A brilliant campaign bolstered by the grassroots won!
When I was in Ohio with Downtown for Democracy in 2004 with a group called VoteMob (for voter mobilization). The group used new tactics that focused on mobilizing young voters who would not be reached by traditional voter outreach which heretofore reached only settled middle-aged or elderly folks living in the same house for over four years. Evan Hutchinson wrote a recap of the strategy and experience here.
To my surprise, when I was leading trainings for an Obama phonebank in Brooklyn, I learned that the lists we were working with were up-to-date because the campaign had invested heavily in canvassing. I only wish we could have had people bring their laptops to the phonebank to enter the data they were collecting real time and not rely on people to do data entry.
A lot of the lessons we learned from our Ohio strategy had been addressed in this campaign, coupled with the myriad brilliant online organizing and fundraising strategies that enabled peer-to-peer contact. I only wish I had been on the ground much sooner. For now I will know that Obama will not get me health insurance but that it may not be as long until I can afford it. I’m hopeful nonetheless, and here’s something from change.gov “Barack Obama and Joe Biden are committed to ensuring that all Americans have health care coverage by the end of their first term in office.”
I gather that he will be interested in what the online nation has to say. Check out CHANGE.GOV which has been set up for the transition.
Here’s a flickr set from Obama’s personal photog (Thanks to Gideon Yago for the tip)
Here’s a funny Onion article (thanks to Nick Pappas for the tip)
Dear A’yen,
what they say