It is not most amazinly, it is expected, having in mind that Soros is behind all this. $42Million can do a lot. And Soros has pulled it off twice already, in Serbia and in Georgia.
Belarus figured it out, but U.S. has not yet.
Posted on 10/29/2004 7:32:04 AM PDT by daviddennis
ORLANDO, Florida — I have seen the present, and it works — I think.
I have spent the past week observing the official Democratic Party and unofficial 527 field operations in the battleground states of Ohio and Florida. And I have found something I’ve never before seen in my 36 or so years as a progressive activist and later as a journalist: an effective, fully functioning American left.
Those liberal organizations that already knew how to do politics — the AFL-CIO, the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) and a few others — are doing it better than they have before. Those liberal groups that stayed aloof from elections or phumphered ineffectually are now playing the game like seasoned pros. New organizations have arisen to mobilize sometime voters; the largest of them — America Coming Together (ACT) — will have 12,000 staffers in each of the three biggest battleground states (Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida) on Election Day.
And most amazingly, all the 527s — ACT, the AFL-CIO, the LCV, the Sierra Club, the NAACP, Emily’s List, MoveOn and 25 others — are working together under the umbrella of a single coalition, America Votes. They meet together, plan together, divvy up turf, parcel out messages, coordinate their mailing and phone banking.
Here in Orlando, ACT is getting out the vote in the black and Latino communities, while the LCV targets more upscale white suburbs. The Sierra Club plays the LCV’s role in Tampa, where it has a thriving chapter. “On the environmental side, we never figured out how to work together before,” says Allan Oliver, who heads the LCV’s Orlando operation. “Now, I’m on the phone to the Sierra Club every week; we say, how can we do this better?” The 527s even share their private polling — a common-sense pooling of knowledge that was utterly unthinkable before the prospect of four more years of George W. Bush concentrated the progressive mind.
The groups draw as well from a pool of progressive activists, who have journeyed from all across the nation to Ohio, Florida and other battleground states; I was reminded — minus the ideology — of the migration of leftist young men to Spain in 1936. The Orlando headquarters of the LCV was overflowing with preponderantly young staffers and volunteers on Monday afternoon, two-thirds of them, by Oliver’s count, from out of state. Matt, one of four people mapping out the Orlando get-out-the-vote program, came here from Oregon State during spring break. He’s still here.
In the Cleveland office of ACT, I met Ed Cyr, who came out from Boston on October 18 and, with his experience in voter mobilization in Cambridge city elections, found himself coordinating Election Day transportation in Cleveland. (“We’ve rented every minivan in Ohio and Western Pennsylvania,” Ed says.) Carolyn Jackson arrived in early October from New York’s Upper West Side (“no need to preach to the choir,” she notes), and is now running the office. Every time the phone bankers recruit a new Election Day operative, Carolyn sees to it that a bell — the kind they used to put on registration desks at hotels — is rung. For the 20 minutes that I’m in the office, the place sounds like a pinball machine.
The Democrats will have lots of people — party people, 527 people — getting out their vote in Ohio on Election Day. Putting together the estimates of the various party and non-party groups, I got a total of somewhere between 40,000 and 50,000. For a state of 10 million, with a potential electorate of 5 million, having 50,000 people to get those Kerry voters who need an extra zetz to the polls is nothing short of astounding. Partly due to these groups’ efforts, Kerry has already pulled ahead in Ohio, and I’m confident he’ll take the state next Tuesday.
The effect of these operations in the field was wondrous to behold. Last Friday, I went on a precinct walk through Garfield Heights, a white working-class Cleveland suburb, with members of a Service Employees International Union (SEIU) local. Among other things, the walk revealed the potency of what AFL-CIO national political director Karen Ackerman had termed “our secret weapon” — an unheralded program called Working America.
Working America is the first genuine realization of labor’s “associate member” program. Canvassers recruit members by going door-to-door in neighborhoods where many union members live; for a nominal dues payment — routinely waived during this election season — members affiliate directly with the AFL-CIO, receive repeated phone calls and mailings on such causes as Bush’s war on overtime pay, and send post cards or e-mails to their members of Congress to oppose this potential change. These days, they receive election-related mail and calls from the AFL-CIO as well.
The AFL-CIO inaugurated this program in three states last year — not coincidentally, Florida, Ohio and Missouri. The goal was to open a line of communication with the nonunion white working class, and by the evidence of the AFL-CIO’s numbers and my Garfield Heights walk, the goal has been reached and then some. The three Ohio canvass operations have recruited 541,000 members — a clear majority of whom support John Kerry, according to the federation’s polls. In Garfield Heights, fully half the persons listed on the SEIU’s walk sheets were Working America members (the other half were either regular union members or retirees). Though it was just midafternoon, a number of working-age men were home. Asked what issue mattered to them most, they said jobs; asked their candidate preference, they said Kerry. Take Ohio’s unemployment rate, add the activities of ACT, Working America and other such groups, and you understand why this is one Bush-2000 state that won’t be Bush-2004.
If John Kerry is elected next Tuesday, the tsunami of volunteer activity within the independent groups will be in large part responsible. Whether this tsunami can be bottled — whether this coalition will take on a permanent life of its own, become an enduring progressive presence in American politics — is a question of resources, opportunity, Zeitgeist and even law (the legal status of the 527s may be under attack if Bush wins). But the leaders of progressive organizations, Democratic elected officials, and the hundreds of thousands of phone bankers and precinct walkers, each for their own reasons, want the outpouring of 2004 to become a fixture of American politics. “Progressives have been waiting for decades for a citizen-based movement to happen,” says Ed Cyr. “One that’s independent of the party, that’s integrated, that’s effective.”
“This is it,” says Cyr. “It’s happened.”
The Orlando headquarters of the LCV was overflowing with preponderantly young staffers and volunteers on Monday afternoon, two-thirds of them, by Oliver’s count, from out of state. Matt, one of four people mapping out the Orlando get-out-the-vote program, came here from Oregon State during spring break. He’s still here.
So they can't even find enough people in Florida to man their campaign operation?
It's going to look really bad when they lose bad.
I wonder if he'd be any less confident in Ohio if he'd also seen the Republican operation? The only way you can really understand whether your efforts will succeed is if you look at both sides.
I read the Weekly to see both sides. Seems like the Weekly doesn't do likewise, and I think it's the worse for it.
D
Activist friend ping!
D
That would also be illegal as 527s are not supposed to coordinate their efforts - oh well - what are campaign laws to democrats anyways?
TRANSLATION: KERRY IS BEHIND IN EVs AND CAN'T MAKE IT UP ON HIS OWN.
No
Talking with african american mothers at my sons public grade school, not one of the mothers plans to vote for Kerry. They don't talk about it much, they don't want to lose their free ride to the polls.
He's only been paying attention to the dem's ground game, I guarantee that Kerry's ground gamer isn't half of what BC04's is. Kerry's set up a top-heavy lethargic ground game that emphasizes registration over GOTV. They aren't as well organized as they were in 2000 or 2002.
It is not most amazinly, it is expected, having in mind that Soros is behind all this. $42Million can do a lot. And Soros has pulled it off twice already, in Serbia and in Georgia.
Belarus figured it out, but U.S. has not yet.
"I have have seen the future and it works"
spoken by Lincoln Steffens, one of the best-known journalists of his day, who went to the Soviet Union in 1919 when the Red Terror was butchering people by the tens of thousands. He was the first in a long line of journalists to whitewash the crimes of communist tyrants and minimize the anguish of their victims.
There should be a special place in Hell for Mr. Steffens !
Bush has been organized down to the precinct level for more than a year. They have a head count, know exactly what they will need to win, and are leaving nothing to chance.
>>>>>>And most amazingly, all the 527s — ACT, the AFL-CIO, the LCV, the Sierra Club, the NAACP, Emily’s List, MoveOn and 25 others — are working together under the umbrella of a single coalition, America Votes. They meet together, plan together, divvy up turf, parcel out messages, coordinate their mailing and phone banking.<<<<<<<
It is not most amazinly, it is expected, having in mind that Soros is behind all this. $42Million can do a lot. And Soros has pulled it off twice already, in Serbia and in Georgia.
Belarus figured it out, but U.S. has not yet."
Nice little hole in the campaign reform law as authored by Sen McCain....
He's an Idiot.....
Corrrect me if I'm wrong, but isn't it perfectly legal for 527s to coordinate with each other?
I know it's illegal for them to coordinate with the campaigns, but I would think there's no way to make it illegal for them to coordinate with other 527s.
And whenever you criticise 527s, remember the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, an organization that's helped us a great deal more than their 527s helped them.
Personally, I think any political contribution should be legal as long as it's publically disclosed. All these knotty freedom of speech issues give me the willies; political speech should be the most protected speech of all, and instead it's the most overregulated.
D
I saw it this morning. Amazing how in play states are that supposedly should not be.
Why are Hawaii and New Jersey and even California way narrower than they normally would be, while Ohio and Florida are a lot closer than you'd think?
It seems odd.
D
Bush has run a nationwide campaign. Kerry has really obsessively focused on swing states. Kerry's work has helped close the gap in a bunch of them. But his lack of focus on places like Cali, NY and NJ means they have drifted towards Bush, who they know after 4 years and is, after all, the incumbent.
It means something is false. Either the national polls or the state polls, we shall see November 2nd.
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