Why Obama Staffers Are Secretly Worried, and Other Dispatches from the Campaign Trail

The Daily Beast ^ | October 26, 2008 | Paul Alexander

[2ndDivisionVet]

This week, Barack Obama has shown clear signs that he is confident he is going to win. But privately, top Obama leadership are still worried that Republicans might be able to pull off another improbable election night victory.

Last week, in closed-to-the-press meetings, Obama officials briefed major donors about their concerns heading into the election’s final stretch. One of those meetings took place in Austin, Texas—a city in the solid red state of Texas that has raised a surprisingly large amount of money for Obama, mostly from the city’s high-tech community.

In Texas and other states, Obama officials are preparing for the possibility that polls may be wildly off because of the so-called Bradley effect.

“The Obama officials are very cautious,” says an attendee at the Austin meeting. “They want comfortable margins in place just in case. They are looking at three to six percentage points as a possible Bradley effect. Before they consider a state comfortable, they want it outside the polling margins. They think the Bradley effect could be as large as six—maybe even seven—percentage points, but they don’t really know.”

Another major concern of the campaign is what they consider to be voter suppression. “The Obama leadership believes there is a systematic campaign,” says the attendee, “by the White House and the Justice Department to suppress voter turnout across the country.”

To counteract the Bradley effect and potential voter suppression, the Obama leadership has amassed one of the largest legal teams ever assembled by a presidential campaign. The main goal of the legal team, almost all of them volunteers, is to guarantee ballot security. “The Obama campaign has learned the lessons of 2000 and 2004,” my source says. “On Election Day, lawyers will be everywhere—all the way down to the county level.

Obama officials point to the government’s treatment of ACORN, the nationwide association of community organizations, as an example of possible voter suppression. The campaign has never relied on ACORN for its voter registration drives, according to Obama officials, and is viewed as only one of many venders hired by the campaign. Of the $605 million raised by the Obama campaign so far, only $800,000 has gone to ACORN—a number that could be much larger, and would have been had the campaign relied on it more heavily.

But perhaps the most important asset the Obama campaign has is an army of workers estimated to be as large as 100,000 nationwide. Some paid staffers, mostly volunteers, the workers are being spread out across the country to states the Obama campaign is targeting. For example, 5,000 workers based in Texas—a state Obama doesn’t expect to win—are being relocated to New Mexico, a state Obama believe he can win.

Obama workers will be flooding into other battleground states in the waning days of the presidential race, among them Colorado, Nevada, and Ohio—perhaps even Georgia and Montana. What is impressive about this sizable operation is its very organization. By Election Day, campaign officials believe, they may have the most extensive grass-roots organization of any presidential campaign in history. (two additional articles on pages 2 & 3 at link)

[tallyhoe]

I don’t I do pray! I’m confident we will win!

[cookcounty]

"polls may be wildly off because of the so-called Bradley effect. "

But the "Bradley Effect" is only part of the Obama poll inflation.

There has been a constant powerful drumbeat from the press that Obama is so cool and hip and with-it, and McCain is passe while Palin is stupid.

The result is that many pull their punches when expressing their views. And in some cases, this punch-pulling even extends to people being polled. It only takes 3 or 4 % of respondents not being truthful (or even hesitant, note the unusually high "undecideds), to throw a poll far off the track. Just 3% saying "Obama" instead of "McCain", throws a poll off by 6%.

I've been observing presidential elections and polls for over 40 years, and while bias in the press is nothing new, I have never seen this kind of near-unanimity among the press corps, nor this level of willingness to let (force?) personal views into "news stories," especially among editors, who are actually worse than the reporters themselves.

In an atmosphere where allowing your views to be known can result in being furiously Wurzelbachered, harrassed, privacy invaded, etc., it is not hard to visualize a few paranoid folks keeping their owncounsel or giving misleading answers to pollsters. And it only takes a few to make a poll worthless.

[NOBAMA in 08]

Thank you, but I sincerely contain my true emotions here:-)

[supercat]

It DOES exist, they question is whether it is worth .5% or 10%...

I wonder whether Obama realizes that his intimidation techniques will almost certainly increase the Bradley effect. If people are led to fear reprisals should it be known that they favor the "wrong" candidate, they won't tell pollsters that they do. On the other hand, in the privacy of the voting booth, such voters may be resentful of the efforts at intimidation, and thus be even more likely to vote against the "right" candidate than they would have been without the attempted intimidation.

[dr_who]

Meanwhile, Daily Kos automotons are probably busy obsessing over a dark, well-hidden Republican conspiracy to reverse the results of computer voting... while occasional references to actual voter fraud by certain left leaning “get out the vote” groups are covered by the “big corporation-dominated”, right-wing media. The left has a lock on delusional voters.

[unkus]

Good idea. And it might be smart to take off any conservative bumper stickers.

[PapaBear3625]

Of the $605 million raised by the Obama campaign so far, only $800,000 has gone to ACORN—a number that could be much larger, and would have been had the campaign relied on it more heavily.

There is a limit to how much money individuals can give Obama directly, and foreign money is technically prohibited.

There is NO limit to how much money individuals or foreign entities can give ACORN directly -- with the understanding that it is to be used to help Obama.

[AmericanVictory]

How racist and awful it is to try and stop fraudulent voting.

[Kenny Bunk]

Shermy, why the hell should Obama worry?

After his successful terror campaign with Marxist Muslim Cousin Odinga in Kenya, where all they had to do was roast a few Kikuyu Christians in their churches, threaten Muslim-Christian Civil War, and then get the UN to install the Marxist Muslim Loser Odinga as Prime Minister, Obama has proven his international relations expertise to my satisfaction. Odinga burned no church that didn't deserve it, using his Luo cousin Obama's money to buy gasoline and matches. And you know those Kikuyu, always hanging around with missionaries and causing honest Muslims trouble.

It's a sad state of affairs when a kid illegitimately born in Africa, of a Harvard educated drunken, wife-beating Muslim polygamist and an American Commie Mommie, prepped at Punaho, raised in Indonesia as a Muslim, comes back to America and makes friends with William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, and hangs out with a foaming-at-the-mouth-hate-filled Black Liberation Theologian for 20 years, cannot become President of our great country.

A few weeks ago, I would not have subscribed to this theory. But the scientific polls tell me that over 50% of my fellow Americans think this is the greatest Messiah since that other guy. Shouldn't I join them? After all, I certainly don't want any of my fellow Americans, or that nice young pollster fellow to think that I am a racist!

[MtnClimber]

I would not call it the “Bradlet effect”, I would call it “Fear of being put on the reeducation camp list effect”. People who fear being put on this list will say they are loyal Obama supporters, but will never actually vote for a Marxist because they did not flunk history class.

[Major Matt Mason]

Another major concern of the campaign is what they consider to be voter suppression. “The Obama leadership believes there is a systematic campaign,” says the attendee, “by the White House and the Justice Department to suppress voter turnout across the country.”

They make the assertion, but don't back up that assertion with facts. OTOH, we have plenty of evidence to suggest that ACORN is looking to cause havoc on Election Day.

[george76]

Just a Little Genocide

I asked, “well what is going to happen to those people we can’t reeducate, that are diehard capitalists?” and the reply was that they’d have to be eliminated.

And when I pursued this further, they estimated they would have to eliminate 25 million people in these reeducation centers.

And when I say “eliminate,” I mean “kill.”

Twenty-five million people.

I want you to imagine sitting in a room with 25 people, most of which have graduate degrees, from Columbia and other well-known educational centers, and hear them figuring out the logistics for the elimination of 25 million people.

And they were dead serious.

http://confederateyankee.mu.nu/archives/276377.php

Ayers’ Weathermen planned “re-education”, genocide

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJn5b8_weUY

[editor-surveyor]

Austin, the Berzerkeley of Texas

[HP8753]

Bradley effect. = Pure BS
2 Points. Since

1.)How can they know that the small percentage of voters they polled didn't vote the way they said they would?

2.)Why do they think they can project to all the voters the results of the small percentage of voters they polled?

[MtnClimber]

I have heard that there was a meeting between Weather Underground and Chinese officials where Dorhn was present. Don’t know who else was present. In his article on Weather Underground for Rolling Stone Magazine, David Horowitz is supposed to have written that the Chinese gave WU the advise that 20-40 million would need to be eliminated if a communist revolution was to be successful. They should know of which they speak. If WU thought that only 25 million would need to be killed it shows they were probably just wild eyed idealists.

[george76]

Have you seen Yuri Bezmenov KGB speak ?

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/k6KUDv1wzraWhwlBt1

or

http://www.crossroad.to/Quotes/brainwashing/2007/bezmenov.htm

[pray4liberty]

There’s something about the voting booth that clarifies the mind, focuses the logic and allow the voter to respond to his innermost sense of right and wrong.

I don't know about you, but I'm praying that God stations an interceding angel at every one of those voting booths in this election.

We can still do a lot, but God can do what man can't.

[AZLiberty]

The Obama leadership believes there is a systematic campaign,” says the attendee, “by the White House and the Justice Department to suppress voter turnout across the country.”

I know for a fact that George Bush is going to make it rain in every blue state on election day.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks geo.

And thanks FARS:

(FL Poll watchers)
We were told yesterday that the Obama campaign has our addresses...
me | 10/26/2008 | me
Posted on 10/26/2008 5:16:05 AM PDT by ajwharton
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2115566/posts

[Kenny Bunk]

,,,,,White House and the Justice Department to suppress voter turnout across the country......

The rumors are true ... the WH and wealthy Republicans are attempting to limit African-Americans and members of other minority groups, gays and lesbians, women, illegal aliens, and the dead to one vote apiece. What heartless bastards!