you might have just shot one of their family members through your tears in the dark.
Hell, why not?
It sounds like a profile of how we let our banking systems run.
FlipYrWhig
@Kay:
It’s almost like we let them get away with feeling like and even saying openly that they did it all on their own, when actually they had plenty of help building and running their businesses! A politician should really think about making a point about that.
Piratedan
you guys are forgetting, the R’s already have a ground game, it’s called Fox News and they don’t have to organize about local issues because they already have their talking points and beat those buttons relntlessly….
abortion
minorities
sluts
athiests
soshulism
class war
guns
capitalism
freedumb
its like wingnut bingo, any combination of five, or four if you have the free spot in play will ensure a proper campaign. It’s turnkey politics, doesn’t matter what you did or who you did it to, play upon those issues and you too, can be a viable Republican candidate for office.
MattR
@Southern Beale:
Fixed that for them.
Redshift
Hey, Kay, something I’ve always wondered about. Way back before the health care reform battle, I remember reading stories about farm wives getting jobs in town just so their families could have health insurance. I don’t know how widespread it actually is, but I always thought more should have been made of that.
Any thoughts?
jl
I should be so lucky that I ever would be in meetings that are only twice as long as they should be.
If Mitt and GOP is outsourcing their GOTV, whether to Mormon Church or anyone else, I am doubtful it will be as effective as an integrated operation that started way back with local registration drives. Moar talks about Pprop 8 in CA, but that was going up against essentially nothing.
A lot of local knowledge is needed for an effective GOTV. And it needs to be tied in with a knowledge of what local groups need extra attention and who is going to be detailed to them (which ties in with registration drives done much earlier), good relationship with staff at polling places, knowledge of state laws and regs to deal with problems, etc.
So if our opponents have the modern CEO attitude of ‘pay to have a guy handle it’, then I say that is great. Let them waste as much Unlimited Corporate Cash as they want.
The Moar You Know
@Valdivia: Of course not. I can’t and wouldn’t say that. But I can say that without it, it would have lost. Period.
We disagree. I think there’s a good chance that it is going to work the same way, as I suspect the Church was rather happy with the results the last time they did this. I think it would be a lethal mistake to not at least plan for the contingency.
Redshift
@Piratedan: Nope, Fox News isn’t a ground game. Where exactly do they have people on the ground? How many Fox fans are going out and doing anything without AFP busing them somewhere?
Yeah, a lot of ridiculous candidates can be “viable” because of the Fox base, but viable doesn’t mean winning. I’d love to be running against a candidate who thinks he doesn’t need anything more.
chuck butcher
If you are talking to a member of Congress, a high level staffer or a campaign manager there might be some point in sharing your ideas regarding policy or campaigning, but doing it with an organizer simply wastes everyone’s time. “How do I deal with question x” is valid, but not “I think you should…”
I’ve worked with elected officials and political arms and I’ve worked with organizers and organizers need two things, “what can I do to help” and “here are the connections to the community.” I’ve attended a lot of organizing classes put on by organizers and they know more and are better at it than I am, despite all the classes.
Best to you Kay
Svensker
Tell me about it! Not just in politics. I went to a Library Friends meeting yesterday that was supposed to be about figuring out a small problem and how to solve it. Meeting should have been an hour. 2-1/2 hours later I had to leave because the meter had run out on my parking spot and they were still going round and round with bloviation galore on the state of the economy, the collapse of the educational system, the demise of reading, and different ways that books for sale could be shelved while being researched, and the Mayor’s peculiar personality. What we’d actually come together to solve is still pending. Aaaarrrgggghhhh.
Some people sure do love the sound of their own voice.
Martin
@jl:
Prop 8 was tricky. A LARGE part of the democratic base here are Latino Catholics and a smaller part are African American and Asian Catholics/Baptists/etc.
Obama won the state by a massive margin but a lot of his voters crossed over to vote in favor of Prop 8. There was some argument that it was confusion over what yes/no were voting for, but you could clearly see where that crossover happened – and it happened in more heavily religious communities – particularly Catholic communities. The GOP had their GOTV running every Sunday morning which the opposition was largely powerless to oppose. Even if we had picketed every Catholic church in the state, what was said inside the building was going to obviously overpower what was said outside.
The No on 8 ground game wasn’t bad – it basically wound up being Obama’s ground game that was completely not needed moving over to oppose Prop 8. We went to ever house with an Obama sign and asked them to put up a No on 8 sign – even if that required taking the Obama sign down. We did no work for Obama because he didn’t need it – Prop 8 did, though – but we couldn’t get the message out in a way that carried the kind of authority that the Yes on 8 message did. Politicking from the pulpit is VERY, VERY effective.
Valdivia
@The Moar You Know:
I think that the main difference here is that Obama has been on the ground with his own organization for months now. In a small community with the locals going door to door, local knowledge etc. My point is that parachuting people in October vs having a ground army there for months doing the hard work delivers a very different outcome.
Unless this Mormon army is already in all of these states in which case it is an even ground game.
schrodinger's cat
@Kay: Will they knock on doors in pairs, wearing neatly pressed shirts with ties.
ETA: May be they can form a strategic alliance with Jehovah’s Witnesses too.
Piratedan
@Redshift: you need to get out of your house more if you don’t believe that Fox News isn’t an effective ground game for the R’s. Thread after thread on this blog mentions how Fox News is on in doctors offices, gyms, hotel lobbies, airports all around this country, incessantly. They target the elderly and those folks unlikely to have the time to check them on their facts and claims. Not sure how else you explain the systematic takeover of state legislatures over the last twenty years, it isn’t because Dem policies are that unpopular, because once what is explained to be in the bill that are being proposed, the majority of folks support those policies. It’s the systematic misinformation of American voters by outfits like Fox and the MSM’s unwillingness to identify the Big Lie that is causing Dems to lose power locally, imho.
Kristine
@slag:
Preventive maintenance isn’t sexy. You spend $$$ fixing a cracked foundation or upgrading wiring or plumbing? What fun is that? Much more fun to throw on a splashy paint job, even if the foundation is rotting.
Yes, I am a little bound up in house repair issues lately.
Kay
@schrodinger’s cat:
I only have one Mormon story, so I’ll tell it. In 2008, we rented an Obama headquarters on the town square. They put a tv in there, so we went to watch the debates together, which was actually a lot of fun. So two young men wandered in one night, they were really polite, so I was talking with them. One of them was for McCain and one was for Obama. After they left someone told me they were Mormon missionaries. That’s my sum-total Mormon exposure, other than Big Love, where I loved the incredibly complex female characters, but found the male characters sanctimonious, annoying and sort of boring.
jl
@Martin: I mostly worked Central Valley in 2008, and local GOTV for Obama wanted us to stay away from Prop 8 when discussing issues, unless a person brought it up, in which case we were supposed to be ‘let your personal beliefs be your guide’. That was a problem too.
Not sure it was just religion, I think also male insecurity kooties. In Catholic communities I dealt with (mostly Hispanic and Filipino), women and young adults were not a problem. Older men freaked out, as I remember. A few of them talked about not voting for Obama over it, though after a brief discussion, they admitted that would be cutting off their nose to spite their faces.
But older men don’t seem to take their religion nearly as seriously as the women. The older dudes are more into going through the motions in order to do their duty, which may be the problem: a different idea of what religion is than the women.
Most younger people were like ‘sure, I’ll vote against it. why not?”
Edit: changed ‘for’ to ‘against’ above, and that confusion was a problem too.
LanceThruster
Thank you sincerely for your efforts.
You swing state people (the “you people” used with the utmost respect) are really on the front lines of the battle.
I can certainly empathize when other volunteers can lose sight of the primary focus (as I was occasionally wont to do). Marshalling the forces of those volunteering their time can be very much like trying to herd cats.
Much appreciation and sincere regards.
Dennis SGMM
Kay,
Thank you for your continuing hard work. A special thanks for doing it in a state that does count. I’m out here in CA, known to pols from both parties as “The ATM state” so my efforts on behalf of the Democratic party are for my soul’s sake rather than affecting national politics.
Redshift
@Piratedan: I get out of my house plenty, working on campaigns, which is how I know what a ground game is. You might want to try it sometime. I also see what Republican campaigns are doing, and it isn’t sitting back and assuming everyone will vote for them because Fox spreads lies about Democrats. The Religious Right has also spent those decades organizing, getting candidates elected at the local level, employing and actual ground game.
Yes, Fox is a big problem we have to work against. In a low-turnout election, it can turn the tide. That doesn’t make a TV in your doctor’s office a campaign ground game.
WaterGirl
II live in Illinois. I was on the ground in Iowa for 10 days before the Iowa caucus in early January. Then I was on the ground in Colorado for the 14 days before the Colorado caucus.
The difference was night and day. In Iowa, two of us were assigned to each Iowa precinct, and it was all door-to-door, all day, every day. You were in your precinct on foot every day until the day of the caucus, except for working the Obama events. Then it was all about visibility for the morning drive time, visibility anywhere and everywhere at lunchtime, then it was caucus prep and work at the the caucus for your precinct.
This was my first campaign work ever, so I thought Colorado would be like Iowa. No so. In Boulder where I worked, there was NO door-to-door. None. It was all phones and data entry, all the time. What works one place just doesn’t work in another, I guess. Great that they were smart enough to know that!
Like Barath, I have done nothing except donate this time around. The stakes are no less high this time around. I can’t figure out why I don’t feel the same urgency to get out there and work work work.
Southern Beale
@El Cid:
Hey it worked in that Bruce Willis movie I saw once!
jl
And forgot to add that local Congressional and state leg GOTV operations in Central Valley did not want the precinct walkers to touch Prop 8 with a ten foot pole.
When I think about the problems Prop 8 caused for a unified campaign message and talk through of issues when persuading voters for GOTV, I can see why the GOP loves them their wedge issues.
Sorry for saying Prop 8 was a ‘problem’, but speaking purely from a ‘get your person elected’ POV.
Southern Beale
@Valdivia:
Yeah folks love it when the Mormons come knocking on the front door at dinner time. Oh, wait.
jl
@Southern Beale: Will the flying squads pack their missionary clothes for the trip? Ah, for the want of a nail…
schrodinger's cat
@jl: Nah too obvious, probably will wear mom jeans like Romney and plaid perhaps, and look just as awkward.
Piratedan
@Redshift: I think we’re on the same story, just in different sections. I also work for Dems (as has been established here before with my entries regarding the Giffords shooting) so ty for the return snark, but we’re obviously on the same side.
My contention is that despite how organized the religious right may have been, they weren’t making any headway nationally or even locally with their social agenda until they found a home with the Fox 24/7 propaganda machine. To use a twisted analogy, America is no longer a home game for what I would consider to be the ideals I grew up with, fairness, tolerance and success based on merit.
It’s an uphill climb to combat that prescence because it is so bleeping pervasive and attempting to have a conversation regarding what’s right and wrong with this country and what needs to be done is tainted because of the constant fear mongering and distortions that emanate from their collective pie holes. I wonder if knocking on doors and making phone calls is enough, y’know?
Dee Loralei
Thanks for the always informative posts Kay.
WaterGirl, Barath, the rest of you, Obama needs you! I’ve been working with my local OFA since last August. Since we’re in TN we do some voter registration and some door-to-door stuff, but mostly we’re calling North Carolina. And I hate talking on the phones, but we’re getting it done so he can win the state again. Those of you in CA or other blue and even red states will probably be asked to call the swing states, too. Get involved please. Your country is counting on you. If you can get time off work to go to a swing state for a few days, they’d love to have you! Money is very important in this post- Citizens United world, but so are boots on the ground, voices over the phone and fingers inputting data. We need you!
There’s a great new web video Michele Obama put out yesterday. It’s called “It Takes One” it’s only a few minutes long, please watch it and then go to BarackObama.Com and sign the I’m In pledge and get involved. Summers almost over, the conventions are mere weeks away and then comes the long tough slog to winning. We need you! We’re like 106 days out from Nov 6.
We Need You!
Kay
@FlipYrWhig:
I had to ignore that kerfuffle. I hate, hate, hate any political news that has the word “gaffe” in it. I start thinking about Marc Halperin and my whole day is then grim and bitter.
We have to ignore some of these things or we’ll go crazy. I considered reading about Fast and Furious, but it was so convoluted and stunk so much of Right wing blog sweat and late-night conspiracy theories that I decided “I’m just skipping this whole thing. I don’t care”.
Gin & Tonic
@schrodinger’s cat: I don’t get the “mom jeans” thing. Is Mitt (or Barack) just not supposed to wear jeans at all? Is he supposed to try to pull off True Religion, or Paper Denim & Cloth? Should he be looking in thrift stores for distressed, grease-stained 501’s? What would be his way out of this dilemma?
schrodinger's cat
@Gin & Tonic: Simple really, buy jeans that fit well and don’t sag. Also no need to pull them up high enough to reach the breast bone. That’s all.
JoyfulA
Thanks, Kay, for the inside information and, more, the understanding.
Everyone: When you walk into a medical office, gym, or whatever and Fox News is on, change the channel. Politely ask the receptionist or brusquely do it yourself, as is your wont.
dirge
In my experience — mostly in a business context, but I think it’s still relevant — the best thing you can do is to go ahead and put things like this on the agenda explicitly, at the end of the meeting.
Item 9: 30+ min Unproductive but entertaining bull session on national strategy. Attendance optional. Snacks. BYOB.
When the conversation starts to drift in that direction, remind everyone that it’s already on the agenda, but we haven’t gotten to it yet. It’ll actually encourage people to work through the important items that much more quickly.
JoyfulA
@schrodinger’s cat: Jeans that fit well may not accommodate alternative underwear. Maybe khakis would be better.
schrodinger's cat
@JoyfulA: Where do you guys live? That Fox News is always on where ever you go. Where ever I have lived insipid CNN has been the choice of most businesses. I have lived in NY, MD and MA and ME. Is it a red state blue state thingie?
jl
@Kay:
I don’t think I can do a good job of talking with voters unless I get familiar with crud like that. Since undecided or disgruntled voters can bring up any kind of stuff as an excuse to vote for the other guy, or more commonly, just stay home.
I think it is very effective to be able to say “that stuff is effing bullshit” (or ‘Well, now, some of what you’ve heard might not be entirely accurate, I can fill you in if you want” for the more straight laced folks).
Except, if I don’t have to worry about that if I am working on a modern efficient corporate CEO GOTV model where you are supposed to be entirely scripted, and give out stupid info line numbers for people to call (yeah, sure they will). But my recollection is that those kinds of ‘efficient CEO GOTV’ campaigns I have worked on have usually have lost.
schrodinger's cat
@JoyfulA: You are probably right. Mittster should probably stick to khakis then. I don’t know about Obama though, he is skinny and I bet he can pull off almost any jeans.
MikeJ
@Kay:
Read that commie rag, Fortune mag. they did a good story on it.
Hill Dweller
I didn’t know we had two Presidents until today. Thankfully, the media has set me straight.
Kay
@MikeJ:
I heard one or another Republican or media personality say “Holder has been cited for contempt…in the House” and I knew then I could completely disregard it.
Ooooh. A House contempt finding. I’m sure Eric Holder is properly chastened. Straighten up and fly right, Holder, or we’ll set Rush Limbaugh and Michelle Malkin on you.
El Cid
@MikeJ: Even before getting into the facts, you could ask: “So, you’re saying that conservatives are outraged that the federal government didn’t do enough to review gun shop sales and stop gun sales to potential criminals? Really? Really? Since when have conservatives supported that?”
Davis X. Machina
@Piratedan:
It probably isn’t, but if you don’t do it, people draw conclusions from that as well. Silence is audible.
MikeJ
@El Cid: That’s sort of the whole point. They’re outraged that federal agents watched perfectly legal transactions and didn’t rush in to arrest people who hadn’t broken any laws.
Davis X. Machina
@Kay:
The only House contempt finding that matters: Congressional Job Approval.
Mnemosyne
@The Moar You Know:
And yet Obama won California in a walk. I think it’s a helluva lot harder to sell a candidate the way you can sell a proposition.
Linda Featheringill
@schrodinger’s cat: #37
I know you’re joking but actually the JWs try to stay scrupulously clear of all politics. It may have something to do with politics being the work of man and not the work of God.
And I must admit that a lot that goes on under the name of politics is most definitely not very Godly.
Dennis SGMM
@Piratedan:
You have touched on a feature of American life that requires attention from us all. Talk radio and Fix succeed and are pernicious because they do two very simple things:
1)They assure people that anything good in their lives is the result of their own merit.
2)They assure people that anything bad in their lives is the result of some conspiracy.
When the official voice of “You’re OK its them other guys,” tells you to vote for someone you tend to do so. Underestimating the effect that media has had on moving the center to the right of 1950’s Republicanism is yet another of the mistakes of liberalism and the barely Democratic party.
JoyfulA
@schrodinger’s cat: I’m in PA. Usually it’s CNN here; one place always seems to have “The View” on, I guess because of my timing.
But every so often, someone’s changed the channel to Fox News, and I change it elsewhere.
If I’m in an office by myself with the TV on any channel, I turn it off.
cckids
@The Moar You Know:
To me, though, the difference is that many people see/saw Prop 8 as having religious overtones, or at least as a subject that a church had a “right” to be involved in.
Many of those same people will balk at having the Mormon church essentially electing the President of the US.
El Cid
@MikeJ: No, they are utterly, utterly lying hypocrites.
When the ATF asked them to please let it require dealers to just submit a fucking form when someone bought multiple assault rifles, ASSHOLE PSEUDO-DEMOCRAT DAN BOREN and the REPUBLICANS IN CONGRESS BLOCKED IT.
Even Peter Fucking King (R-Fucknutz) supported it.
From February of 2011, in other words, 8 million years ago thus lost to history:
These NRA-supporting shits are a bunch of lying, lying fucks who would never support any regulations on firearms they could ever manage to block, no matter who’s asking and why. They don’t care.
It’s all a big, steaming pile of bullshit about Eric Holder and Mexicans.
Davis X. Machina
I got a robocall from Wayne LaPierre at 12:30 this afternoon (EDT). Life, like comedy, is mostly timing.
NCSteve
Let me get this straight: you had a one hour meeting that you manged to finish in only two hours? Are you sure these people were Democrats?
Linda Featheringill
@Gin & Tonic:
Romney’s jeans:
I see nothing wrong with wearing denim. But you can get those things tailored just like any other piece of clothing if you want to sport a domestic brand. You can also get them made to order with your measurements. He’s running for political office, for Pete’s sake. His britches should support him and not the other way around.
People may refer to Romney’s “mom jeans” because he seems to be a little short of machismo. Sometimes I wonder if his testosterone level is a little low. He should quit smoking the weed and get a blood test.
Svensker
@schrodinger’s cat:
Seriously? Everywhere I ever went in NJ and PA it was Fox News 24/7. Especially in the doctor’s offices.
Redshift
@Piratedan: Yeah, it’s definitely a handicap. But the thing is, even before the wingnut-o-sphere became pervasive, it was a pretty fundamental rule in most elections I was involved in that the Republicans had more money, and the Democrats had (a lot) more volunteers. Fox is different because it’s constant, and not part of a campaign, but it’s still fundamentally a manifestation of money — pumping the message out through an impersonal channel. Person-to-person communication is less efficient because you can’t just scale it up, but that’s balanced by it being more effective, especially when it’s local enough that there’s a relationship with the people you’re talking to.
Door-to-door action by itself certainly isn’t enough, but it’s absolutely essential as a counter to paid mass communications and shameless abandonment of honesty we’re up against.
Piratedan
@schrodinger’s cat: I’ve found Fox on non-stop in AZ (not a surprise) but also in Ore, Idaho, Kansas and Colorado. Perhaps there is something to the blue versus red tilt, but Oregon and Colorado aren’t what you would nornmally consider Red bastions.
Redshift
@jl:
I know it’s shocking to us political junkies, but in my experience very few voters actually want to talk about any of that stuff. In the rare case where someone starts ranting, it’s a waste of time to talk to them, so you just want to extricate yourself as soon as possible. About the only time you’d get even a little into the weeds is if someone sympathetic said “I’m worried about this ad I saw on TV…”, and basic reassurance on that doesn’t require a lot of research.
Most campaigns I’ve worked on really don’t want canvassers or phone bankers getting into long discussions of the issues. Just get the message across, and if someone has some serious questions, refer them back to the campaign.
Redshift
@Piratedan: Maybe we should all start carrying these.
HyperIon
@barath: I got a very nice call from the Obama campaign two nights ago. The (very young sounding) fellow was polite, efficient, and informed. He ask if I would consider becoming involved in the campaign. Because I am deep in trying to manage aging parent problems from a distance, I answered “I don’t think I can do that.” He cheerfully thanked me for previous support and said good-bye. I was impressed.
bemused
A Romney sign in a knitting/embroidery shop? Somehow I don’t picture a republican yarn shop owner having very interesting stock in yarn. I know it’s wrong to assume but as a knitter, the knitters I met who are very conservative are not very imaginative in what they knit.
piratedan
@Redshift: lol! changing attitudes, one stealth remote at a time!