Sarah Palin – Motivating the Obama Grassroots almost as well as Obama himself
Sarah Palin’s outrageous statements make my blood boil, but luckily I’m not the only one. She has invoked the ire of precisely the last group of people she wanted to upset. What you don’t hear about on the news media or from the pundits or from even the candidates themselves is what is really driving the Obama campaign. Obama is doing just fine on the national stage, at the convention, and in his commercials. He’ll do fine in the debates. However, where the Obama camp is absolutely handing it to the McCain camp is on the ground, in the local communities.
It was not fluff when Obama said in his acceptance speech that this campaign “isn’t about me, it’s about you.” I spent this summer in Akron, Ohio working with people in the community to get this campaign started. The amount of excitment, energy and motivation these people had all the way back in May and June was amazing. It grows exponentially each day.
Hard work in Portage County, Ohio
In these communities the campaign is not run with yard signs and posters. It is run by the staff, organizers and volunteers who work endless, tireless days to get this man elected. The paid staffers are one thing, moving to any community they are needed, working 14 hour days each and every day working themselves crazy. The people who are jobless, without healthcare and with children to feed yet still come to the office a few hours each day to make phone calls, they are another completely. And these are the people that Sarah Palin and John McCain have taken to belittling. I spent a few months doing this sort of work. I know many more who have been doing this since the very beginning of the primaries. They will not stop until November 4th. They are going to win this election for Barack Obama.
And Sarah Palin, you’ve just upped their energy exponentially. I have talked to my friends in Ohio, my friends in Pennsylvania. They are livid. But more, they are ready to go. They are going to wake up earlier tomorrow, hit the ground harder, make more calls, talk to more people. They are going to make sure you pay the political price for such arrogance. This issue might drop from the media in a day or two, but it won’t drop from the minds of the community organizers and the grassroots network of the Obama team. November will tell how this serious mistake plays out for the McCain/Palin ticket.
But don’t take my word for it.
From Ben Smith at Politico:
Obama’s coffers have been filling since Sarah Palin attacked him repeatedly in St. Paul last night.
An Obama aide confirms Drudge’s report that Obama has raised about $8 million from more than 130,000 donors and is on pace to raise $10 million by the time McCain reaches the stage tonight.
UPDATE: Obama spokesman Bill Burton says, “Sarah Palin’s attacks have rallied our supporters in ways we never expected. And we fully expect John McCain’s attacks tonight to help us make our grass-roots organization even stronger.”
Obama’s measured response to Palin’s ridiculousness:
Clips from the grassroots front:
It is clear that we here at IOEOTO favor Obama this time around. We do our best to criticize McCain and now Palin, and yes, even Obama/Biden when warrented. But what has happened at the RNC this week has not only offended me, but sickened me as well. 4 more years of this would be nigh-intolerable.
-Mike
If Rudy Guiliani and Sarah Palin were trying to win over my vote, They obviously failed. I don’t understand the strategy of alienating and insulting the people who take on the responsibility of working to change people’s lives.
Though if I picked up a gun and was willing to shoot people to protect America, I’d be hailed as a hero. But because I organize in peaceful ways for the same reasons I’m laughed at.
A simple point for McCain \ Palin – the person who does not hold themselves up to scrutiny is the person who cannot handle responsibility .
It is indeed unfortunate that Palin did not specify the type of community group/organizations that were the intended target of her comment.
For every group that holds worthy banners high there are a great number that exist for the reasons of money,ego and power. It is these latter elements that amount to little more than sanctified shake down artists and deserve any scorn and scrutiny they get.
The fact that this is all being hailed as an issue by BOTH sides is yet another nail in my heart that longed for a better run this time around.
I’d go further than that Alfie, because the group Obama was working with a community group that really WAS AND IS doing good work, and that the ego, money, power groups really are in the minority.
I’ve done and occasionally do community organizing; attend conference where we discuss tactics, goals, cooperation, community. In your average industrial city, say like Cleveland, there are hundreds of GOOD community groups doing good work: church groups, environmental groups, social groups, community health care… the list is never ending.
In the U.S. alone there are thought to be over half a million social and environmental non-profits doing work in communities.
I reccomend you read Paul Hawken’s “Blessed Unrest” to give you an idea of the full scope and scale of the grassroots community organizing movement. It’s really much, much more than the political community organizing developed by Saul Alinsky for urban areas everywhere.
I was already motivated to vote for Obama. The Guiliani-Palin speech has motivated me to speak out for him any chance I get. Notice how Palin got sappy when talking about Truman having been a haberdasher and how she identified with small town people. She said that she signed up for the PTA with pride. Then, she turned around and mocked being “community organizer” which is, in fact, only the BEGINNING of Obama’s resume. Sorry, Palin, but we prefer our candidates to not talk about us one way in one sentence and another way in the next. I’ve saved a transcript of your speech, reveiwed it, and found it to be full of holes. And I’m not going to let people forget it, because it is my goal to make it bite you in the butt.
With all this exponential energy growth you guys are probably about to explode. I suggest you see a doctor.
It’s pretty hard to get specifics on what Obama exactly did as a community organizer, except for Altgeld Gardens – which is in his book and for which others have said he takes too much credit, which is a habit of his. He says he worked with unemployed steel workers – but I have never heard him say exactly what he did and how his work helped.
He has failed to provide details on his work as a civil rights attorney, except for his work for Rezko, which does not sound like Civil Rights work to me. As an attorney, he chose never to try a case. He did behind the scenes work – entry level. Most people suggest that any community organizer would know that the buildings owned by Rezko were poorly maintained. An African American columnist (Laura Washinton) in the Chicago Sun Times has suggested that someone should be writing about the link between Obama’s ineffective housing agenda and his fundraising.
His work as a constitutional law professor – big deal. Many people teach school part time. Obama has been criticized for not doing anything to promote the University. He never engaged with the faculty. He taught his two courses and left. He also took advantage of the office space they gave him to write his memoirs.
Obama’s candidacy totally offends me. He has never stuck his neck out for anyone.
Mary Not So OK On Your Sense Of Reality,
Most of the work of a community organizer, like many jobs, is paperwork and phone calls. If you’ve ever had an office job, and someone asked you what you did, you’d probably mention specific projects but not the daily work of talking to individuals, writing papers, filing out forms, and making calls. Or do you have such an encyclopedic memory?
Here’s an in-depth article on what Obama did as a civil rights lawyer by none other than a national news outlet. It tooks me 2 seconds on google to find it, so it’s clear you’d rather whine than enlighten yourself. His time as a civil rights attorney was spent working for the Miner law firm, not Rezko.
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2007/02/20/obama_got_start_in_civil_rights_practice/
Seriously, you’re down on Obama because he used his office to write his memoirs? what the hell do you think professors do with all that office time? Write books.
Finally, it’s fine for you to support whoever you want, but this is clearly a time when you stuck out your own neck on the facts, and had your head lopped off.
@ Mary
Are you for real or just a troll? (Sorry Iraq, we did it for the lulz.)
Marc already covered most of the points so I’ll just stick to Obama’s professorship at the University of Chicago. Contrary to what you think, earning a tenured track position at the U of C is extremely difficult. Obama did such an exceptional job of teaching law students about the constitution (in his spare time) that the U of C offered him tenure. Multiple times. Maybe, in his spare time, he could teach Palin what the role of the VP is (I hear she isn’t sure).
Additionally, the University of Chicago is one of the most conservative institutions in the country. Their Economics department is world renowned. Any Republican would tout an association with the U of C as the ultimate conservative credential. Yet they try to attach Obama for it.
Mary, please educate yourself about the candidates. View every piece of information critically (including this comment). With the internet, it has never been easier to fact check what you are told; take advantage of it.