Obama readies plan to reshape the electorate

The Politico via Yahoo! News ^ | April 2, 2008 | Ben Smith

[2ndDivisionVet]

Even as he fends off Senator Hillary Clinton in the Democratic nomination contest, Senator Barack Obama is already turning his attention to the general election, and to an ambitious plan to reshape the American electorate in his favor.

Bringing new voters to the polls "is going to be a very big part of how we win," said Obama's deputy campaign manager, Steve Hildebrand, in an interview. "Barack's appeal to independent voters is also going to be key."

Hildebrand said the campaign is likely to turn its attention and the energy of its massive volunteer army this fall on registering African-American voters, and voters under 35 years old, in key states.

"Can it change the math in Ohio? Very much so," he said. "If you look at the vote spread between Bush and Kerry in 2004 - we could potentially erase that."

President George W. Bush carried Ohio by about 119,000 votes in 2004, winning the state despite a massive, expensive Democratic effort to mobilize voters there. And there's some reason for skepticism that Obama can do better than Senator John Kerry and his allies. Every four years, Democrats claim, and reporters write, that a massive voter registration and field operation will reshape the electorate in their favor. In recent years, they've been matched or bested by the Republican National Committee's targeted outreach to likely Republican voters.

"It's something that Democrats have tried," said Bill Steiner, the Republican National Committee's director of strategy. "The 2004 election kind of speaks for itself, particularly in Ohio, where that was a big fear."

But there are signs that this year could be different. In the Obama campaign, youth turnout and Internet-based organizing - so often promised, and rarely delivered in the past - have been made real. And the first black nominee could reach deep into the large non-voting tracts within the African-American community.

"There's the potential here to change American politics for a while. Under-35 voters are just so overwhelmingly Democrats. Getting them registered is a simple, important, not-easy part of that — and Obama can," said Jim Jordan, a consultant who ran the independent group that headed Democrats' national field operation in 2004, America Coming Together. "And the voters who do register will actually vote. African-American voters, under-30 voters will be hugely self-motivated. They'll get to the polls in numbers that aren't typical for new registrants, and they'll do it on their own, on top of the strong turn out mechanics that the Obama guys will surely bring to bear."

Michael Slater, the deputy director of the non-partisan Project Vote, also said he found the Obama campaign's hopes of a dramatic increase in the participation "very plausible" for younger and black voters, groups, he said, which are under-represented in the electorate.

"There's a long history of a lot of hype not delivering on election day," he said. But in this case, "there certainly is a great potential for an African-American candidate to appeal to some voters who have been out of the electorate."

Obama's massive, smoothly integrated volunteer organization has been a mainstay of his campaign. It has been central to his success in caucus states such as Minnesota and Idaho, where a volunteer army - organized online - preceded and noticeably bolstered his staff's organizing efforts, helping to build the huge victory margins that have made him the frontrunner.

His voter registration efforts have drawn far less attention. But they were there from the start. When Obama toured Iowa last February in his first campaign swing, his campaign brought along voter registration cards. As the race there heated up, voter registration became a quiet focus, with registration drives in colleges and even high schools that helped drive Obama's victory.

South Carolina, Hildebrand said, was the site of another intensive effort. "A great case study for voter registration was the South Carolina primary, where we dramatically expanded the African-American vote and dramatically expanded the youth vote," he said. "It was such a big part of getting us to that 28-point margin of victory."

Another high-stakes voter registration drive just concluded in Pennsylvania, where the deadline to register as a Democrat and participate in the primary was March 24. The Pennsylvania Department of State reports that more than 234,000 voters have either newly registered as Democrats or switched from other parties, and the state hasn't finished counting the new registrations.

"We put together a massive effort," said Hildebrand, saying that the numbers include "over 200k Obama supporters" - an impressive number, and likely more than 10 percent of the total turnout in the primary.

Hildebrand declined to discuss in detail the campaign's preparations for this summer and fall, but he said planning has begun for a major voter registration push.

"We are pretty convinced that Barack is going to be the nominee, and so we're going to prepare for a general election no matter how long this two-person race goes," he said. "What we did with those two demographic groups [in South Carolina and elsewhere] is what we will have the capacity to do in the general election in every state where there's large pockets of under-35s and African-Americans" - states that include Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, and other battlegrounds.

The recent Pennsylvania drive reveals elements of that effort. It includes a traditional ground operation, with staffers flooding the state from offices across Pennsylvania. Obama also ran radio ads aimed at young people and at African-Americans, encouraging them to register. His website, meanwhile, includes a section that facilitates registration in each of the primary states by filling out a completed registration form in each of the states, and offering details on where and how to submit it.

But Obama - whose campaign is entwined with his biography on many levels - has also made his own experience registering voters part of the story, something that's likely to gain a higher profile as national efforts step up. In 1992, he served as the director of Project Vote's Chicago successful Chicago effort to raise minority voter participation, a chapter that's the subject of a video Obama narrates on his website. The video suggests that the project helped turn Illinois to Bill Clinton that year.

Together with Obama's proven appeal to independent voters, his campaign's focus on increasing turnout of younger and black voters -- his base -- could counterbalance hints of weakness among more traditional swing voters like the working-class whites known as Reagan Democrats.

Senator John McCain is running strong in many polls in key states, and is expected to challenge Obama for many of those voters. But McCain lacks a motivated new cadre of supporters, and even the traditional Republican volunteer base - evangelical Christians - views him with skepticism.

"Where Obama really has the comparative advantage is his volunteers," said Michael McDonald, an expert on voter turnout at George Mason University. "When you look at McCain, one of his weaknesses is that he's not a candidate who is going to excite the Evangelical hard conservative base. He's not going to have the volunteers in place to do the same sort of mobilization efforts that an Obama would do."

The record turnout in many Democratic primaries suggests the same. Obama, for instance, received more votes in Virginia than the leading Republicans combined.

"There's a big difference in what's happening in the two parties," said Simon Rosenberg, a Democratic strategist, who cited the Democratic candidates' superior online organizing.

"The possibility of running a very large, very powerful, and very effective campaign to register voters is something the Obama campaign could pull off this summer."

[2ndDivisionVet]

This, combined with the usual massive voting fraud from the democrats and the media's slavish cheerleading, might give us a "president" Obama. Can we afford that? Can our military?

[Gatún(CraigIsaMangoTreeLawyer)]

In your dreams, Obama Osama.

To begin with, you are not going to be president. Period.

[Red Badger]

"Barack's appeal to independent voters is also going to be key."

Wishin' and Hopin' by Ani DiFranco Wishin', and hopin', and thinkin', and prayin', Planning and dreamin' each night of his charms. That won't get you into his arms So if your're looking to find love you can share All you gotta to is hold him, and kiss him, and love him, And show him that you care. Show him that you care, just for him. Do the things that he likes to do. Wear your hair just for him, 'cause, You won't get him, thinkin' and a prayin', Wishin' and hopin'. 'Cause wishin', and hopin', and thinkin', and prayin', Planning and dreamin' his kisses will start. That won't get you into his heart! So if you're thinking how great true love is All you gotta to is hold him, and kiss him, and squeeze him, and love him. Yeah, just do it! And after you do, you will be his. You gotta show him that you care just for him. Do the things that he likes to do. Wear your hair just for him, 'cause, You won't get him, thinkin' and a prayin', Wishin' and a hopin'. 'Cause wishin', and hopin', and thinkin', and prayin', Planning and dreamin' his kisses will start. That won't get you into his heart! So if you're thinking how great true love is! All you gotta to is hold him, and kiss him, and squeeze him, and love him. Yeah, just do it! And after you do, you will be his. You will be his. You will be his!

[Red Badger]

Wishin’ and Hopin’ by Ani DiFranco

Wishin’, and hopin’, and thinkin’, and prayin’,
Planning and dreamin’ each night of his charms.
That won’t get you into his arms

So if your’re looking to find love you can share
All you gotta to is hold him, and kiss him, and love him,
And show him that you care.

Show him that you care, just for him.
Do the things that he likes to do.
Wear your hair just for him, ‘cause,
You won’t get him, thinkin’ and a prayin’,
Wishin’ and hopin’.

‘Cause wishin’, and hopin’, and thinkin’, and prayin’,
Planning and dreamin’ his kisses will start.
That won’t get you into his heart!

So if you’re thinking how great true love is
All you gotta to is hold him, and kiss him, and squeeze him, and love him.
Yeah, just do it!
And after you do, you will be his.

You gotta show him that you care just for him.
Do the things that he likes to do.
Wear your hair just for him, ‘cause,
You won’t get him, thinkin’ and a prayin’,
Wishin’ and a hopin’.

‘Cause wishin’, and hopin’, and thinkin’, and prayin’,
Planning and dreamin’ his kisses will start.
That won’t get you into his heart!

So if you’re thinking how great true love is!

All you gotta to is hold him, and kiss him, and squeeze him, and love him.
Yeah, just do it!
And after you do, you will be his.

You will be his.

You will be his!

[subterfuge]

But can Obamassein count on all those racist white democrats he and his wife rail against? I don’t think so.

Dems are closet racists.

[skimask]

Dusty...Is that you?

[ilgipper]

I never thought that a Clinton would be the preferred option in this primary, but the potential that this guy could possibly be in the oval office is frightening. I like to think he can’t win, but he seems to keep winning over voters, despite his atrocious life history.

[Thebaddog]

The new voters might turn out if Obama looks like an instant front runner, but if he is able to be portrayed as the abject light weight that he is, the new voters will evaporate.

[chris_bdba]

What is all this hype about the under 35yo? There aren’t that many of them to create all of this kind of hype. The majority of American’s are in the over 45 age range, those younger pale in comparision.

[Red Badger]

You Wishin’ and a Hopin’?............

[Truth29]

A leading Democrat with proven Chicago voter organizing experience. The parodies and jokes can write themselves, but this is a dangerous combination. Cemeteries will be new prestige addresses for registrars.

[ClearCase_guy]

Grapes of Wrath:
"Wherever you can look - wherever there's a fight, so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there. I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad. I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry and they know supper's ready, and when the people are eatin' the stuff they raise and livin' in the houses they build - I'll be there, too."

Democrat plan:
"Wherever there are cemeteries -- wherever bodies are buried, we'll be there."

[AliVeritas]

Send them, copy to your hard drive. A taste of who we’re dealing with:

Barack Obama’s unlikely political education. (Must Read)
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/Articles/bobamasunlikelypoliticaledu.html

The Chicago Connection: Hillary, Obama and the cult of Alinsky

S:

In a 1971 book called Rules for Radicals, Alinsky scolded the Sixties Left for scaring off potential converts in Middle America. True revolutionaries do not flaunt their radicalism, Alinsky taught. They cut their hair, put on suits and infiltrate the system from within.

Alinsky viewed revolution as a slow, patient process. The trick was to penetrate existing institutions such as churches, unions and political parties.

S:
Barack Obama is also an Alinskyite. Trained by Alinsky’s Industrial Areas Foundation, Obama spent years teaching workshops on the Alinsky method. In 1985 he began a four-year stint as a community organizer in Chicago, working for an Alinskyite group called the Developing Communities Project. Later, he worked with ACORN and its offshoot Project Vote, both creations of the Alinsky network.

Camouflage is key to Alinsky-style organizing. While trying to build coalitions of black churches in Chicago, Obama caught flak for not attending church himself. He became an instant churchgoer.

That Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama share an Alinskyite background tells us two things. First, they are leftists, dedicated to overthrowing our Constitutional system. Second, they will go to any length to conceal their radicalism from the public.

That is the Alinsky method. And that is today’s Democratic Party.

http://catholiccitizens.org/press/pressview.asp?c=45262

Obama’s Third Way

S:
But DCP leaders wanted an organization that was identifiably African-American. Obama felt loyalty to the people in the Chicago neighborhoods where he had been working at a time when he was also consolidating his own identity as African-American.

“This was the first time that Barack had lived in a major African-American community, except at Columbia,” Kellman says. “It wasn’t just that he identified with the black community, but he found a home. He was rootless. He put down roots. He could not have done his political career without that. He became comfortable with who he was, not that he became comfortable ‘being black,’ but with the complexities of it all.”

Obama stayed on with DCP for two more years, winning small improvements in job training, education and the environment. While an article in the Los Angeles Times portrayed him as exaggerating his importance as an organizer, Obama is very frank about his limited organizing successes in his autobiography.

After he left DCP for Harvard Law School, Obama retained ties to the community. “He was the first black head of the Harvard Law Review, but he came back and did training for us, and if we had a big action, he was there,” Augustine-Herron says. “Even when he graduated, he still worked with the organization. That’s commitment most people don’t have. When they’re climbing the ladder, they don’t look back. He looked back.”

But Obama was also looking forward. He often chafed at the inability of community organizing to tackle the big issues of power and injustice. “Ah, yes. Real change. It had seemed like such an attainable goal back in college…,” he wrote. “Only now, after a year of organizing, nothing seemed simple. Who was responsible for a place like Altgeld? I found myself asking. There were no cigar-chomping crackers like Bull Connor out there, no club-wielding Pinkerton thugs.” A small neighborhood group, he concluded, cannot easily confront the people with the greatest control over their lives.

Kruglik says Obama went to law school largely because “he wanted to understand how power operates at a more powerful level, how money is moved and invested, how major financial decisions are made, and how that affects what happens to people in communities.” Yet Obama talked about returning to Chicago to form a much larger, faith-based network of community organizations. The Alinsky model of institution-based organizing continued to appeal to him more than alternatives, such as the direct organizing of poor people by groups like ACORN (Association of Communities Organized for Reform Now), which often is involved in electoral politics.

http://www.nhi.org/online/issues/149/obama.html

Psst, came across this as well...
Obama campaign using ACORN to hire canvassers…
http://glasscityjungle.com/wordpress/?p=2642

Held for Chaos, Obama, ACORN, Gamaliel, other organizations and voter fraud.

[King of Florida]

Actually, that was a Burt Bacharach tune originally done by Dusty Springfield.

[Argus]

Obama will raise the dead, free the prisoners, and open the borders to all our new guests, to get elected.

[Red Badger]

Yeah, I know. But that was the first Goooooogle reference that came up........

[AliVeritas]

Know your opposition video:

Shelby Steele on A BOUND MAN: WHY WE ARE EXCITED ABOUT OBAMA AND WHY HE CAN’T WIN

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/01112008/watch2.html

[Maine Mariner]

“In a 1971 book called Rules for Radicals, Alinsky scolded the Sixties Left for scaring off potential converts in Middle America. True revolutionaries do not flaunt their radicalism, Alinsky taught. They cut their hair, put on suits and infiltrate the system from within.”

Absolutely correct-one of my professor travelled to East Germany in about 1970. His field of speciality was history of economic thought. He talked with mid level members of the East German Communist Party as well as some old Bolsheviks.
He asked them what they thought about the 1960’s radicals, Yippies etc. To a person they said that if these 1960’s radicals were around at time of the Russia revolution or the later take over of Eastern Europe, they all would have been executed as counter revolutionaries.

[no dems]

Bringing new voters to the polls "is going to be a very big part of how we win," said Obama's deputy campaign manager...

That's what scares me.

[sportutegrl]

Obama has done very well in states with caucus primaries. This is states where you have to stand in a corner with other supporters of your candidate. It is easy to see who is for or against whom. Liberal democrat white guilt probably accounts for a lot of his numbers, as if to say, "See, I'm not a racist".

In other states with secret ballots, Obama has not done so well. In polls, where one has to profess one's choice to a pollster, it is possible that people are claiming to vote for Obama so as not to appear racist. But, when the general election comes, with it's secret ballots, I predict these votes will evaporate.

[Typical_Whitey]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1996198/posts

Obama is an idiot with positions like this on the hard left will vote for him.

[Typical_Whitey]

Yep he will be calling it the 100 Million man march to the polls....and Wright will be singing Hallelujia we painting the White House Black.... Reparations courtesy of Joe taxpayer...

[thulldud]

In polls, where one has to profess one's choice to a pollster, it is possible that people are claiming to vote for Obama so as not to appear racist.

Some are trying to claim that Obama is or will be the first to beat the Bradley Effect, but I don't see it happening.

[Virginia Ridgerunner]

Bringing new voters to the polls "is going to be a very big part of how we win," said Obama's deputy campaign manager, Steve Hildebrand, in an interview. "Barack's appeal to independent voters is also going to be key."

This sounds vaguely like Kerry's old strategy, and we know how well that worked out.

Remember "Rock the Vote?"

[Dad yer funny]

thanks AliVee , for posting and providing the link ,...

{ {{ “and its only April ! ! ! O M G !” }} }

[Dad yer funny]

yeah , .. but that was “Lurch” , ...

this is “Smooth-talkin’ Long-legged Mac Daddy”

[WOSG]

Obama PING - Marxist by birth, black by choice.

[OldArmy52]

Here in Calif (si, nosotros hablamos espanol in California, pero no hablo englesh), we have many new voters. Some of them citizens too.

[Thebaddog]

The other significant hurdle for Obama is that every other black candidate has essentially running to represent the black man against the Man. How is Obama going to prove himself to be a “new” politician who isn't just another black candidate against the Man?