What Happened in PA is Far More Serious than it Appears & Scapegoating Wright won't Fix it.

Obama's loss in Pennsylvania has nothing to do with race, god, guns, abortion, or anything Wright said, that's just a list of excuses. Wright's become a scapegoat to avoid addressing the real problems with Obama's campaign in Pennsylvania. Obama lost PA because your ground strategy wasn't effective here. It was lack of turnout in predominately Black urban areas let Hillary win with that margin; Wright had nothing to do with it. Obama did better in rural areas than he expected to, but Democrats win PA with a proportionally larger turnout in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia than in rural areas. Obama didn't get the proportionally larger turnout in urban areas he needed; that cost him the primary, and can just as easily cost him the general.

I don't give a damn about Hillary's 10 delegates, but delegates to the Electoral College aren't divided like that. As a veteran volunteer in PA, I'm used to looking at the last minor election before a national election as a practice run, as this would have been if the presidential candidate had already been decided. This was a nightmare that cannot be repeated in November. Run a campaign like that again, and the results will be the same, but the stakes a lot higher.

Only Pennsylvanians can win Pennsylvania. We were fighting a 3 way battle here; Obama's people, his supporters in PA who are used to running things, and Hillary's lead. We've made this a blue state by fighting the Republicans with everything we have; we know how to win here, it takes 110%, and we can't do it without autonomy and unconditional support from National. We already know how to win here, don't tell us to do something else and be surprised when you lose. Try applying a bit of cultural relativism to your campaign strategy; there is no such thing as one size fits all grass roots politics, thinking there is, and running a campaign in Philadelphia like its South Dakota is a fatal mistake. You can never win PA doing things your way, but we can win it for you if you let us do things right, and play by our rules.

Elections in Pennsylvania aren't won in Levitown, they're won in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. There are people on the ground in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia who know how to win elections there; that's Obama's base, and elections are won or lost in Pennsylvania based on how many people in those area's get to the polls. We know how to do this; we do it twice a year, every year. The mayoral elections and primaries where nothing is contested serve as practice for the big ones.

We know what we need from national or state wide campaigns to win — mainly money and materials, and those are the things Obama's campaign didn't provide. We don't need more volunteers, there are already tons of people in the community like me, who do this every year and know how to get it done right; of course extra hands never hurt, but out-of-state leadership does. The ward leaders know what they need to do, veteran volunteers know what we need to do, and we help the newbies, whose first time it is working on an election, figure out what they need to do. Everybody, from the ward leaders in their cars, to the people behind the doors we knock on, knows it's the people going door to door, the people standing outside of polling places, who are doing the real work, and nobody questions these people being entitled to certain perks. Nobody except the Obama campaign.

My opinion of the campaign comes from what I've seen in Pittsburgh and what I've read about what happened in Philadelphia. Obama did unexpectedly well in central PA, but still lost by 10 points; so something went horribly wrong in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.

One mistake Obama's campaign made was not having people stationed at polling places, as they should have. When I asked them about that, and volunteered to take that position if they needed me to, they said they didn't think it's important, but it is important. It was a beautiful day, people weren't home, so going door to door wasn't a particularly effective way of contacting people. The last chance you have to change someone's mind is as they enter their polling place, and everyone who goes to vote enters the polling place, so if the people outside polling places are working effectively, you can ensure contact with all voters. A secondary function of the people outside polling places is to serve as poll watchers and a contact point should someone lose communication with their group while canvassing. In cities many volunteers rely on public transit, so they can't just go back to their cars and drive to base if they get lost or separated. If people are stationed at polling places, any volunteer who loses communication can easily get back in contact with the campaign by going to the nearest polling place. Should any kind of problem occur at the polling place, that person can advise the person to get a provisional ballot, and should have a cell phone (theirs or the campaign's) to alert their superiors of the problem immediately, as opposed to finding out about it much latter by meeting a person who ran into such a problem at their polling place while going door to door. Standing at a polling place is easier than going door to door and you can make contact with more people from there. This is a critical function which was completely neglected, and it showed up in the numbers.

Campaign headquarters and satellites in cities should be placed on major public transit lines allowing people to be efficiently moved back and forth while freeing up cars for more important uses. Many volunteers are students or lower income people who don't have a car, so the cars available should be put to the most efficient use possible, and to do that headquarters and satellites should be placed where they are easily accessible without a car. The people working at these headquarters should know directions there via public transit, or at least what public transit routes come closest.

Placing signs at polling places is important, the signs themselves aren't as important as the lack thereof. Around here there are only 3 conceivable reasons a candidate would not have a sign in front all entrances to a polling place.

1. They're running for dog-catcher and/or unopposed.
   
2. The campaign is run by disorganized highschool students.
   
3. Everyone hates the candidate so much that someone took the sign down in broad daylight, without anyone in the community saying a word, or while others cheered (this typically happens to Bush signs). Removing a candidate's sign(s) is our way of saying "fuck you" to that candidate and their supporters.
   

Any of these 3 cases reflect poorly on the candidate, which is why putting signs at polling places is important.

Refusing to fund our existing grass roots infrastructure was a huge problem, and a big part of how Obama lost this state so badly.
The way it works here is that there's a grass roots infrastructure built out of people in mainly lower income communities, while people in wealthier communities tend to donate money. The money donated from wealthier communities is given by the campaign to fund the needs of the grass roots organizers in lower income communities. That's what I call teamwork. They have something we need, money, and we can do something they don't want to, which is go door to door. It's the job of the campaign to put these things together to win elections. Obama's campaign refused to act in that capacity, which is absolutely despicable, lost him Pennsylvania, and can lose him the national election.

"My ward's going to be an Obama ward," Paulmier said. "We've had to buy all our literature, buy all our street signs, and we haven't bought as much of it because we can't afford to. . . . We've raised $1,500 to buy yard signs and literature to canvass our community."

What does the Obama campaign charge him for street signs?

"They're seven dollars apiece, including shipping," Paulmier said. "So without those street dollars, we're going to have a hard time producing the turnout we'd like to produce in this election."

Philadelphia Inquirer: Word on the street: No election $

Considering it's a lower income community where the hell are they supposed to get that money from? Go door and collect the money themselves? Coming up with that money isn't their job, it's the candidates; even school board candidates know that volunteers shouldn't have to spend a dime of their own money working on your campaign. I'm sorry, Obama's not running for dog-catcher, and his campaign better quit acting like it. His campaign has raised a quarter of billion dollars, yet he doesn't want use a cent of that to pay for yard signs in lower income communities? If he'd rather give his money to AOL-Time-Warner than to the people putting themselves in harms way for his campaign, his priorities are backwards and upside down.

"One of the ways we've operated in every state is we don't pay people just to get paid," Obama said. "We're not going to pay for votes or pay for turnout, we're going to do it the old fashioned way."

Of course in Philly, paying street money is the old fashioned way...

Philadelphia Daily News

I don't think I've ever heard such backwards, twisted, logic coming from a Democrat. "Pay people just to get paid?" Somebody's been in DC way too long. Philadelphia has the highest murder rate in the US, and one of the highest, if not the highest, in the developed world outside of a war zone. More like "Pay people to work their asses off, and risk their life for your campaign". The idea that "street money" is some kind of bribe is utter nonsense. If every one of these people was paid 10x what they are, they would earn every cent of that money. Every one of them is putting in a 14 hour day of exhausting work under perilous conditions. Going door-to-door can be difficult & dangerous work anywhere, but what I do here, in Pittsburgh (though equality exhausting), is nothing compared to what the people in Philadelphia deal with. The volunteers and campaign workers on the streets of Philadelphia put themselves on the line sake of the campaign, and have my unconditional respect and admiration. Every single one of them, paid or unpaid (many are paid by nonprofit organizations), deserves to be commended for their extraordinary work; the least Obama's campaign can do in return for their heroic effort is pay for them to go out to lunch.

I can't think of a more insulting or despicable statement a candidate could make about the people on the ground working for them, than to imply the work they're doing isn't worth being paid for. Of course the volunteer work people do is worth paying for, they're not getting paid for it is a contribution to your campaign you should be grateful for, not something that's to expected or assumed. I have little doubt Obama's campaign managers get paid, so the "it's an all volunteer operation" excuse is a load of crap. The people on the streets of Philadelphia are doing at least as much work as his campaign manager does on election day, under far more hazardous conditions, and they deserve to be paid as well.

If using money to get the greatest possible number of people to vote for you is wrong, then what do political campaigns raise it for?

Getting out the vote in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia is critical to winning PA in the general election, by balancing the votes from Republicans in central PA. It's takes a ridiculous amount to work, and it's perfectly reasonable for the people doing this work to be paid something. Refusing to put money into getting out the vote on the grounds of "people shouldn't need to be encouraged to vote" will cost you PA's electoral votes, end of story. That's not a threat; PA is a blue state on a house of cards, don't blow on it, don't touch, or pull cards out, and expect it to stand. Are you willing to sacrifice 21 electoral votes over this 'putting money into getting out the vote is wrong' nonsense?

The way we've been doing things in PA works. The Obama campaign came here and told us to do something else, pushed the people out who know how win an election in PA, then lost by 10 points. We can't rebuild the party in time for the general election, we don't have time to try, and we can't afford this kind of infighting over tactics if we're going to win in November. If you don't want to "do politics the way it's always been done, because it's always been done that way", fine, do it that way for the sake of winning the election. The way we do things has evolved over time because it works for us; leave it be. Don't come into someone else's house and try to change their ways. We have a war to fight, we don't have to time to relearn the rules of game, and you don't have time to teach the nation a new set of rules if we're going to win in November.

I am Afraid of Hope: A commentary on Obama's Speech

I've been a Clinton supporter until this morning, but lately I've been on the fence between Clinton and Obama. Just last night I was thinking I wouldn't vote at all at all because I like them both. Primaries are a political Chinese finger trap; the harder you pull the more stuck you get; both Clinton or Obama would be unimaginably better than the hole there now. I've been a Clinton supporter until now because I believe in playing to win, and with these people that means playing dirty. Up till now my attitude towards national elections has been "screw morality; the stakes are too high. In doesn't matter what it takes, we can't let them win again. There is nothing we could possible do in the campaign worse than losing, so far as anything and everything else is concerned the means justify the ends." Hillary seemed like the kind of politician who could beat Rove at his own game, and that's what we needed. The biggest lie a politician can ever tell is that they are telling the truth; it's their job to lie, to tell us we want to hear, to react to polls.

This was how I felt until in re-reading Obama's speech I realized it was so much more than it's content alone. The act of giving this speech during the campaign put us, the American people, ahead of everything including his own ambition. It was a selfless act, and through that Obama has earned my trust and respect in ways I thought a politician never could. I feel like someone is stroking my skin to wake me up from this 8 year nightmare.

I'm not happy with Casey (the new Democratic senator from PA) at all, he's an anti-choice, southern Democrat, insider, and had he run against Specter I've have voted for Specter in an instant, but he ran against Santorum, and Santorum is such a disgusting pathetic excuse for a human being, that not only did I vote for Casey, I campaigned for him. People would ask me "Why should I support your candidate? He doesn't even agree with most of things I feel strongly about." And my answer was "Because if you don't and Santorum wins..." I'd confess, that I didn't like him much myself, and that I was campaigning against Santorum more than for Casey. Long ago a friend asked me who I would vote for if Hitler ran against Bush, and during the Santorum Casey race I couldn't get that hypothetical dilemma out of my mind. After 6 years of Bush I was so far beyond caring about anything other than winning, it didn't matter to me anymore.

Then Obama comes along and with the philosophy of, we should not play the game of "who can go lower and not get caught". A game the Democrats have been half playing and losing horribly, until the last midterm election, when we were finally desperate enough to get our act together and do what had to be done, which was running a bunch of half democrats, to take back congress. Lying, cheating, doing whatever you have to do to win, well that's politics. I don't trust a politician who claims to be telling the truth. Hillary is the only one who wasn't pretending to tell the truth, and that's a good enough reason for me to support her. "Straight Talk" from a politician is an oxymoron; it just means they're a better liar than most of their colleges.

I found myself re-reading Obama's speech this morning. A speech filled with so many things I know to be true, and have been afraid to say, or unable to put into words. So much of it I can confirm through my own experience, that I know, for once, a politician is telling the truth. I find myself completely in awe of the level of faith it took in America and in humanity to say those things in a public forum. Never in my life have I seen a political speech that brought out the better part of me and not the worse. I can't remember the last time I let myself feel emotion while reading anything in the paper. There has been nothing to feel but disgust, with this administration, and frankly, with this country. I just don't let myself react emotionally anymore. Bush is scum, the lowest of the low, he shows his hatred for humanity every day. What more is there to say? Of course he vetoed CHIP, he wants children to suffer and die, American children, Iraqi children; he doesn't give a damn. His administration did some other despicable thing... It's all yesterday's news to me. Hell, with the amount of work the Bushites put into damning America, they won't need help from God. Cynicism is so easy, to force myself not to feel anything about anything. You can't be disappointed when you expect less than nothing.

I had forgotten hope, in favor of dreams which carried no expectation. Until this morning I had thought hope was just a catch phrase (and not a particularly good one), until I read his speech again for the second or third time and thought about all of its implications. In giving such a speech at this point in his candidacy, he did far more than just say things that have long needed to be said, he risked his career for America. To watch a candidate put the American people above everything, above their own ambition, their quest for power, and to show such complete and total faith in us, is astounding beyond anything I could have imagined in my wildest dreams. To see a candidate who loves and trusts humanity and America enough to put himself at our mercy, who risks his candidacy to tell us what we've long needed to hear, was unfathomable yesterday, and yet I'm reading a transcript of the Democratic front runner doing exactly that. It is the polar opposite of the Machiavellian leaders we have lived with for the last 7 years and possibly longer. I don't understand, honesty and decency aren't supposed to be part of American politics. Or is America better than that? Is humanity better than this? Asking those question in of self, is hope in the truest sense, hope that we are in fact something greater than we appear, that the spirit of good is more powerful than I now believed it to be.

In letting myself believe, even for a moment, that a world where our president has earned my trust and respect through putting the interests of the American people above his own ambition, is possible, I find myself overcome with emotion, and that emotion is hope. It's frightening like falling in love too early in a relationship, my feelings are outside my control, and I find myself unexpectedly vulnerable. I am afraid to feel anything regarding politics, perhaps I am afraid of disappointment, but it goes is far beyond that. I am afraid that if I let myself feel anything now, I might start to feel something about everything; that the next time I look at a newspaper headline I'll get upset, instead of the usual, "so Bush fucked up one more time or thing... that's just the details of yesterday's news again" reaction I've had for the last few years. Or worse yet, that I might let myself feel something about what's happened over the last 7 years, and start crying in public. Perhaps this is why the cynic in me didn't let anything Obama said register as anything other than the standard political rhetoric until now. The act of giving this speech has moved me to hope; watching a presidential front runner show a faith in the American people I have long since lost, has forced me to remember what hope is.