Yesterday I wrote a photodiary summarizing my experience leading a group of young Democrats from California to canvass in Nevada. And while I described the experience in very positive terms, it wasn't until I read the HuffPo piece by Zack Exley (proudly linked by kos earlier today) that I myself paused to reflect on what I actually saw in Nevada.
After reading that article, the orgnizational and structural differences between the Obama operation and any other campaign I have ever worked on were immediately clear. And the only conclusion is this:
This campaign has an organization like nothing I have ever seen.
More below.
See, I wrote yesterday that after the rally with Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel, we went into the field office to receive our canvassing assignments. Thing is, that's not technically true.
As I'm sure you know, most of the time you go canvassing for a political campaign, you'll go into a field office, lounge around for a while waiting for them to get ready for you and prepare all of your packets and lists, and then go out without all that much information about the neighborhood you're supposed to be canvassing. "Here's your list, here's your script, here's your lit, now go ahead."
That's not the Obama way. We weren't actually staged from the field office: We were actually assigned to head over to a house of a volunteer that was serving as a staging area for one particular neighborhood. There was one paid staffer who was living at that house, and half the ground floor was dedicated to the Obama campaign organization. Let me bring in at this point a quote from the Exley article:
Ryan, for example, has six teams covering a wide swath of rural and exurban Southwest Ohio. He said, "It's great—it's like having six offices around town."
He elaborated: "So many people lose elections because of the places you can't get to. This program allows Glenna's team, with just two or three weeks of VAN training to know how to cut turf, to know how to pull lists and put canvass packets together. So all that type of work that eats up so much time for organizers can be handled at the local level—at her place.
The Obama campaign has many more field organizers and campaign personnel on the ground as it is, but these "staging areas" aren't counted in the total number of offices, even though they're effectively functioning as such and handling dozens of volunteers per day. When we arrived at this staging area, we were given specific information about all the local races, but also about the particular demographics and structure of the neighborhood--all of which proved useful when talking to the actual voters. We were immediately given our canvassing packets, which were small enough that they could actually be finished in a reasonable amount of time--which, we were told, was important because it was crucial to get a completed packet for data entry purposes so they could know if it was worth sending more people back out for another canvass of uncontacted voters later on.
But what this neighborhood-by-neighborhood strategy also allows is for the campaign to be more nimble and flexible. When runneraaa and I got back from our first canvass, we didn't just drop off our packets and walk out the door. We were asked by the paid staffer, "how did it go and what did you learn?" The neighborhood leader was able to take the time to debrief each canvass team, which is something that couldn't possibly happen at a centralized field office.
In my personal debrief, I mentioned that there was an Obama supporter in my canvass who had not yet registered and still needed to do so. I had told her that she could only register in person at that point, but that I didn't have the location for it and that I would have the campaign give her a call. I reported that situation to the neighborhood leader and gave him the information. Now, what would normally happen in a centralized field office is that that time-essential information would go into some "to be contacted" black hole, rather than actually being followed up on in a reasonable amount of time.
Not so in this organization. The team leader got all the information and called the voter immediately to give her all the instructions she needed for registering.
And what is happening here is that the neighborhood organizing and local data entry is making the canvass packets more and more effective. Unlike a haphazard central office system where it's impossible to know what data is being entered, when and by whom, resulting in very uneven success for future canvassing, the walk lists were practically perfect. That's what happens when each neighborhood is responsible for itself in a decentralized--but still organized--manner.
On Sunday, our next staging area wasn't in a private residence, but at a local park. Again, why not use all available spaces, especially on a nice day? It saves crowding at the local field office, and it's a lot more convenient for the canvassers to have a central location. The experience was very similar: a personal briefing and debriefing for every canvass team. But having a staging area on a public park on a weekend had side benefits: additional volunteer recruitment.
There were some young people who were at the park for recreation who were Obama supporters and wanted to see what was going on. In appreciation of their interest, they were trained in canvassing and given walk packets--an immediate boost to the number of volunteers.
It's very, very rare to bring 42 out-of-state volunteers, get to the place, and have the campaign know exactly what they want each of you to do and give you immediate assignments. This is the most organized, most efficient campaign I've ever seen.
But on top of that, it shows as well that the coming Obama ground surge cannot be measured in paid staff. It can't be measured in field offices. It can't be measured at all. But you will see it on election day, because the opposition doesn't have anything even close to this.
In his brief post, kos said:
I am so thankful to be part of this, that I sometimes feel like I'm going to burst.
Damn right. And it's amazing to see it in action.