How Obama Won Florida

Miami Herald: Inside story: How Obama won Florida
It took passion, precision and a little bit a luck for the Obama team to turn Florida from red to blue

[T]he campaign registered 200,000 new voters in Florida, opened 50 state field offices, recruited 600,000 volunteers and allocated $40 million to fight John McCain....

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Obama's Florida strategy was thorough and simple: ask every supporter to help, give every volunteer a job, register every eligible voter, get ''sporadic'' voters to the polls, and bring the campaign to every pocket of the state.

The campaign did it by dividing the state into five regions, or ''pods,'' each with its own staff and message geared to regional concerns. It harnessed social networking on the Internet and cell phones to allow grassroots organizers set up their own voter registration drives, home-grown phone banks and text messaging chains.

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in 2004, 1.6 million Democrats didn't vote, including 600,000 African American voters.......

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''We don't stop when we ask you to vote. We ask you to talk to your neighbors, or start a phone bank, or knock on doors or donate food,'' says Botticella, 25 and a California native.

''It's about turning conversations into relationships,'' she says.

In Florida, that means 1,414 ''Neighbor to Neighbor'' teams with a total of 22,000 volunteers.

Community organizing, baby.

Damn Straight

The all-white Republican convention laughing heartily at Sarah Pain calling Barack Obama a "community organizer" derisively surely were using it as a stand-in for n**ger. I had no doubt while I was watching it. For whose community was Obama serving? The Southside of Chicago. New York Governor David Paterson said it yesterday. About time.

NYTimes: Code Words Hint of Race in Campaign, Paterson Says

Gov. David A. Paterson said on Tuesday that he detected “overtones of potential racial coding” in the presidential campaign, drawing a sharp retort from the campaign of Senator John McCain, the Republican candidate.

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... “I think the Republican Party is too smart to call Barack Obama black in a sense that would be a negative. But you can take something about his life, which I noticed they did at the Republican convention — a ‘community organizer.’ They kept saying it, they kept laughing, like, ‘What does this mean?’ ”

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A McCain spokesman, Peter Feldman, said in a statement that criticisms of Mr. Obama’s early work as a community organizer by Mr. McCain’s running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, were well within the bounds of respectable political debate.

“Governor Palin’s remark about Barack Obama’s work as a community organizer was in response to the Obama campaign’s belittling of her executive experience,” Mr. Feldman said. “There is certainly a place for community activism, as demonstrated by Sarah Palin’s own record of civic involvement. But Barack Obama’s role as a community organizer pales in comparison to Governor Palin’s demonstrated experience.”

Mr. Paterson on Tuesday seemed to bristle at such attacks. Defining what a community organizer was, Mr. Paterson said: “It means that an individual who could have gone to Wall Street and made a lot of money — and then run for office because he can buy media time — chose to go back and work in programs in neighborhoods where he thought he can make a difference and became an elected official based on his involvement right in his own community.”

Obama Responds: "Who Are They Fighting For?"

Jesus Was A Community Organizer

zazzle


Jesus was a community organizer, and John McCain is a POW: a Prisoner of the Wingnuts. Only a Republican wingnut like Sarah Palin would have the chutzpah to mock community organizers in her first major speech on the national stage.

Hey, you know another community organizer? John Lewis, Congressman from Georgia, chair of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee fighting for civil rights during the 1960s; beaten to a bloody pulp by police during the Selma march in 1965; recently cited by Republican hypocrite John McCain as someone he would look to for advice. So, McCain would look to community organizer and American hero John Lewis for advice, but he sends out his pitbull in lipstick Sarah Palin to attack Obama as a lowly community organizer.

The Rethugs have nothing. They don't have any policies to offer except for four more years of George W. Bush's failed policies. So they're on the attack. We're not falling for it this time.

Insightful diary from organicdemocrat at dailykos.

Jesus Was a Community Organizer

Martin Luther King was too. So was Gandhi. Mandela. Also John Hancock, who organized a boycott of [t]ea imported from China.

The Republican Party is run by powerful corporate interests who feel threatened by any citizen organization. Mitt Romney made money at his East Coast hedge fund by taking over companies, firing his workers and looting their pension fund. (While Mitt was talking, Nero called. Wants his fiddle back.) Rudy Giuliani, as Mayor, lived in fear of community organizers from Harlem and Brooklyn who held him accountable for his brutal tactics. They have no credibility even with their base. Even Huckabee's "Aww shucks" act falls flat.

So they go out and hire an attractive young spokeswoman. Write a speech for her. Attacking Obama at his core. Before even introducing her properly to the public. It is not going to work either. Because Obama's brand is more established than hers.

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The proper response is not to go after Sarah Palin. Instead, hit McCain at his core. If Obama is a community organizer, the defining trait of McCain is POW. Take over that word. Own it. Mock not his war record, but the way he has been exploiting it for cheap political purposes. Obama cannot do it. Nor even Biden. But the rest of us can. We are the community they are mocking. Let us organize to give them a piece of our mind. Two million voices.

Every American knew a year ago that McCain was a POW. By offering up nothing more than that, no economic plan, not even a coherent foreign policy ( supposed to be his strong suit), the Republican are risking over exposure. And there will be even more today. McCain does not really have anything else to talk about.

McCain's greatest weakness is his association with Bush. Obama has gone after that. But the tactic of attacking an opponent at his strength is effective. Do not be afraid to go after McCain's strength as POW. Trivialize him.

What does POW stand for again? Prisoner of Wingnuts. He can't even make a phone call without permission from his minders.

What war did he get taken Prisoner in? The Culture War. The man who once derided Falwell and Robertson as "agents of intolerance" is now pimping for them.

McCain is a coward. He runs in fear from the Press that once adored him. The "Angry Left" that he is running from is that well known young radical, Larry King.

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THIS is what they were mocking tonight.

Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:

For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in:

Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.

Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink?

When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee?

Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?

And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

Matt. 25:34-40