GOTV admonishments, pleas, directives, entreaties, opportunities, programs and instructions are all over Daily Kos and have been for weeks. At the time of this writing, a GOTV diary is in the Community Spotlight, another on the recommended list, another noted in the most shared pane, many are moving down the recent diaries list and the Front Page is all over the issue.
Taking note of the prominence of the subject on Daily Kos prompted a rare peek at Red State, the domain of the execrable Eric, son of Eric and representative of what passes for a Daily Kos sort of website on the other side of the looking glass. As usual, when I take a rare excursion to that intellectual abattoir, hilarity, albeit of a very dark variety, ensued.
Red State, too, has bloggers obsessed with making calls and knocking on doors. They constitute a robust enough presence to avoid, just barely, complete invisibility. Only one recent GOTV post popped up over there at the time of this lurk, but it hilariously illustrated the state of GOTV efforts among Red State users.
Entitled The Redstate Contributors’ GOTV Talking Points Open Thread and posted yesterday at 4 AM, a hint of what was in store came in the very first paragraph, where the author, ColdWarrior, found it necessary to explain to readers what GOTV means. Then the diarist asked:
How many phone calls did you make?
How many doors did you visit?
If you live in a very red or very blue district, how many calls did you make for other conservative candidates not in your district?
Except for the word "conservative" at the end, these questions would feel right at home on Daily Kos. The post then related ColdWarriors personal GOTV experiences making calls and knocking on doors out in Sheriff Joe Arpaio's jurisdiction, Maricopa County, Arizona.
Though a bit ambiguous, the post left the impression that ColdWarrior was doing all that GOTV work as a lone wolf, rather than as part of a campaign or party or outside political group. That seemed very different than many of the GOTV stories seen on Daily Kos, with tales and photos of people working together in common cause as a community. A chuckle bubbled up over the irony of the conservative ground game suffering from lack of organized volunteers because of their philosophy of rugged individualism. Little wonder their leaders have to hire shills to cheer for them in public.
The Red State response to ColdWarrior's Open Thread turned the chuckle into a full out guffaw. Two comments, then {{{crickets}}}.
Wow! They are fired up and ready to go over there. Each of the two comments amused in its own way. The first commenter, apparently from Alabama, thought all that GOTV stuff was done with once the Republican primaries and run-off elections were over.
The other comment sort of addressed the lone wolf problem. The post referred ColdWarrior to a local Tea Party organization and also mentioned phone-banking for Republican Congressional candidate, Paul Chabot, in the California 31st CD. In CA-31, an open, D+6 district, Democratic hopeful, Pete Aguilar, has outspent Tea Party favorite, Chabot, six to one and the Democrat still enjoys a 2 to 1 advantage going into the home stretch. GOP GOTV is going to need all the help it can get to hold off Aguilar. Then we'll win anyway.
Little will turn up if one searches Red State for evidence of a widespread, grassroots, highly motivated, boots on the ground, GOTV operation by the GOP, something that extends beyond their run of the mill effort. There is certainly plenty of hatred for President Obama, Black people in general, Muslims in particular, liberals, progressives, science, atheists, progress itself, etc. But with all of their raging energy focused so tightly on being against the things they hate, conservatives seem unable or unwilling to re-channel much extra energy into better GOTV effort. At least I hope so.
Whether or not such awesome hopes are justified by such tiny observations, a stark and glaring contrast in coverage of GOTV seems to exist between Daily Kos and Red State. It could signify an ordinary off-year election GOTV effort for GOP candidates in a year when Democrats have arguably implemented an unprecedented off-year GOTV campaign for our party's candidates all over the country.
At places like Red State, contributors like to unskew polls with wishful and imaginary thinking. Well, the best way to skew a likely voter poll is to get an unlikely voter to vote. GOTV, comrades!
N.B. These observations have no scientific basis, come entirely from extremely limited empirical experience and should be relied upon by nobody to help decide whether to engage in GOTV activities during these crucial final hours before Election 2014. For everyone trying to decide whether to engage in GOTV activities during these crucial final hours, the correct answer is yes, do it. Join Team Blue. Make those calls. Knock on those doors. Get those voters to the polls on Tuesday. The answer to this question of "Should I?" is always "Yes", or "YES" or "YES!" and none other.