Apologies first: This is not original content, although I'd love to provide it. I'm sitting in Germany however and can participate in this campaign only by incessant reading of blogs, posting comments, recommending stuff. But this is too good to go unmentioned. So here goes:
Some heartening news coming from Sean Quinn over at fivethirtyeight.com. He's been travelling in Missouri and some other unnamed states to visit campaign offices and assess the groundgame of the two campaigns.
After relating the story how the McCain-campaign kicked them out of their field-offices, his verdict couldn't be any clearer and frankly, bordering on the hilarious:
Let’s be clear. We've observed no comparison between these ground campaigns. To begin with, there’s a 4-1 ratio of offices in most states. We walk into McCain offices to find them closed, empty, one person, two people, sometimes three people making calls. Many times one person is calling while the other small clutch of volunteers are chatting amongst themselves. In one state, McCain’s state field director sat in one of these offices and, sotto voce, complained to us that only one man was making calls while the others were talking to each other about how much they didn't like Obama, which was true. But the field director made no effort to change this. This was the state field director.
You get the distinct feeling of one campaign in meltdown-mode and the other one surging. Can you guess which is which?
You could take every McCain volunteer we’ve seen doing actual work in the entire trip, over six states, and it would add up to the same as Obama’s single Thornton, CO office. Or his single Durango, CO office. These ground campaigns bear no relationship to each other.
Go on, read the entire thing, they also have a nice set of photos from Obmas field offices!
I can't tell you how much I would like to go out there with all these terrific volunteers and help win the Obama landslide (turning green with envy...)
On the other hand, we just demolished the ruling conservative party of my home state, Bavaria in last week's elections (down to 44% from over 60% they got five years ago). Heads are rolling right and left and that certainly feels very very good.