The other night I had the rare opportunity to sit in (just to listen) a meeting of Florida Democratic operatives and organizers who had worked on the campaigns of House Representatives in Florida, from Katharine Harris’s opponents to Clay Shaw’s rival. (Don’t ask me how I got in, let’s just say that my wife is Democrat)
The group had two camps: the Chicken Little types: “This is terrible, we screwed up badly” and the Eternal Optimists: “We’re only a couple of seats away from a majority in the Senate.”
One of the Chicken Little crowd raised the issue of Tom Delay bussing “paid volunteers” to House districts with competitive races to help with the get-out-the-vote effort. He was contradicted by one of the Eternal Optimists group who said:
You don’t need to bus paid party workers to distant districts. You just hire them locally.(Best of my recollection of the exchange)These bussed people were unpaid passionate Republicans who were very glad to help with the Republican take-over. We failed to energize our base, and we should not assumed that Republicans were as demoralized as we were.”
I guess Democrats were surprised at the spontaneous Republican vigil outside Gore’s residence, so they have to concoct these stories about being orchestrated.
Mind you, all the winning and conceding was done during the wee hours of the morning, but they STILL had enough time to land a planeful of their shills before the sun came up in Florida. Talk about organized!