Fear & Loathing On The Campaign Trail: A Disgruntled Obama Volunteer Writes In
I worked on the election day disaster that was the Obama campaign in South Philly.Basically how it worked on election day was a couple of geniuses from out-of-town places like DC & North Carolina were in charge of a bunch volunteers from Philly and other places. All of the out-of-town geniuses (who you basically don’t see working on the Philly campaign before election day) give out lists of doors to knock on. These were the exact same lists we had been working off of for weeks, and almost none of the information we had gathered, and had been gathering for weeks, was entered; supporters were not even noted.
This was supposed to be the best ground game in Politics, but Philly ain’t Iowa, cuz.
All of the geniuses are super psyched to see other people like soccer moms and college students come in from out of state, and since there is no plan other than knock on every door, they knock on “undecided” doors since they have the man power. Now, I am just a South Philly knucklehead who watches a lot of MSNBC, but considering exit polling said that the late decider went 6-4 for Clinton, maybe this wasn’t the best idea.
Worst of all, they ignored polling places all day. Polling stations in black neigberhoods were covered in Hillary signs with Doc’s (usually white) thugs standing right under them… they finally sent some of us to the polls at 7pm, to see if there were lines… which there never are at any of the locations and there were none this time.
Oh, and if you are all curious as to why everything was covered in Hillz signs and no Barry signs yesterday; apparently, the geniuses have determined that signs don’t win elections, what’s funny is that, well, neither do they.
[Photo credit: The Ave.]
April 24th, 2008 at 11:01 am
This would be more insightful if Philly hadn’t gone overwhelming in favor of Barry. I believe he even outpaced his hoped for margins in the city. It was the margins in the rest of the state that doomed him. He lost 3 to 1 in places like Erie, Scranton and Wilkes-Barre.
I don’t know anything about the outsiders coming into town with their own “lists” so I won’t comment on that, but I don’t think his loss had anything to do with whether or not there were Obama signs up at the polling places. People are stupid, but they aren’t that stupid.
April 24th, 2008 at 12:43 pm
How far did JDocs 12 tonnes of signage get him?
Sucks about the lists, though. And rightfully infuriating.
April 26th, 2008 at 12:37 am
Yeah, we are going through the same in Indiana. Calling the same people over and over, knocking on doors from very old lists. The locals seem to be disregarded as yocals that are only good for directing them to food places or making phone calls all day to the same people. I don’t know how it is there, but most people here do not want to be called at 9pm for two nights in a row.