I heard this story second-hand but I laughed so hard and thought it was such a fabulous metaphor for this transformational election that I'm going to pass it along to my friends at dKos. To keep it simple we'll just refer to my source as The Volunteer.
The Volunteer has a strong background in media and, as such, was tapped by the local Obama campaign to work with the media in St. Louis at the Vice Presidential debate that was held Thursday night. The Volunteer has a dozen great stories but this one....I think it shows the way we all often underestimate the Obama campaign organization.
After the debate started, The Volunteer began to notice volunteers swarming out of the McCain staff room. These volunteers all wore orange hats and they ran around the media center distributing blue sheets of paper with opposition research on it. Well, usually that's what they had.
This video only lasts 1:18 and it does a couple of things--1) it shows you the room I'm describing and 2) it has a good laugh at McCain's expense at the end--always a worthwhile way to spend time.
At any rate, back to the main attraction. The Volunteer watched while the Army in Orange Hats burst out of the McCain room over and over again and raced up and down the aisles distributing these hand-outs. Apparently, this vigorous attack from the McCain camp even started to get on some people's nerves as evidenced by this note in ABC's live blog..
9:05 pm CT: From Matt Jaffe, in the press filing center: The press is dealing with McCain staffers in orange hats swarming around the file center like bees to honey dropping off their oppo papers left and right. A few media members even asked the Orange Hat Army to stop passing out the papers because they were starting to cover up their computers.
Irritation by the media notwithstanding, The Volunteer is really getting upset now. The McCain people are all over this--some reports say that they distributed 31 different talking points and opposition research papers during the debate. They were feeding reporters information as it became relevant. The Republicans are so good at everything! The Democrats are so bad at everything! We suck!
The Volunteer finally went into the Obama staff room and confronted the leadership--a volunteer taking on the paid Smart Guys! "The McCain people are going to own this debate. They're passing out all kind of information. Why don't we have volunteers distributing paper to these reporters?"
The Smart Guys explained. We send e-mails to the reporters.
UPDATE: My friend Emily Litella just told me she heard The Volunteer's response to the Obama campaign after they set him straight on the proper way to communicate with the reporters: