Hi everyone — sorry if this diary is a little disorganized (it is my first one), but I wanted to know what you all think of a phonebanking plan I have for the Obama campaign. While Obama’s campaign has shown major strength in a number of areas, two key strengths have been in organization and netroots support. But there seems to be a potential overlap between these two areas that has not yet been fully explored. (See you on the other side!)
The online phonebanking tool on Obama’s website is a revolutionary step forward in campaigning, but in order to fully utilize this great new resource we should apply caucus-like organization to it. The idea is this: create a structure of volunteer phone “precinct captains” who are responsible for organizing a small group of, say, 10-30 other volunteers. The Obama campaign has a huge amount of young supporters — supporters who frequently have a lot of time, but not a lot of money (like me). After forming a core group of volunteer “phone precinct captains,” the Obama campaign could send out an e-mail along the lines of: “We know many of you would love to support the campaign, but currently cannot afford to donate money: there are 20 days left before the March 4th primary — would you be willing to donate 20 phone calls?” A volunteer would then pledge to make a certain amount of phone calls — of course they would not be required to follow through on their pledge, but they would know that the number of pledged calls they do not complete would then be made by their “precinct captain” (although the unmade calls could be pooled by all the precinct captains).
The precinct captain would be responsible for sending out e-mails to his or her group personally encouraging them to make calls and periodically reminding them how many calls have been made. Like the bios and letters that get attached with matched donations, it would be a nice way of personalizing the Obama effort. The Obama website already has a “National Call Team” and a number of groups documenting how many calls a person makes to each state, but the addition of volunteer phone “precinct captains” could exponentially increase the number of phone calls made and add a great sense of community to the project and campaign.
One last benefit of this organization would be the ability to organize groups of people according to specific skills or shared experiences (i.e. Spanish speakers or union members) that would allow the Obama campaign to target particular areas with particular groups of callers, thereby increasing the effectiveness of the calls. There would probably have to be a number of managing volunteers who would serve as the conduit carrying the information and message from the Obama campaign to the precinct captains, but I don’t think it would be difficult to get people to volunteer for these positions. (Also, people would not be forced to opt into this system — if they do not pledge to make phone calls, they will not be assigned to a captain, but could still phonebank by themselves)
Daily Kos seems to be the perfect place to find the organizational structure that the Obama campaign needs in this endeavor, as we already have an established community. There is frequently a tension on DKos between commenting and acting — the idea being that if you are blogging, you are not actively campaigning for your candidate. Such a distinction does not have to exist anymore as one can use one’s time blogging to simultaneously organize phonebanking efforts.
Let me know what you all think, and if you know of a good way to pass this idea along to the Obama campaign please let me know!
Thank you for reading (and please rec. the diary if you think it is a good idea)!