Yes, house parties can be a useful part, but only if they are used to enlist and recruit real on-the-ground volunteers. Volunteers who do not just work on their own, posting things on facebook or sites like DU (especially if their main efforts are to tear down another candidate--which not only does not work, it's a futile waste of a campaign's energies).
I remember holding a house party to introduce the candidate Wes Clark to my suburban Boston neighbors and activist acquaintances. I had literature available, and gave a talk about his positions (anti-Iraq war, diplomacy as the first foreign policy tool, economic positions, education positions, etc.) More than 20 came, and many were interested. A few went to hear him talk in NH, where he was drawing ever-large, overflow crowds. But I don't think I got any actual volunteers who drove up to NH 2 or 3 times a week to the campaign office to be sent on weekly canvassing missions, door-to-door, working phones, even doing visibility at events (I recall being assigned to standing out on the coldest day recorded in NH history at one event--it was either a pancake breakfast at a VFW hall or one of the large town halls at a gymnasium). This was the first time I got real training, from members of the Kennedy School of Government and on-site campaign officials. It was disciplined, precise, and rigorous. I learned at lot, and although he came in 3rd after the two "native sons" from adjoining states (Kerry first, Dean second), it was not enough to sustain the campaign.
House parties and social media played a big role in the Obama campaign, but it was not the main part. By this time I was living in Chicago, so was close by his national and state campaign headquarters. Talk about organization. It was like the Army. Since Illinois was going to vote for him anyway, the campaign divided volunteers according to their Congressional district, and you were then sent, depending on your district, to either Michigan, northern Indiana, Wisconsin, or Iowa to canvass. (I was assigned a small, economically struggling city 3 1/2 hours away in Michigan, and drove 5 people there--we eventually won that town, even though it was "The Birthplace of the Republican Party). The phone-banking sessions were often so crowded with volunteers you had to wait in lines that snaked down to the lobby and beyond just to get to the table upstairs where you were given your calling lists and scripts. As in the Clark campaign, staff supervisors roamed around monitoring peoples' calls, correcting us when we made a mistake in our interactions.
Engaging friends and neighbors around you is good work, especially in the early stages--but it is engaging people outside the choir, in disciplined, rule-bound ways that have been well tested across many decades by professional electoral activists, that is the necessary element in getting people to the polls to vote for your candidate.
I hope that the Sanders campaign can muster this kind of organization. It takes real-estate for offices, trained campaign staff, and an army of volunteers who are well trained in the dos and don'ts of approaching and enlisting unknown people. I no longer have the energy to do too much of this work, but I probably will do some of it for the general election, once a nominee is selected.
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