The Northern Virginia Juggernaut

Here's the fivethirtyeight.com guys on Obama's northern Virginia operation that I've been giving you a look at from the perspective of the humble canvasser.  Yes, we have found this communist land ripe for our leftist manipulations. 

We really had the elitist machinery cranked up the other day while canvassing.  Four people in the car and I was the only one without an Ivy League degree.  Naturally I had to drive.  But I refused to wear the chauffeur's hat. 

Funniest moment of the day for me -- I went to the house of an elderly black couple.  The man of the house grumbled while looking at me -- "she said there was a cop at the door."  (I was in jeans and a black leather jacket and what my wife affectionately refers to as my "asshole sunglasses.")  "No sir," I replied, "just a volunteer for Obama" -- although all of us beefy Irish guys do look alike.

Favorite moment -- we went by a house with a couple of McCain signs in the yard and a young woman, probably 19 or 20 years old ran up to us and said "don't worry about the signs, I'm going to cancel out my mother's vote."  We explained early in-person absentee voting to her, which she was deeply interested in.  "I'm going to go out next week and make sure that I cancel out her vote."  We encouraged her to try and change her mom's mind.

Mark my words --- Obama is going to take Virginia and people are going to study for decades to come what his campaign has done there (and elsewhere) in this campaign. 

Comments

[oddjob]

AFL-CIO is pulling out all the stops, too:

...This is the largest independent GOTV program in the nation.

With its member-to-member communication and up-to-date microtargeting, AFL-CIO officials say they've seen significant evolution in the hard-to-reach parts of the voter universe:

Active members who own guns support Obama -- the margin has doubled since September.
Active members who are veterans now support Obama by 13 points. Active union members in Appalachia (Ohio and Pennsylvania) supported McCain and Obama evenly in September and now support Obama by 22 points. Retirees in the battleground states now support Obama by nearly 30 points.

There's more.

[Voice o' Reason]

I gotta get me one o' them there wives. Right now, I have nobody at home to insult my choice of accessories, clothing, or hairstyle. Oh, sure, sometimes the cats issue an urgent warning meow if I head for the door looking too horrifying, but that's more concern than criticism.

Keep up the good work, Sir C. Great things are happening!

[oddjob]

On Election Day, beginning at midnight until 3 am, Obama canvassers will quietly drop literature at the houses of sporadic voters who commute long distances beginning as early as 4 am. A small reminder piece of literature about Election Day needs to hit those voters at a precisely-timed moment: before they begin their long workdays. Another canvassing shift goes from 5-8 am, another no-knocking lit drop, but timed to voters who would be ideally caught at their cars and met with a smile and a reminder about which voting location is his or hers.

Holy s**t!

Clearly the senior congressional staff he's got running this campaign sat down way in advance and said to themselves, "Okay, in a perfect world with unlimited funds, how do we allocate those resources in the most effective possible ways?", and then whittled their planning back by stages so that they'd know what to do with any amount of money they raised (or something like that). Thus now, having raised more than anyone ever has before, they aren't wasting it.

This operation just blows the mind in the amount of careful planning it displays!