OBAMA: Takin' It To The Streets

The Huffington Post's Zack Exley has a lengthy post examining Barack Obama's audacious approach to the 2/5 primaries. Team Obama is "building a precinct-level field organization large enough to affect the outcome of Super Tuesday ... aided by email lists, web tools and old school organizing techniques long missing in electoral politics." Exley reports: "Over the past two months, the Obama campaign has staged a number of in-depth, three-day trainings in February 5 states, with more than 1,000 carefully selected volunteers attending. Trainees leave the events organized into teams by Congressional district, charged with building an organization that reaches all the way down to the precinct level."

Team Obama identifies two developments that have made "a hard-fought precinct-by-precinct field battle" in big states like CA possible: 1) "an unprecedented amount of money is now available. The Obama campaign has a mountain of cash on hand and the ability to raise tens of millions more before 2/5"; 2) "use of campaign websites now makes hundreds of thousands of volunteer campaign workers available to campaigns in states before a single staffer is hired to work in them."

Exley reports the second factor still needs some work: "[O]n the Obama campaign, there is still no online system available for the teams graduating from Camp Obama (or the teams they establish below them) to report in their progress back to headquarters. This is a huge missed opportunity to give field directors perfect visibility into the work of every team, anywhere in the country -- visibility that could be used to identify the best field volunteers in the organization for promotion, and to identify problem areas that need special attention from staff organizers."

Obama National Field Dir. Temo Figeroa tells Exley that Obama is still committed to "an early state strategy" but asks: "[W]hat if it's completely mixed results in the first four? Then you go into a battle for delegates. There are a little over 1,500 delegates that are up on February 5. Twenty states! So, for us, we have to prepare: because we have the ability to prepare. We have that luxury because we have the resources and this amazing volunteer base."

OBAMA II: Keep Your Staff On Message, Dude

The Washington Post's 8/27 story on Obama CoS Pete Rouse's success in convincing Barack Obama to vote against John Roberts confirmation despite Obama's respect for Roberts intellect. David Sirota warns: "Memo to self-important Capitol Hill staff and political operatives who think they are the story, not their bosses: Landing a story in the Washington Post about how you convinced your boss to make a decision on a Supreme Court chief justice nominee based purely on personal political calculation is not a way to have your boss look principled, or look like he's a 'Washington outsider.'"

Talk Left's Jeralyn Merritt also flagged the article but notes: "Of course, other Democrats actually voted for Roberts, including Chris Dodd and Russ Feingold."