Obama #44

NOTE TO READERS:

FROM NOW ON, ALL POSTS WILL BE @ HOWIEINSEATTLE.COM---PLEASE VISIT US THERE. THANKS FOR ALL YOUR SUPPORT.

HOWIE MARTIN

"Obama Roasts McCain at Al Smith Dinner" (video)

NC Dem, video (10:27):

Barack Obama speaks at the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner.

Barack Obama

"Voter-Fraud Fraud"

Hendrik Hertzberg:

The idea that Democrats try to win elections by arranging for hordes of nonexistent people with improbable names to vote for them has long been a favorite theme of Rove-era Republicans. Now it’s become a desperate obsession.

Consider today’s fund-raising e-mail from Robert M. (Mike) Duncan, chairman of the Republican National Committee. Some snippets:

Every election, it’s the same old song and dance from the Democrats and their liberal allies when it comes to donor and vote fraud.

They will soon be trying to pad their totals at ballot boxes across the country with votes from voters that do not exist. From Ohio and Florida to Wisconsin and Nevada, there are reports of fraudulent voter registration forms being submitted by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), a liberal group that is dedicating its resources to electing the Obama-Biden Democrats.

The e-mail climaxes with this pledge, which one hopes is delivered with a Sarah Palin wink: “We will not stand for the stealing of the election—the tainting of our democracy—by those who wish to subvert the rule of law.”

ACORN has become the 24/7 story on Fox News, too, on account of reports that it has submitted several thousand phony registration forms to local boards of elections. These reports appear to be true. Nevertheless, the “scandal,” as Fox calls it, is itself on its face as phony as Mickey Mouse’s social security number.

During this election cycle, the Times reported today, ACORN has deployed thirteen thousand mostly paid workers, who have registered 1.3 million new voters. One or two per cent of these workers turned in sheaves of forms that they filled out themselves with fake names and bogus addresses, and, even though at least a hundred of these workers have already been fired, the forged forms have been submitted to election boards.

Sounds suspicious—unless you know that groups like ACORN are required by law to submit them, even if they’re obvious fakes. This is to prevent funny business, such as trashing forms that look like they might be Republican (or Democratic, as the case may be).

Sounds suspicious—unless you know that ACORN normally sorts through forms, flags those that look fishy, and submits the fishy ones in a separate pile for the convenience of election officials.

Sounds suspicious—until you reflect that the motivation of the misbehaving registration workers is almost always to look like they’ve been doing more work than they really have, and that the victim of the “fraud” is actually the organization they’re working for.

Sounds suspicious—unless you know that even if one of these fake forms results in a nonexistent person actually being registered, now under the Help America Vote Act of 2002, “any voter who has not previously voted in a federal election” must provide identification in order to actually cast a ballot. This will make it tough for Mickey Mouse, even if registered, to vote, no matter how big, round, or black his ears. Likewise, members of the Duck family (Donald, Daisy, Huey, Dewey, and Louie) who turn up at the polling place will have a hard time getting into the voting booth. (Uncle Scrooge might be able to bribe his way in, but he’s voting Republican anyway.)

Sounds suspicious—unless you know that despite all the hysteria, from 2002 to 2005, only twenty people in the entire United States of America were found guilty of voting while ineligible and only five of voting more than once. By contrast, consider the lede on this story, published a week ago today:

Tens of thousands of eligible voters in at least six swing states have been removed from the rolls or have been blocked from registering in ways that appear to violate federal law, according to a review of state records and Social Security data by The New York Times.

And take it from Sarah Palin: the Times is “hardly ever wrong.”

Howie P.S.: I'm already sick and tired of pushing back against the lies of the opposition, but feel it is my obligation to do so.

Barack Obama

"The Community Organizing Renaissance"

Al Giordano, with video (01;03) from TechPresident:

With the passing of the final debate (one which only confirmed the trajectory - toward Obama - of the past month) now in the past, it remains to be seen whether the commercial news media will discover the real story of the 2008 campaign: the ground game.

While the commercial media obsesses over an alleged Ohio plumber (who apparently might neither be registered to vote nor licensed to practice that trade) the real everyman and everywoman - the ones that don't generally make more than a quarter-million dollars a year - can be found in the real towns and cities of America, on the front lines of the community organizing renaissance.

On Monday, Micah Sifry of TechPresident did some counting by hand:

-# of upcoming McCain events happening within a 25 mile radius of Orlando, Florida: 8


-# of upcoming Obama events happening within a 25-mile radius of Orlando: 84


-# of upcoming McCain events within a 25-mile radius of Dayton, Ohio: 8


-# of upcoming Obama events within a 25-mile radius of Dayton: 57

By Wednesday, he was able to quantify the ground game nationwide using Internet technology, which led to that video above, and this observation:

...while playing around with both sites' tools, I discovered that Obama's campaign will also allow you to export the resulting list as a structured data file, which for the geeks in the audience is like manna from heaven. In particular, you can get a KML file, which is short for "Keyhole Markup Language"--which means you can easily put Obama's events on Google Earth.

From that realization, it wasn't far to this: a visualization of all of Obama's upcoming events (there are more than 10,000 I think) between now and Election Day.

There are ten thousand potential newspaper, TV and radio news stories in those numbers, and at least as many "reporters" in need of a good report, but as during the primaries, the commercial media are leaving the real story of the 2008 United States presidential election to a few intrepid online journalists and bloggers. When on Election Night they will raise their eyebrows and go, wow, just wow, how the hell did that happen?, it will be the Field Hands here, and a very few folks like Sifrey, like Sean Quinn at 538 and Zack Exley at The Huffington Post who will have documented the answer: It was the organizing, stupid!

Quinn, in particular, has been doing yeoman's work. Weeks back, he started in Nevada and began the long drive across the fruited plain, posting pretty much daily from the road in the battleground states. There, he's found real people making real news, folks like Debrah Harleston in Northwest Ohio:

Most of her life spent as a Republican, Debrah Harleston volunteered heavily for George Bush in 2004. As she threw herself into helping Barack Obama in Toledo, one of her first questions to her organizer was, "why are we canvassing so soon?"

Debrah's story is uniquely her own, but also very much like the story of tens of thousands of everyday people that took history into their own hands this year:

Now that Debrah has settled into her role as one of Obama's Toledo Community Directors, she's amazed at the sophistication of the Obama structure. As a Community Director, she oversees three Neighborhood Team Leaders, volunteers who comprise the heart of Obama's volunteering infrastructure. Each neighborhood team, in turn, has up to five different coordinators: (1) the canvass coordinator; (2) the phonebank coordinator; (3) the volunteer coordinator; (4) the data coordinator; and (5) where applicable, the faith coordinator.

In Ohio, Campaign for Change State Director Jeremy Bird told us, there are 1,231 defined neighborhoods, as of August 25 there were about 800 in place, and as of Saturday approximately 1,100 NTLs had been tested and were up in operation. By "tested," Bird said, each NTL had undergone and met a series of specific challenges the field organizers had presented.

First, can the potential NTL organize a group of people? Whether by hosting a house party, a faith forum with a church group, or some other type of organizational meeting, the potential NTL needs to show they can lead the organization of their neighbors.

Second, can the potential NTL pass the voter contact test? Can he or she lead a canvass, can he or she build a group phonebanking night? It's a leadership test, built around voter contact.

Third, are they willing to make the final commitment by attending specific training for their role? Debrah Harleston smiled as she told us about the imminent blooming of satellite offices throughout the Toledo area so that neighborhood teams can begin running right in the neighborhoods autonomously.

Zack Exley, in another Ohio region, found another such unsung heroine, Glenna Fisher:

In her job at a Middletown, Ohio, steel factory, Glenna Fisher managed the preparation and shipping of millions of pounds of steel per year until her retirement six years ago. But when she has volunteered for democratic campaigns in the past, no one ever asked her to do anything more complicated than calling voters with a script.

This year, the field organizer (FO) assigned to her town, Ryan Clay, had much bigger plans for her.

"He'd gotten my name from info I'd entered on the Obama website listing ways in which I'd be willing to volunteer," Glenna explained in the Hamilton office before a regular report-in with Ryan. "He called and we set up a time to meet at a local coffee shop."

One of the ways Ryan asked Glenna to help was recruiting other volunteers.

"And that Sunday, my church had a joint service with our sister church, a local African-American congregation. There I talked with a friend who gave me several names of people who also might be interested in volunteering with the campaign. I called Ryan and passed on those names and phone numbers," Glenna said.

Ryan was impressed, and continued to ask Glenna to try increasingly difficult tasks. She didn't know it, but she was being "tested" to see if she had what it took to be a neighborhood team leader (NTL).

See, the story of the 2008 campaign is not some media creation and caricature like "Joe the Plumber," but those Americans that have done more than "win" the media lottery by having a chance encounter with a presidential candidate. (I put "win" in quotation marks because I have the feeling this isn't going to end well for that Joe, as media scrutiny can be a knife with two edges.) No, the story of 2008 is authentically about "Debrah the Neighborhood Team Leader" and "Glenna the Neighborhood Team Leader," and "Joe the Organizer," and "Jane the Change Crew Chief," and "Jose the Phone Banker" and "Jasmine the Canvasser." The story is that of so many Americans that didn't wait for the media to show up at their doorsteps but stepped out onto the battlefield and did the heavy lifting.

And there's a very special group among them: the more than 10,000 people - most, but not all, of them young - who right now aren't reading blogs or watching cable news because they're too busy organizing all those Debrahs and Glennas: the field organizers and deputies that were trained at Camp Obama and Fellows sessions, who have recruited those Neighborhood Team Leaders and others to carry out the action plan. They're engaged in hand-to-hand combat of sorts to identify or persuade every last vote and turn them out to the polls. Today, those of them that are in North Carolina are putting those votes on the scoreboards as the state's early voting began this morning and continues through November 1. Their counterparts in Georgia, Iowa, New Mexico and Ohio have been doing this for days now. The results are on the board already.

What will become of these organizers after Election Day? Having been in their shoes, I'm guessing that few of them have given it much thought. When you immerse yourself in immediate history, the "self," in traditional terms, ceases to exist, or is at least put on pause for a spell. It's the Cambellian hero's journey, and the luckiest of humans get to live it and then spend the rest of their lives contemplating what happened to change them so profoundly.

But their stories and memories and knowledge of how the job was done - not to mention the power of their skills, if they continue to harness them, in the future - hold the keys to understanding what is about to happen in America.

And so, Field Hands, I have an assignment for you in each of your local areas: You may already know some of these good people. They've probably organized you (or tried to). You certainly know where to find them. We don't yet know if their official campaign emails will still exist after November 4. But after the election we're going to need to be able to locate them and listen to their stories in order to properly document this historic moment. Your task: to assemble, for your area, their names, their permanent personal email addresses and their cell phone numbers, so that we can find them after the great leap forward and make sure their stories - a collective story - are told.

In most cases that means marching down to their offices, writing down the names of each person there with the title of "organizer" or "deputy" (usually their names are right on the wall in the office lobby, next to an envelope serving as a mail box), seeking them out, shaking their hands, thanking them for the work they're doing (you'll feel real good doing that), and asking how to find them after the election is over, as many of them are not from the areas where they're hard at work today. If they want to know why (a reasonable question), tell them about The Field, the Field Hands, and that your friend, the author (if they request it, give them my email and write down the URL for The Field for them), wants to interview them for a possible book about what they accomplished after the election is over and after the office they're working out of no longer exists. Respect their privacy. Don't post their personal info here or anywhere online. Send it privately to me at narconews@gmail.com: name, email and cell phone number. Remember that these folks are very, very busy right now. Assure them that we promise not to bug them before Election Day, but very much want to be able to find them and listen to their stories from the front lines when all is said and done.

The top story of 2008 doesn't end on November 4. It is - it must be - that this was the year that the Community Organizing Renaissance began.

We're going to move heaven and earth to make sure that it continues. Stay tuned for some important announcements about how, together, we're going to take up that challenge.

Howie P.S.: Great post, great video but I could do without the majestic soundtrack music on the video.

Barack Obama

The Final Debate-Roundup

"McCain, Obama get tough, personal in final debate"--AP.

"Is It Over? Debate Reveals That Dynamic Of Race Is Fixed In Obama's Favor"--Greg Sargent.

"Obama Hits McCain, Palin For Ugly Tone At Rallies"--Greg Sargent.

"Gergen: McCain's Performance "An Exercise In Anger Management" (VIDEO)"--Huffington Post.

"Obama T.K.O.s McCain in Last Debate"--Ari Melber.

"Obama Campaign Escalates Fox Attack at Debate"--Ari Melber

"Bloggers Weigh In"--Huffington Post

"Instant Debate Reaction"--Political Wire:

The instant polls conducted just after the final presidential debate found Sen. Barack Obama the clear winner.

CNN poll of debate viewers: Obama 58%, McCain 31%

CBS poll of uncommitted voters: Obama 53%, McCain 22%

In addition, both focus groups of uncommitted voters on CNN and Fox News found Obama the winner.

Barack Obama

"Barack Obama: Who is this guy? (Trailer)" (video)

VeridicusFilms, video (01:20):

"There is not a liberal America and a conservative America -- there is the United States of America. There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America; there's the United States of America." Barack Obama, 2004 Democratic Convention.

Veridicus Films is excited to announce that our new documentary, Barack Obama: Who Is This Guy? is now available exclusively at Blockbuster Video to purchase, rent or download via blockbuster.com.

A truly compelling American story of promise and change, narrated by the acclaimed actor, Blair Underwood, and featuring exclusive interviews with some of our most prominent and recognizable personalities in Politics, Academics, Entertainment, Religion and Business.

Blockbuster is the leading movie rental retailer in the United States, with literally millions of movie fans walking through their doors through Election Day.
We are asking for your support in building excitement for the film, and encouraging everyone you know to purchase or rent this movie and share this powerful message.

DVD cover for messaging & for what you'll see at Blockbuster:

Thank you for your support and for helping to spread the word about this incredible film!

Thomas Howard, COO/EP: tehoward23@aol.com
Maria Arita-Howard, Creator/EP: aritatv@aol.com
Media Inquiries: Angela Blair, angela@angelablair.com, 214.208.6761
Veridicus Films, LLC: www.veridicusfilms.com

Howie P.S.: The soundtrack music at the end comes from Seattle's Bergevin brothers.

Barack Obama

"Obama Memo on Tonight's Debate"

Political Insider:

TO: Interested Parties
FR: Bill Burton, Obama-Biden Campaign National Press Secretary
RE: John McCain's plan to "whip" "That One's" "you-know-what"
DA: October 15, 2008

In tonight's debate, Chuck Todd of NBC News says, McCain needs to "figure out how to disqualify Barack Obama." Time Magazine's Mark Halperin writes, "McCain will have to produce a major memorable moment." The NY Daily News says the debate is "do-or-die for McCain's campaign." However they put it, people agree, John McCain needs a game-changer.

On the big issues, this debate is one last chance for John McCain to do what he has failed to do throughout this entire campaign: explain to the American people how his economic policies would be any different at all than the failed Bush agenda he has supported every step of the way. It's his last chance to somehow convince the American people that his erratic response to this economic crisis doesn't disqualify him from being President.

Just this weekend, John McCain vowed to "whip Obama's you-know-what" at the debate, and he's indicated that he'll use Bill Ayers to attack Barack Obama. Even though Senator McCain has said he doesn't "give a damn" about Bill Ayers, his campaign has admitted that if he talks about the economy, he'll lose.

But perhaps the NY Times explained the peril of McCain's negative strategy best this morning when they wrote: After several weeks in which the McCain campaign unleashed a series of strong political attacks on Mr. Obama, trying to tie him to a former 1960s radical, among other things, the poll found that more voters see Mr. McCain as waging a negative campaign than Mr. Obama. Six in 10 voters surveyed said that Mr. McCain had spent more time attacking Mr. Obama than explaining what he would do as president; by about the same number, voters said Mr. Obama was spending more of his time explaining than attacking. [NYT/CBS Poll, NY Times 10/15/08]

Senator Obama is going to use the debate to discuss his plan for the economy. That's what he's been doing this entire campaign. And on Monday, he built on his proposals in a new Rescue Plan for the Middle Class. That's the kind of steady leadership and real change Americans are looking for - not John McCain's erratic handling of the crisis, his constant character attacks, and the same Bush policies that have failed us for eight years.

But after two debates in which John McCain didn't mention the middle class once - and after his campaign declared openly that they want to turn the page on talking about the economy - the real question is not how many attacks McCain can land in the debate, but whether he can finally communicate a vision to turn this economy around.

And while McCain has promised to attack Obama in the debate, every minute that he ignores the economy and the middle class is not just a minute wasted but time spent on attacks that even some of those closest to him have said don't work.

Barack Obama

"Obama Explains His Tax Cut Plans To Plumbing Business Owner' (video)

jed report, video (05:47):

From ABC.

Barack Obama

"David Plouffe's Strategy Update: October 14, 2008" (video)

BarackObamadotcom, video (03:06):

Campaign Manager David Plouffe gives a strategy update from Ohio and talks about the McCain campaign's false, negative attack ads. Make a donation to help fight back at https://donate.barackobama.com/takeas...

Howie P.S.: Aden Nak puts it a little more bluntly: "The Stench of Panic."

Barack Obama

"Obama Details Economic Plan" (with video from CNN)

truthout.org with video (10:41):

Senator Barack Obama unveiled a plan to rescue the middle class today in Toledo, Ohio. Obama called for the plans to be enacted now - three weeks before the election - saying the nation has already lost three-quarters of a million jobs this year and unemployment is on the rise.

"Today I'm proposing a number of steps that we should take immediately to stabilize our financial system, provide relief to families and communities and help struggling homeowners," said Obama, who is preparing for Wednesday night's debate with Republican nominee John McCain near Toledo. "It's a plan that begins with one word that's on everyone's mind, and it's spelled J-O-B-S."

Barack Obama

"The facts about ACORN"

Tom Matzzie (excerpted from the Huffington Post story "How McCain Will Steal the Election from Obama (Sort Of))":

The facts about ACORN are worth getting out.

ACORN is an organization that, among other things, registers low-income people to vote. One of the ways they do this is to hire door-to-door canvassers from the neighborhoods they are working in. This sort of work is tightly regulated. So, when one of the thousands of people they give jobs to doesn't do their work right and brings back bogus or phony voter registration cards, the law REQUIRES that ACORN turn the forms in to the voter registration office. The law, rightly, doesn't want anybody throwing out voter registration forms for any reason.

But ACORN goes a step farther. They have people assigned to do quality control on all the cards--calling people on the forms after they fill them out. When they find bad information on the cards they attach a cover sheet to the card but, as mentioned above, they turn in the cards as required by law. The effect is that a few bad canvassers or a poorly run office will mean that bad cards are submitted as part of the normal process. But ACORN has done everything possible to make sure voting officials know to check the forms.

The sad fact is that in at least one state--Nevada--the voting officials disregarded ACORN's cover sheets flagging the voter registration forms. That should have never happened. The resulting blowup was a scandal in search of a scandal.

Howie P.S.: In other campaign news: "Obama Camp Relying Heavily on Ground Effort" (WaPo), "In Friendly Region, Biden Cites McCain as Erratic" (NY Times), and "Children for Obama (Green Lake, Seattle)" from Silenced Majority Portal with video (01:31).

If you have/know school age children, you know how well they connect with Obama.
Barack Obama

R U wonderin' how FAUX is handling this weeks' news? (video)

The Daily Show, video (01:50):

The economy is the big story everywhere. Well, almost everywhere. With the economic downturn corresponding with Barack Obama's surge in the polls, Fox News wants to distract its viewers. How well are they doing?

Barack Obama

"Ari Melber On 'The Hate Talk Express'" (video)

Jed Report, with video (05:58):

Ari turns in another strong performance on MSNBC. Basically, these days he's mowing down whatever GOP hack they happen to put in front of him.

Barack Obama

"Obama Thanks McCain for Admonishing Supporters"

At a campaign event in Philadelphia, Senator Barack Obama acknowledged Senator John McCain’s effort to “tone down the rhetoric” during one of his own rallies on Friday. (Photo: Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times)
NY Times:

PHILADELPHIA – The morning after Senator John McCain tried to tamp down heated comments from his supporters at a town-hall-style meeting in Minnesota, Senator Barack Obama offered him a quick nod of thanks.

“I want to acknowledge that Senator McCain tried to tone down the rhetoric in his town hall meeting yesterday,” Mr. Obama said, speaking at an early-morning rally in North Philadelphia. “I appreciated his reminder that we can disagree while still being respectful of each other. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again – Senator McCain has served this country with honor, and he deserves our thanks for that.”

But in the next breath, Mr. Obama criticized Mr. McCain and Rick Davis, Mr. McCain’s campaign manager, for his comment on Friday that the campaign is “not a CNBC news show on the stock market.”

“When it comes to the economy, and what families here in Pennsylvania are going through, Senator McCain still doesn’t get it,” Mr. Obama said. “Yesterday, Senator McCain’s campaign manager said that Senator McCain wasn’t talking about the market because there’s not much a candidate for president can say –they aren’t sure what he’d say each day even if he did talk about it.”

His remarks kicked off what promised to be a busy morning of campaigning designed to boost voter turnout in Philadelphia, with four rallies in quick succession throughout the city. Mr. Obama began with a rally before a mostly African-American audience at Progress Plaza in North Philadelphia.

He spent Friday evening appearing at his two biggest fund-raisers in the city since June, taking in more than $5 million.

Barack Obama

"Obama Accuses McCain of Trying to Stoke Anger" (video)

truthout.org, video (04:55):

Senator Barack Obama addresses the crisis in the American economy and warns against the McCain campaign's efforts to stoke anger among their supporters.

Howie P.S.: These remarks came at campaign stop in Chillicothe, OH. Seattle attorney Karen Russell, whose father (Bill Russell) was a legendary "first" himself, has posted "McCain: Stop The "Hate Talk Express." Mr. Russell was the first African-American NBA coach.

Barack Obama

"Top GOP Strategist: It's Over, Obama Will Win In Landslide" (video)

Jed Report, video (01:41):

Ed Rollins ran Ronald Reagan's presidential campaign in 1984.

Howie P.S.: Instant analysis here from Ari Melber.

Barack Obama

"Obama Attacks McCain’s Mortgage Plan"

NY Times:

This 30-second advertisement for Senator Barack Obama will be shown across the nation on national cable television, according to the campaign. It is titled “Tested.”

PRODUCER Obama campaign media team

THE SCRIPT A narrator says: “In a time of crisis, our leaders’ judgment is tested. On Tuesday, an announcement.” Senator John McCain: “I would order the secretary of the Treasury to immediately buy up the bad home loan mortgages in America.” The narrator: “On Wednesday, the details. McCain would shift the burden from lenders to taxpayers guaranteeing a loss of taxpayer money. Who wins? The same lenders that caused the crisis in the first place. Putting bad actors ahead of taxpayers? We can’t afford more of the same.”

ON THE SCREEN The advertisement opens with still images: a foreclosed home with a “For Sale” sign, a worried stock trader, the Capitol. Then a clip of Mr. McCain’s announcing of his home mortgage plan at the debate Tuesday. The narrator says the plan would “shift the burden from lenders to taxpayers” as a graphic of a CNN Money.com article that reaches a similar conclusion appears on the screen. The advertisement ends with images of a street sign on Wall Street, followed by a photograph of Mr. McCain with President Bush.

ACCURACY Even Mr. McCain’s economic adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, conceded that the plan would place a burden on taxpayers. Under the proposal, the government could buy the home loans of Americans who are at risk of defaulting (or are already delinquent) and allow them to obtain new mortgages at more favorable rates. Taxpayers would be responsible for the difference in value between the old and new mortgages. It is very likely the McCain plan would result in “a loss of taxpayer money,” as the message says.

While the advertisement portrays lenders as the winners in this arrangement, it fails to acknowledge the potential benefits to homeowners, namely more affordable mortgages. Mr. Holtz-Eakin has also noted that stabilizing home values would speed economic recovery. The commercial does not mention the fact that legislation, including the $700 billion bailout bill that Congress and the president approved last week, paved the way for the plan that Mr. McCain proposed. Both Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama supported the bill.

SCORECARD With millions of Americans at risk of foreclosure, Mr. Obama has seized on Mr. McCain’s mortgage proposal as a way to question his judgment on economic issues. While the advertisement glosses over the critical point of the McCain plan — that it is meant to be a lifeline for homeowners before they slide into foreclosure — it makes some valid points about the new liabilities taxpayers would face.

Barack Obama

"Obama's Web-Savvy Voter Plan"

Ari Melber:

Before Barack Obama spoke to a September rally at the University of Nevada, 21-year-old Carmen Gilbert took the stage to address her classmates, who spilled across the quad in a capacity crowd of 12,000 people. She was all business. "Take out your cellphones," said Gilbert, as she ordered the throng of rookie voters to text Obama's headquarters on the spot. With the punch of two buttons--a message reading NV--vital organizing intelligence poured into the campaign.

Obama's aides treasure data and contact information for voters in swing states, and text messages provide both. First, the campaign learns when and where a person joined up. So a student with a New York cellphone, who would otherwise be relegated to fundraising appeals, is reclassified for Nevada mobilization. Then, organizers directly reach them with text messages and calls. The campaign also asks supporters to forward text messages and grow the network.

"Every night there's a data sync on who is new and who is a longtime MyBO [Obama social network] user who started making calls," says Joe Rospars, Obama's new-media director, explaining how the campaign integrates virtual actions with organizing on the ground. A swing-state supporter who signs up online will swiftly receive calls from local staff and targeted e-mails. "Fifty percent of our e-mail is on state-specific items, like volunteer recruitment," Rospars told me one Sunday night in September, at a Chicago bar a few blocks from Obama headquarters. Each time a supporter interacts with the campaign, Rospars says, data specialists "create new layers" for targeting that person by region, engagement and volunteer preferences.

Campaign messages range from reminders about watching presidential debates to registration deadlines. The communication, however, is not confined to top-down missives from Chicago. On September 28 the campaign launched a turnout application on the popular iPhone. In a break with typical voter contact models, it empowers users to call their personalized list of voters. It sorts friends' phone numbers by "key battleground states" to focus on the people with potentially decisive votes.

Tapping personal networks can also unearth people who are not on the grid for conventional outreach. Scott Goodstein, the guru behind ObamaMobile, the campaign's cell outreach, anticipates the program "will generate thousands of additional personal contacts." Within a week of its launch, the tool broke into the Top Ten free downloads on iTunes. It bested iGolf, another new release, but is still trailing Lightsaber Unleashed as we go to press.

Reaching new people is futile, of course, if they aren't registered to vote. The Obama campaign has united web and field recruitment to wage one of the largest voter registration drives of a modern campaign. It's the first time since Jesse Jackson's 1980s bids that a candidate has staked success on mobilizing new voters. Obama's October schedule is studded with evidence of this audacious strategy; he's spending precious time in recently bright-red states like North Carolina, where he spoke to a 28,000-person rally on October 5. But he can't win the state within its 2004 universe of registered voters: they re-elected Bush by a whopping 12.5-point margin, about 436,000 votes. Obama needs new registrants just to narrow that gap--and he must still win back conservative swing voters.

Step one is working. Democratic registration has spiked by seven points in North Carolina since March--the GOP's is up only a point--and the Obama campaign says it has registered 160,000 new voters. It has forty-five field offices sending volunteers to find new voters; a parallel hunt continues online.

Obama's Internet success is well known, of course, since he has bested his rivals in both parties on everything from political traffic to YouTube views to MySpace friends. The campaign's use of the web for recruiting new voters, however, is largely below the radar. That's fine with Obama's aides, who think the quiet, steady growth of the list of new registrants will catch some Republicans off guard. One example is McCain's abrupt choice to cede Michigan, which he announced on the very day that new voters packed an 18,000-person Obama rally at Michigan State. Obama's press shop has done very little to promote its signature registration effort online--the innovative portal VoteForChange. (The campaign required my interviews with its Internet staff to be mostly on background.) VoteForChange has received scant print coverage, but it's a viral hit. Although the site is an Obama operation, it decouples registration from the Hopemonger. The spare bilingual homepage looks more like a search engine, soliciting information and helping visitors register, request absentee ballots or find polling locations.

The campaign can keep the effort discreet because it has a network to route around the press. Organizers spread the word using supporter e-mails, targeted Facebook ads--and an irreverent spoof video. The edgy clip spliced footage of Tom Brokaw imagining a McCain victory and directed terrified viewers to VoteForChange. It was an instant sensation, rocketing past celebrities as the most viewed item on YouTube. Within days NBC filed a copyright claim and the clip was pulled, but the new site had already bested the average traffic for Senate.gov. Meanwhile, in some states spikes in registration reveal a civic excitement broader than any single campaign can create. In Ohio a record-breaking 94 percent of eligible citizens have now registered.

It's easy to forget, but during the primary season Obama trailed in most polls before the Iowa caucuses. Credit the man for using personal appeal and the politics of hope to stay afloat, but credit his campaign's sophisticated Internet program for making even that possible. Without the web, they wouldn't have had the money to compete or the network to organize support beyond the party apparatus. Those feats, however, have blue borders. Obama has only altered Democratic politics so far.

If his strategy succeeds, all presidential politics could change. First-time voters--both this generation of the young, black or marginalized as well as future rookie cohorts--might become a constituency that candidates pursue. The long shot, if Obama wins big, is a larger electoral universe that forces Republicans to play catch-up. The party that spent decades stifling voter turnout, from illegal suppression to court-sanctioned ploys like ID requirements, could find electoral salvation depends on the ability to register its own new voters. Couple that grassroots pressure with an economic crisis stoking intense bipartisan populism, and a "new politics" might really be on the horizon.

Barack Obama

Spotted at First & Pike: Seattle Bassets for Obama

First posted here on Seattlest, and then picked up by Andrew Sullivan. This is my dog park buddy Stevo who told me earlier today when we were there with our canines that he was going to head downtown for some Obama "visibility." He got it, big time!
Barack Obama

Michelle Obama on Larry King (video)

CNN, video (01:48). Howie P.S.: There are several more clips from the show there, as well.

Barack Obama