I am not sure if anyone has told John McCain that a traditional campaign against Barack Obama does not work. But, I guess McCain will find out the hard way. John McCain is running a traditional red/blue state campaign. McCain has 11 regional offices in traditional swing states like Ohio and Florida and 84 local offices, again mostly in traditional swing states. The McCain camp calls this a huge improvement.
"It is an incredible amount of progress for a campaign that ended the primaries with no money, little infrastructure, and no formal organization outside the early primary states," Steve Schmidt, who was put in charge of day-to-day operations this month, said in a memo.
The McCain camp estimates that its staff will grow to 450. But, Obama and the DNC will have thousands of paid staff in all 50 states.
"Between the Obama staff and the Democratic Party staff there will be several thousand" paid operatives on the ground deployed across the country, deputy campaign manager Steve Hildebrand said in an interview. "I don't want to get too specific; it gives away strategy."
Obama is also setting up one of the biggest campaign organizations ever to operate.
Reports filed with the Federal Election Commission show that in May the campaign had a payroll of about 900, not counting nearly 500 part-time workers who were paid stipends. As of May 31, the Obama campaign staff was well over twice the size of the Bush reelection campaign staff in 2004 and nearly three times the size of McCain's current staff, and has expanded significantly since
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And, Obama is setting up his infrastructure now before crunch time. By setting up offices and providing proper training during the summer, the Obama team will be in good position to have a tightly run and well organized general election machine. McCain on the other hand, if he waits too late, will likely run into organizational glitches.
The McCain campaign does not realize it is about to be run over.
"The climate has made millions of Americans who haven't been involved in a political campaign ever in their lifetimes very active," Hildebrand said. "We estimate that 70 percent of our grass-roots volunteers haven't worked in a campaign before. . . . We're somewhere just shy of 2 million volunteers, and we think we can potentially triple that on Election Day."
That would mean 6 million volunteers. For comparison, about 116 million people voted in the 2004 presidential election
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http://www.boston.com/...
Wow! Thank you for recommending my diary. This is my first time making it to the Rec'd list. I just want to add a special plea to donate because we need Obama in the White House!!!