By Stephen C. Rose
If Barack Obama becomes president, it will be because of grass roots organization. The people who will make the difference on November 4 are the paid and volunteer organizers of the Obama-Biden campaign. Their secret lies in a simple principle:
You organize not by getting adherents, but by finding ever more organizers, proven people who can canvass, call, plan and execute events, get voters to the polls on election day.
It is for this reason that, from region to region, the number of Obama events at the micro level (say in a county in a battle ground state) will dwarf the McCain events. The media may talk about overconfidence, but on the ground the battle is on and it will not end until all votes are in.
Al Giordano has been a key online avatar of this ground game. He notes that, within a 25 mile radius or Orlando, the number of planned Obama events are 84 to McCains eight. Within 25 miles of Dayton, it's Obama events 57 to McCain's eight. SOURCE
Says Giordano:
While the commercial media obsesses over an alleged Ohio plumber (who apparently might not be licensed to practice that trade) the real everyman and everywoman - the ones that don't generally make more than a quarter-million dollars a year - can be found in the real towns and cities of America, on the front lines of the community organizing renaissance.
This is what the Obama ground operation looks like from a distance.
The estimated Obama on the ground events between now and election day is over 10,000.
Giordano concludes:
There are ten thousand potential newspaper, TV and radio news stories in those numbers, and at least as many "reporters" in need of a good report, but as during the primaries, the commercial media are leaving the real story of the 2008 United States presidential election to a few intrepid online journalists and bloggers. When on Election Night they will raise their eyebrows and go, wow, just wow, how the hell did that happen?, it will be the Field Hands here, and a very few folks like Sifrey, like Sean Quinn at 538 and Zack Exley at The Huffington Post who will have documented the answer: It was the organizing, stupid! SOURCE
And adds:
And there's a very special group among them: the more than 10,000 people - most, but not all, of them young - who right now aren't reading blogs or watching cable news because they're too busy organizing all those Debrahs and Glennas: the field organizers and deputies that were trained at Camp Obama and Fellows sessions, who have recruited those Neighborhood Team Leaders and others to carry out the action plan. They're engaged in hand-to-hand combat of sorts to identify or persuade every last vote and turn them out to the polls. Today, those of them that are in North Carolina are putting those votes on the scoreboards as the state's early voting began this morning and continues through November 1. Their counterparts in Georgia, Iowa, New Mexico and Ohio have been doing this for days now. The results are on the board already.SOURCE
Then there is this video playing in Indiana. Move over Joe the Plumber:
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