Like Billmon, I was also struck by the number of snide references to "community organizers" tonight. The dog-whistle thing occurred to me, too. I also thought they may have been trying to scare some voters who don't know what an organizer does but may be put off by the job title.
Whatever the reason, it doesn't matter; it was a bad idea, and it may cost the GOP the election--by an even bigger margin than it would've before.
In my work as an internet communications and organizing guy, I've had the chance to work with professional field and community organizers, and I got news for the GOP: You do NOT wanna piss these people off. More after the jump.
Here's what I've learned about organizers over the last few years:
They're hardcore about their work. They HAVE to be. Community organizers work loooong hours, doing some of the most thankless, frustrating work in the world -- and the average organizer makes between $25-30K a year. So the people who put up with all this crap tend to be the true believers, the ones that believe they're really making a difference and derive a large amount of "psychic income" from what they do.
They're stubborn. Again, they HAVE to be. It can be extremely difficult to mobilize people in a community to take action, for a number of reasons: people are too busy, or they're totally jaded and don't believe organizing will do anything for them, etc. Ironically, sometimes the hardest communities to organize are the ones that need it the most. So the successful organizers are the ones that don't take no for an answer.
They're ridiculously resourceful. Like any job, organizing has a set of "best practices" and standard ways of doing the work. But it's also an unpredictable job, and many times you have to improvise on the spot to make things work. So organizers learn to think quickly on their feet and pull proverbial rabbits out of their hats all the time. They're ready to ditch best-laid plans in a second and write a new playbook on the spot -- whatever it takes to make things work.
They're fearless. Organizers will go wherever they have to, talk to whoever they have to, call whoever they have to, in order to get the job done. I don't know an organizer that could be called "shy" -- they tend to be scrappy, assertive people because it's essentially a job requirement.
So to recap: We have an army of hardcore, stubborn, resourceful and fearless people working in communities all across America. And the GOP tonight insulted all of them and spit in their collective face. Does that seem smart?
Granted, many (if not most) organizers work the progressive side of the fence, so in one way or another they will end up helping Democrats, and they're probably already plenty motivated to do so.
But tonight the GOP (especially Sarah Palin and Rudy Giuliani) directly jabbed its finger in their eye, insulted them, and belittled them and their work on national television. So now they're 10 times more motivated to work their assess off to defeat Republicans this fall and put Obama in the White House. Like I said, not smart. Now they're angry -- and you wouldn't like them when they're angry.
It's on. It's sooo on.