With the February 12th Chesapeake Primary (VA/DC/MD) developing into the potential final showdown in the Democratic Presidential Nomination process (assuming a mixed result on Super Tuesday) because Senator Obama appears to have a strong advantage in MD and DC, Virginia grassroots volunteers are apparently becoming a major threat to Hillary Clinton's National Headquarters in Arlington (near Ballston metro stop) despite having no office space of their own until today.
That's because they booked the office space that has previously been used by Obama volunteers on sunday despite having no intention of using it.
With the February 12th Chesapeake Primary (VA/DC/MD) developing into the potential final showdown in the Democratic Presidential Nomination process (assuming a mixed result on Super Tuesday) because Senator Obama appears to have a strong advantage in MD and DC, Virginia grassroots volunteers are apparently becoming a major threat to Hillary Clinton's National Headquarters in Arlington (near Ballston metro stop) despite having no office space of their own until today.
Since an Obama sweep on February 12 could be capped off by a defeat on the soil of their home base and be a huge momentum-builder/campaign-ender, the Clinton campaign has decided to suppress Obama volunteer participation instead of build up their own (they have yet to send a staffer to an Arlington Young Dems/Arlington Dems meetings or host any recruitment events for Arlington volunteers).
On Super Bowl Sunday, they squatted Arlington Democrats Headquarters (the usual office space for Obama and other primary campaign volunteers) from 10am-7pm just to keep us away from organizing there:
http://www.arlingtondemocrats.org/...
The only problem is they didn't really need it because they have a large HQ already to host as many volunteers as they want.
How do we know? Well, they advertised the location on the Arlington Democrats' web site and invited volunteers to go there, but when you arrived at the front door a sign was posted that told them to go to the National HQ instead.
So, even though their volunteer base includes many older women, they decided to send them to a location 10 minutes away as a fake-out just so they could suppress volunteer participation in the primary by an opposing candidate.
I'm sure the volunteers that showed up enjoyed the extra 20-30 minutes of travel time to get back to their car or try to catch a sunday bus/metro, then ride over to the ACTUAL volunteer location, then park or walk over there, and then FINALLY volunteer.
Meanwhile, Obama volunteers just went to a high rise next door and hosted a meeting attended by well over 100 volunteers!
Pics of the sign and meeting are on the CraigsList posting below:
http://washingtondc.craigslist.org/...