What Fifty State Strategy?

No one has gained more from the new net-based political organizing than presidential candidate Barack Obama. Yet in states like Kentucky, where web savvy is not widespread, the Obama campaign's apparent failure to link with Democratic Party operatives and to give supporters off-line ways to contact him and each other could cost him heavily. That raises questions about the so-called "50 state campaign strategy."

"It's a sin and a shame," says Jo Anne Crawford, Director, Kentucky Democratic Party District # 3, a member of its executive committee, and treasurer of the Democratic Women of Kentucky Club in Louisville/Jefferson County. She explains, "Obama's people have no Kentucky state office, no listed Kentucky phone number, and they closed their offices in Lexington and Louisville [the state's two largest cities] right after the primaries. Before the primaries, there were at least metal Obama buttons that we could pass out and people just snapped them up. Since the primaries, the Obama campaign has not furnished us with buttons, yard signs, bumper stickers, any of it. All the other candidates that I've seen provided those things free. With Obama, his supporters have to call an 800 number and buy all that. For a while, we did not even have the 800 number."

Staffing the Louisville Democratic Party headquarters on Mondays, Crawford reports that she often finds 40-45 messages on the answering machine when she comes in. Yet she says, "He's just not responding to us."

Consequently, there are few Obama signs even in fervent Louisville supporters' yards.

MoveOn.org, the key progressive online organization backing Obama, meanwhile sends e-mail invitations to its Louisville fundraisers and meetings, but the local party headquarters has no information in its "Contacts" binder on MoveOn.org.

In fact, when asked about MoveOn, Crawford said "Moo Vaughn Who?"

That matters. Louisville is among the 30 largest cities in the U.S. It would be the 16th largest if numerous neighborhoods within its borders were not functioning as independent towns. At the only Louisville Obama rally held thus far, thousands thronged the convention center and thousands more were turned away at the door. There is widespread outspoken support for Obama among young people, manual workers and the black community. The local clubs of the Democratic Party are one key to reaching white women over 50, who form a disproportionate number of the party's stalwarts. Yet according to Crawford, the state and local party and the local clubs are not organizing for Obama, because they are getting no Obama back up.

Granted, like many symbols of the old politics, the Louisville Democratic Party is visibly losing steam. The Party has held the mayor's office of Louisville since the 1980s, but "Mayor for Life" Jerry Abramson [D, 1985-] has his own machine. Even the once prominent party headquarters has moved to a hard-to-find industrial lot.

Mercedes-Benz "Auto Werkshop" garage owner Gerald Atherton, seeing me driving back and forth searching, offered to help. He too soon discovered that the local headquarters was not listed on the state Democratic Party website. If contacted, the state office could furnish a phone number but not an address. The local phone book noted accurately that the headquarters was on Barrett Avenue, but the street number was wrong, and neighbors were unable to pinpoint it. I finally found a wind-torn plastic Democratic Headquarters sign. Far down the hill from the sign, in a locked building in an empty industrial parking lot, was the headquarters. It had no Obama literature, stickers or signs.

With piercing blue eyes, tightly curled white hair, turquoise earrings, a rainbow-colored pullover and turquoise slacks, crisp and wanting to work, Party Director Crawford looked as lonely as the Maytag repairman.

Anyone wishing to forge better links might call Louisville party chairman Tim Longmeyer (1-502-341-3609) or the Obama headquarters in Chicago (1-866-675-2008). MoveOn political action can be reached through http://pol.moveon.org/; The link for Obama in Kentucky is at [e-mail] That of course does not help those people who are not web denizens and need to use a phone.

Comments

[Irie212]

This is a very dubious statement. "With Obama, his supporters have to call an 800 number and buy all that. For a while, we did not even have the 800 number." The "we" refers to Kentuckians, who are even more technologically challenged than anyone imagined, because they don't seem to know that 800 numbers cross state lines, as do websites. It's always been possible to log on to obama.com and buy campaign materials.

[js2000]

The reason Obama doesn't reach all 50 states is because he still thinks there are only 47 states. I guess Kentucky was one of the 3 that he forgot about.

You libs crack me up. You claim tolerance and label everyone that doesn't agree with you a racist. Yet, some on this post refer to Americans from various parts of the country as "dumb rednecks". You bunch of hypocrits.

Obama is not an agent of change. He is a typical politician. Just look at all the flip-flopping he has done just since the end of primary season. McCain is not much better, but is the lesser of two evils.

[Amathyne]

Expecting Obama to waste time and money on Kentucky has to be one of the silliest things I have heard lately. In what universe could Obama win this state?? Don't get me wrong... I think the 50 state strategy is a good idea... up to a point. And the O-man certainly has my vote... But lets stay within SOME bounds of reality here... Bad enough he's wasting time and money on Georgia.

I'm just saying...

[JackND]

I'd endorse his spending some money in Kentucky even if it's just to get Mitch McConnell out of the Senate.

[TrevorAlan]

It makes some sense that a "50 state" strategy would actually leave a few states out of true contention, but it would be a mistake not to have a token effort, if only so local House candidates can try to use coat-tails.

But we are in the eye of the political hurricane. There is time and it would be reasonable to assume that the candidacy is going to need a little time to switch gears and will first put its turnaround effort into the batleground states to keep momentum where it is most useful. I'd not give that excuse too much more time, but it may be excusable up to now.

But I think this is more something that should be put on the national party for oversight on state and local party headquarters. The Pres nominee has a lot to do with building party up, but there is a reason why each party has a permanent power structure. I'd say Dean should be the person to answer for this problem.

[AshleyMarie]

Last I heard no candidate has been in every single state. Last I heard the election isn't until November, so Obama has plenty of time.

Its not just Kentucky, I live in Oklahoma, where there are actually a LOT of Obama supporters, and he hasn't been here either.

You don't hear me complaining. If he says he will run all 50 states he will... hold your horses!

[loria]

Obama supporters in solid red states can't wait for the campaign to roll into town. Join with the other supporters and venture out on your own. We will see Obama offices, but they will go to the battleground states first. Obama says "we are the change we are waiting for". So, what are you waiting for? Quit complaining. Don't whine about the candidate of your party over an issue such as this.

I find it disturbing that someone from the Democratic Headquarters is waiting for Obama to tell them what to do. We all need to just do it! There were 4000 house parties last weekend. Our house party resulted in a group of volunteers spending their time at a July 4th festival registering voters. The volunteers got the forms from the Democratic Party Headquarters, but that was it. They went out on their own. The volunteers in this very red state aren't ready to concede it to McCain. We not only want to make a stand, we believe we can win here. So, for all of you who are waiting to volunteer, don't wait. Find a group, establish a group, sponsor an event, register some voters. Just do it!

[loria]

I have to admit I am being too hard on the dem official. It does sound like she is elderly, and I am sure that being a dem in KY is no more fun than being a dem in SC. But, my point that we need to organize and get to work instead of waiting for someone to tell us what to do, still stand.

[izofmagritte]

Last I heard Kentucky was part of the United States. Primaries showed that the more Obama is known by the public, the more people vote for him. More reason for him to make himself known there.

Ms. Crawford sounds like a long time Dem. who is use to campaigns being run the "old way". But she is "fired up and ready to go" for Obama. Someone from the campaign needs to help her understand the "new way"..Otherwise we waste her energy and enthusiasm and her drive to turn others on to Obama. I grew up with these "old time" pols and they can be quite persuasive and effective in getting out the votes.

We are supposed to be uniting as a party - I say, no Dem should be left behind.

[Exit]

Tennessee, Kentucky, and West Virginia are losses. There is no way Obama could win over the ignorance of the population there. Not only are they loss to Obama they are a loss to the nation as a whole. Wish we could kick them out of the union. They are worthless.

[doctorwang]

This is why the Electoral College should be eliminated. If the election was based on the popular vote instead, then each person's would be counted (and would matter). If you're an Obama supporter residing in one of these states, your vote will very likely not make a difference in that state's outcome. Hopefully things will change in the years to come......

[arthuride]

Exit has neither studied the Constitution nor history, and if anyone should leave the USA it should be Exit. There is no place in the USA for elitists or the self-righteous. TN, KY, and WV are as important to the USA as is MA, WI, MN or other states, and their people are no less valuable regardless of their education or economic status. I will be happy to pay a one-way ticket to Russia for Exit, as that is the only place a person of this mentality would thrive.

[inthecolour]

You mean in Kentucky where the crazy rednecks make up most of the population?

The ones who were filmed making comments about how they wouldn't vote for a black man because he wasn't a real American?

Did you pay any attention to the response he got during the Democratic primary there? Did you see the exit polls where whites blatantly said they were voting against him based on race?

Yeah. Obama is trying to win this thing. His resources are better spent elsewhere.

[TrevorAlan]

Some of these states are the traditional homes of ignorance and racism, but several have also had a lot of recent influx from other parts of the country (including dark-skinned people from other countires), good sized traditional black populations, and a traditional white population finally realizing the old prejudices don't get you anywhere.

I wouldn't put the same resources as Ohio into Kentucky, but it would be a mistake, if only as a symbol of that supposed "elitism", to entirely bypass them.

[Freesia2]

This is why I would like to see Jim Webb as his vp. He understands this.

Many of those "red necks" have been created. What was that line Jim used in a speech? "Poor, white, out of sight". They wake up every day in a town where there father was raised, their father's father, and their father's father's father. They work their father's trade, attend his church, marry a girl from their highchool and read one newspaper with one set of opinions. No money is put into their schools, no one acknowledge them unless they need their vote.

What you're looking at are not all rednecks. Many are fundamentally good people, known as "good old boys" who are taught that to be a standup guy in their world is to parrot words they hear every day.
I
And it's still wrong. Hateful and always wrong. But the answer isn't to leave them behind. It's to draw them in. Leaving them out is why they've closed ranks and are so hard to reach. Obama may not be able to do it this time. But he can lay some foundation. And a vice president who understands where the words are coming from, can help.

To Naluca below: Call me psychic, but I sense a McCain voter there. Or a disgruntled Hillary fan? Neither of which have any interest in doing anything but keeping KY and West Virginia people an insulated and predictable voting block.

[Gail McGowan Mellor - Huffpost Blogger]

See Gail McGowan Mellor's Profile

[REPLY TO FREESIA2 in EXIT'S THREAD] All bigotry is ignorant. "Redneck" is a term originally referring to union organizers, who wore red bandannas, or to white manual workers who had badly sunburned necks from years in the open, and even before then to the Scotch Presbyterians, impoverished pioneers. When big corporations rose after the Civil War, hitting the mineral rich Appalachians hard, they defrauded the poor of their land just as huge waves of Irish and German Catholic immigrants came into the country and the newly freed African Americans also hit the job market. Poor whites and blacks were forced into fierce competition for jobs that did not pay a living wage.

Louisville however sided with the north during the Civil War. After slavery, housing was open, white businesses apprenticed African Americans and blacks were welcome in public parks. That ended only decades later, after the rise in New York of the urban Irish bosses--who were by definition not rednecks--and the spread of boss dictatorships in the nation's urban areas. As blacks were forced out of housing here, Louisville blacks and whites in the early 1900s fought the issue all the way to the US Supreme Court, winning. ( Buchanan v Warley, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's [NAACP's] first win, outlawed segregated housing throughout the U.S.) Louisville in the 1950s was one of the first cities in the country to integrate its schools after Brown v Topeka.

[naluca]

If Obama doesn't feel you are or were worth it to him in terms of money or vote count, or PR don't expect anything from him. This goes for before and after the election. Anyone who expects a coherent, meaningful, helpful presidency is dreaming.

[loria]

So, having just secured the nomination you think he can mobilize the entire volunteer force in the country in just a month? I do expect a coherent, meaningful, helpful presidency from Obama and much more. You, I am sure are a McCain supporter who is about to overwhelmed by the number of voluteers that show up to work for Obama. They are organizing all over the country right now. They aren't waiting for someone to show them what to do. They are doing it. What I would like to see from you is a coherent, meaningful and helpful post. But, I am sure that expecting that from you would just be dreaming on my part.

[Liberoservative]

Last Tuesday and Wednesday we spoke directly with Obama Headquarters.... I'm in South Carolina and we had teleconferences with them on both nights. They haven't gotten to getting all the states set up yet but they are working on it. One of our Obama volunteers went to Alaska two weeks ago.

If you know who your Obama contact working in Kentucky was that would be a good place to start.

From the KY page it looks like you have quite a few events going on..... Maybe you aren't looking hard enough?

http://my.barackobama.com/page/event/search_results?type=advanced&orderby=day&state=ky&limit=50

[Gail McGowan Mellor - Huffpost Blogger]

See Gail McGowan Mellor's Profile

Your link gives Kentuckians who are online many ways to link up on the ground. My patient point though is, How do (the often older and/or poorer) OFFline people get this list of events? The answer that many will give is "at the events," but that is fairly circular thinking.) Offline voters have to find each other in order to organize themselves and that is far harder than online. Interested01 for example says, "I tried calling that Chicago headquarters number time after time and was unable to get anyone to answer the phone. I kept hearing a recorded voice telling me to call back in a few minutes....It is easy to send money, but nearly impossible to give feedback or get answers.".

At the center of the Obama campaign there are individuals spending the largest political war chest in U.S. history. . Surely the war chest can afford 1) a phone line registered to the Obama campaign in each big city, if only to give a list of events and a phone number for a local offline organizing point, 2) to give adequate contact and event information to other familiar offline organizing foci like big city party headquarters,3) to give stickers and posters to party headquarters, requesting donations. By instead forcing everyone to go online to buy at a set price, aren't those controlling the war chest slicing off the poor and the offlinein one swipe?

[loria]

Ultimately, when I read this post, it irritates me to think that a someone from the Democratic Headquarters is complaining about the campaign. My first question is, aren't you supposed to be leading the dems in your area? You are the headquarters. Still, it sounds as if this is an elderly volunteer in an area where dems can be pretty lonely. So, while my first inclination is to be hard on this lady maybe we could ask the Obama supporters in her area who are already organizing to reach out to her. This is a new campaign with volunteers leading the way all over the country.

The real issue I have is that this is even a story at this point. The elections is still months away and Obama only secured the nomination one month ago. The expection from anyone would be that he will mobilize in battleground states first. So, those of us in solid red states don't need to be upset that the offices haven't opened yet. The later primary states didn't see their offices open until shortly before their elections. This is a non-issue brough on by another journalist who wants to make an issue out of nothing. Please go write a story about something that is really a story. There is an Obama presence in KY. It just isn't the precense we have come to expect.

[JJeff88]

The challenges involved in the transition from primary candidate to general election candidate never change:

The candidate's campaign has to mesh with local party staffers (This is not a slam dunk given the plethora of strong egos. And it takes time.

Then there's the move from the edges toward the political center without losing your soul" issue.

While much of this is inevitable, how the campaign deals with it will, no doubt, have an impact on the election.

[TommyMcCarthy]

Ms. McGowan-Mellor has....I think helpfully, posted a first-hand account of the state of affairs re: the Obama campain's visibility in Louisville Ky.


What's interesting to me are the comments so far: several of which castigate a Ms. Joann Crawford, a Democratic party volunteer quoted in the article.

"joanVa" asks: "....what has Joanne done? .........(she)"...doesn't seem to understand that the Obama campaign is a grass-roots movement"
Movement or not perhaps it is "joan" who has forgotten that it is Sen. Obama asking Kentuckians for something (their votes) not the other way 'round.

"LisainNYC" notes that campaign props must be PURCHASED from the Obama campaign in N.Y.
Of course New Yorkers often have to PAY for things the rest of us take for granted (crossing a bridge, driving down a higway, using the bathroom).


More first-hand reporting is offered by "SciGuy" Kentucky jewess (i love that story)............but....

"Mcole" seems doubtful because "i don't think Obama is the type to ignore any state" and asks Kentucky RESIDENT "SciGuy" ....... hasn't she heard about what's happening in Kentucky.

Finally "kempis" goes all the way, and suggests that the "claims" of KENTUCKY RESIDENT McGown-Mellor "need to be supported or deleted"...........to quick agreement from several quarters.

Such are pogroms and re-education camps made of.


The Obamite tendency to "kill the messenger" for anything less than fawning admiration for the candidate and all aspects of his campaign is alive and well. Regards..........................................................................tm

[Gail McGowan Mellor - Huffpost Blogger]

See Gail McGowan Mellor's Profile

No matter where the spinning bottle of blame game should stop, I agree that it should not point to Ms. Crawford. A Clinton supporter who is not yet an Obama supporter, and expressing worry that she might "get in trouble" with higher party officials if she spoke up, volunteer Crawford nonetheless took the time and the risk to alert the public about the breakdown of communications among the Obama campaign, the local party headquarters and offline supporters in Kentucky, warning that it could hurt Obama's chances in the general election.When I popped up unnannounced in the party headquaters office, she and another volunteer had, unasked, just finished organizing information from throughout the headquarters into indexed ring binders. When the other volunteer left, Crawford though hungry (it was far past lunchtime) would not leave because she said that she did not want anyone to call or come by party headquarters and find no one there. That is a responsible day's work. A lack of net savvy is not the same thing as a lack of intelligence and drive.

[joanVA]

The Obama yard signs around here sprung up after the local Democratic group bought the signs, then sold them at a festival. Short of complaining, what has JoAnn done? Joann doesn't seem to understand that the Obama campaign is a grassroots movement---not a top-down campaign like Clinton's. She needs to connect via the web and see what the Obama supporters are doing. Like other states, they're doing a lot without support from the national campaign. No state is forgotten unless the people there want it to be.

[toby25]

Folks in these battleground states will be very hesitant to vote for Obama. He may be wating his time and money...just like McCain won't win California or Oregon..Obama won't win West Virginia, Kentucky or Ohio. There just aren't enough liberals living there. The democrats that are living there are "Reagan democrats" that just won't vote for Obama when they go to the polls.

[Gail McGowan Mellor - Huffpost Blogger]

See Gail McGowan Mellor's Profile

Writing Kentucky off is in my view for Obama campaigners a strategic mistake. Kentucky at the state and local level is a Democratic state and holds lots of progressives. I also know many conservatives from every walk of life here who support Obama or potentially do. Please note that Ms. Crawford says when she walks into party headquarters on Mondays mornings, there are often 45 calls on the answering machine. The only Obama rally here drew thousands, overflowing the convention center. Arguably all that the Kentucky primaries showed was that Clinton was better than Obama at activating those myriad Kentucky voters fed up with the Bush years and wanting no repetition of them--not that these voters do not exist or that Obama cannot reach them.

[530Rose]

I wish people would stop referring to "Reagun Democrats." Reagun died a long time ago, and his term in office is not a fond memory for Democrats (remember ketchup was considered a vegetable for the school lunch program? Remember "trickle down economics?). If they were Democrats and they have since been voting Republican, now they are Republicans. They have drunk the koolaid and will never go back.

[doctorwang]

I'll agree with you on Kentucky and West Virginia. There is no way that Obama can win those two Appalachian states (or any other southern state with a small black population). The primaries made that painfully clear. It would, indeed, be a waste of the campaign's money.
Ohio, however, is very much in play.