I'm predicting a pretty brutal defeat today, although it would be quite nice if I am wrong.
What I am most interesting in learning about is the effectiveness of Organizing for America. This election is a good test to determine if OFA's strategy and tactics proved to be an effective counterweight to the old tried and true GOP political methods of strong media advertising and messaging. This election should return some rather useful data on organizing the way OFA is conducting it and whether or not it is making a big difference in an election where Barack Obama is not on the ballot. There will only be one more election where Obama is on a ballot. Is it only effective for him personally or Democrats generally?
OFA had a very explicit overall goal, which I wrote about in late May:
David Plouffe, if reporting is correct, has been given charge of overseeing the overall campaign by posting as outside adviser to the DNC. His strategy is simple: get 15 million first-time Obama voters to turnout again. Mid-term elections are usually party base turnout elections. The broader electorate is not fully engaged because no major candidate is on the ballot. Turnout falls down to mostly committed partisans of either party. Plouffe's strategy is to engage them once again betting they will support Democrats. The Vote 2010 initiative is a gamble to change the composition of the electorate by bringing first time voters into the Democratic base. Driven by MyBO it will rely on the 2008 team of community organizers and volunteers. So the "change the electorate" model is still in place.
I am looking forward to seeing how well this strategy worked. Did first time voters from 2008 turn out again? If not, why not? Was the DNC/OFA/White House organizational structure as effective as the unified command campaigns run by the DNC and Obama for America in 2006 and 2008 respectively?
Obviously a great deal of "success" measurements depends on the results. But win or lose, we should be able to learn a lot about OFA and if it is working well or not and whether changes needed to be made to improve it, or let it wither on the vine and move back to more traditional campaign tactics in light of Citizens United. Either way, there will be a lot to learn from this election.