"Don't bother to vote."
"This election doesn't matter."
"You've already lost."
That is what everyone -- on-line, on the streets, in the New York Times -- is telling New Yorkers about tomorrow's mayoral primary.
"They're all the same anyway."
"Just stay home."
"It's a lost cause."
Reasonable people can -- and, perhaps below, will -- debate whether Mike Bloomberg's good deeds outweigh his sins and acts of neglect. But who here will encourage voters to get in the habit of not bothering to vote?
Tomorrow's mayoral primary will be a test of pure Get Out The Vote power. In an election that everybody is saying we shouldn't care about, the question will be which Democratic candidate can do the best job of the most basic political act: getting people to show up.
Giff Miller, who has had Howard Dean's NH coordinator Karen Hicks as a consultant (and who was endorsed by DFA and DFNY), has been hosting Dean-style house parties hoping that building a grassroots cadre who feel personally involved in the campaign will turn out the numbers he needs.
Anthony Weiner, who is Chuck Schumer's protege and has been working with the person behind John Kerry's Iowa performance, seems to me from newspaper accounts to have been courting the Jewish grandmother vote, spending plenty of time in nursing homes and retirement centers, targeting those groups that historically turn out in the biggest numbers for even the least exciting races.
Fernando Ferrer, former Bronx borough president, has remained focused on the Hispanic and Latino communities where he's already strong, hoping to turn out large numbers of minorities through traditional campaigning.
I've got no idea what Virginia Fields has been doing.
Tomorrow's primary is not just about the four candidates, which you certainly will not care about if you're from outside NYC and are unlikely to care about even if you are.
It's also about the four styles of campaigning. And if you pay attention you may learn something from this little experiment in electoral techniques.
Is it better to court likely voters, or to try to bring new voters in?
Can Dean's grassroots playbook be applied to candidates who aren't Howard?
You've heard of bake-offs? This is a GOTV-off. When voters don't care, how are you going to get them perform that most basic political act: how will you make them show up?