July 2008 Archives

For all you NH Deaniacs who read my blog, don't miss today's WaPo article about the Obama campaign using the organizing model of voter contact. The article will make you all warm and fuzzy when you run across terms such as "one on one" and "house meeting".

One of my biggest regrets over Dean's loss in New Hampshire was that I didn't think our style (i.e., Marshall Ganz's style) of campaigning would be validated. Even though NH voters were subjected to a week long media story on "The Scream", we still managed to come in second in the Granite State. Unfortunately, it was a distant second, and the media gave us little credit for garnering over a quarter of the vote in a crowded field with a candidate who had already imploded. The media narrative of the "Dean Machine" stopped on that Election Night.

It shouldn't have. Anyone on the ground will tell you that energized Dean Democrats helped flip NH's governor and congressional representatives to Blue over the next two cycles. Most campaigns tap into existing party resources, cajole partisans to volunteer and myopically focus on getting votes on Election Day. In contrast, the organizing model empowers the partisans to take control of their own neighborhoods and create ties to other Democrats that last much longer than a fall campaign season. As Lavalee said, "We left more than just yard signs".

Thankfully, in 2007, ex-Deaniac Jeremy Bird hopped on the Obama wagon and ran the organizing model in South Carolina. Check out the part of Obama's Philly Speech on Race about Ashley to see the fruits of always asking "What's Your Story?" And now the WaPo article indicates that this organizing model is now nationwide: huzzah!

I am a bit disappointed that the article didn't make the Labor organizing->Ganz->Dean->Obama connection, but it's probably too much these days to ask reporters to use Lexis or Google.

I griped to Janeite about this WaPo story when it came out last week, but now that we have more fundraising numbers, I feel confident enough to gripe to the world about it.

The article says that because Obama is asking donors to give to Clinton (to help retire her debt), his fundraising machine is showing "signs of wear." The only empirical evidence in the article is displayed on the graph on the right, which shows Obama's per-month fundraising numbers falling from February to May. Yes, that's right, Clinton's debt is to blame for Obama's "poor" fundraising ($22 million in May still seems high to me) during a period when Clinton was still in the race. When the Post decided to run this article on July 11th, five days before June fundraising numbers are reported, they really didn't know what the true impact of Clinton's debt on Obama's fundrasing would be. The data don't say one way or the other. Maybe they would get lucky and Obama would have a terrible June in terms of fundraising.

Not so much. Obama raised $52 million, more than doubling his May take. Oh, and that measly $22 million that Obama raised in May? It's the exact same amount that McCain raised in June. Still waiting for the Post article about how the McCain machine is lackluster.

Late Update: After years of being behind, Dems finally have fundrasing parity with the GOP: Obama+DNC=$92m CoH, McCain+RNC=$95m.

Congrats to Samidh, whose company Pluribo launched their first product a couple days ago! In a nutshell, it's a Firefox plug-in that takes Amazon product opinions (just for electronics at the moment) and summarizes them into one sentence via an automated algorithm. To see it in action, take a look at this screencast, with narration by Samidh.

I've tried it out, and it's very cool. Actually, now that Pluribo is released, maybe the team can turn Pluribo on itself and summarize what people are saying about it!