Posted on 10/28/2004 12:09:20 PM PDT by b_tixer
The Tsunami Can the Democratic ground game elect John Kerry and create an enduring progressive movement? by Harold Meyerson
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 Ive 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, Emilys 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 LCVs 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 LCVs Orlando operation. Now, Im 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 Olivers 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. Hes 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. (Weve rented every minivan in Ohio and Western Pennsylvania, Ed says.) Carolyn Jackson arrived in early October from New Yorks 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 Im 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 Im confident hell 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 labors 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 Bushs 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-CIOs 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 federations polls. In Garfield Heights, fully half the persons listed on the SEIUs 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 Ohios unemployment rate, add the activities of ACT, Working America and other such groups, and you understand why this is one Bush-2000 state that wont 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 thats independent of the party, thats integrated, thats effective.
This is it, says Cyr. Its happened.
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Welcome to FR.
Monster you say?
You have been ZOTTED! Remember, we here at Free Republic have been educated not doctrinated....We are rational, you are not....
I agree. The Dems have OUTSOURCED their GOTV and will lose because of it.
What they really mean to say is htey get together to puch holes through stacks of ballots.
Yep, MONSTER!
Read this from National Review:
I also think that Bush is doing much better in Ohio than the MSM gives him credit for; the MSM are spinning. And this explains why Bush was able to stay away from the state for ten days; he has a chance to take Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota, and still hold Ohio. Rove isn't an idiot and they haven't given up on Ohio. Jay mentions many good reasons for thinking this and he is essentially correct. I want to emphasize a few things, only some of which he mentions. First, as he mentions, Ohio is very much of a GOP state, it is not a swing state; the Democratic party is hardly to be found; and there is no interesting state-wide Demo candidate running for any position that in any way will help Kerry; Voinovich will be re-elected with about 63% of the vote. Second, the social-moral issues (gay marriage, abortion) and security concerns have a huge impact in Ohio, especially among women and African-Americans. This is even reflected in nation-wide polls. Kerry cannot break even with Bush with female voters; he needs to get at least 10% more of them than Bush and Bush will pick up about 13% of the black vote. Third, only fools will think that the roughly 800,000 newly registered voters are all going for Kerry; they will end up breaking about 50-50; pay attention to the large number of voters the GOP has registered, these guys have not been napping for the last five months; there are new voters in rural counties too, they're not all up in Cuyahoga County. Fourth, Bush will get a much larger percentage of Independents than some folks think. Fifth, there is no enthusiasm for Kerry, even among his supporters. Nobody likes this guy, and his wife seems to justify the worst tendencies of the French Revolution; it is impossible for people to envision her in the White House as first lady. I will predict that Bush will win the state by one or two points less than "Issue 1" (no gay marriage) will pass with: "Issue 1" will pass by about 6%, and Bush will take Ohio by 4 or 5 percent. It is my considered opinion that the Democrats and the Kerry campaign are extremely desperate in Ohio. And I understand why.
Wishful thinking...The US will become a protectorate of Islam if the traitor is elected!
Of course, if their intent is at all partisan, I must hope that no union dues money or other soft money is involved, lest everyone have to go to jail. Similarly, I hope that no one involved has coordinated in any way with the democratic party or the Kerry campaign, as that too would be highly illegal.
Assuming, of course, that the law is enforced.
(off topic) Are you a member of Alpha Phi Plpha Fraternity?
No. I was invited to join the Oddfellows once and a couple of Masons have hinted I should apply, but basically I am too cranky to join much of anything.
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