AlterNet: A Peek Inside Obama's Formidable Ground Campaign

[marmar]

A Peek Inside Obama's Formidable Ground Campaign

By Susannah Vila, AlterNet. Posted September 3, 2008.

A visit to a Camp Obama training session reveals a focus on using volunteers to talk about issues with potential voters.



Pundits’ 24-7 prattling from the convention halls will not decide the election. But you wouldn’t know that from turning on the television.

You would, however, know it from attending Camp Obama, a weekend crash course in electioneering whose New York state kickoff date coincided with the DNC and with the start of the general election campaign. The rising importance and urgency of formal volunteer training like this may be symptomatic of a shift in the responsibility for delivering information about the issues at stake. Once, it was up to our media. Now, it is left to campaign volunteers.

In a small auditorium on the second floor of a midtown labor office, New York staffers set out breakfast and folding chairs. This is the first of many training weekends for supporters in reliably Democratic places to learn the skills they need to spend the fall in the field for Obama. At the stroke of nine, roughly 130 campers charge into the SEIU union hall as if propelled by guilt at arriving so late in the game. While many are graying baby boomers, there is also the requisite smattering of college kids. The first question-and-answer session comes at around noon, and it unleashes a barrage of anxieties: "How can we do this all with only 10 weeks left?" "Can you go over it all again?"

Assuring attendees that these efforts are already under way in each state, the staffers don't fail to emphasize the indispensability of the people in the room. "I'm looking at a group of folks who are attempting to change the course of history," booms Luther Smith, president of Bill Lynch Associates, a political consultancy shop. This is standard fare in bolstering volunteers' understanding of the gravity of their mission. But it is also more than that. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/election08/97332/a_peek_inside_obama%27s_formidable_ground_campaign/

[I_Am_Legend]

1. oh i just

cant wait until the election. it will be such a massive landslide movement for this country