On Tue, 23 Nov 2004 Yoshie Furuhasi wrote:
> In contrast, Bai's April 25, 2004 article shows that the Republicans . . .
> relied upon local volunteers to organize Republican supporters in their
> own communities. That's a better organizing model both for the short and
> long-term.
I absolutely agree that's the soul of it. But all the stuff in the long ellipsis is key too. Local volunteers in the exurbs by themselves are not enough. That's what the Republicans always had before, when they were always beat in the ground game by Democratic professionals. What got them to the level of being able to win was local volunteers who were collectively supercharged by a pyramid scheme. So either we've got to use a pyramid model or find something equivalent.
Also let's not forget: whatever its ideological faults, the old professional Dem model not only worked fine in the cities, it worked more than fine; it set records for turnout and/or margin in the three areas that have always previously been considered by both sides the keys to winning (Cuyahoga County, Franklin County, and Greater Cincinnati). The problem is simply that the cities cannot outweigh the non-cities anymore. There's simply too much population out there. And with this new model, the Repugs can now reach that population and harvest it the way Dems have always been doing in the cities. So Dems have to turn out bigger numbers in those exurban areas too. But not to the exclusion of the city turn-out model. To supplement it.
The question is whether a pyramid model would work for the Dems or whether they would have a deep-seated natural aversion to it. I think most people who are movement organizers probably would have such an aversion. It's almost the antithesis of the left-liberal movement model of healthy participation. And if we can't avail ourselves of the pyramid model, then we need something else. But just using local people is not enough.
Just as a speculation, it seems one provisional and substantial network where the Tupperware model might well work is on exurban unionized workers. A friend who is a researcher from SEIU who parachutted into exurban Wisconsin for the last two months of the campaign immediately realized that he was operating at a disadvantage to Republicans because they were using local folks. If this method worked as well for the Dems as it did for the Repugs -- on the union people they weren't reaching and the Repugs were ignoring -- it could well have supplied the missing margin in Ohio.
> It looks to me that the Republican Party's model -- relatively speaking,
> within the limits of top-down organizing required by the parties of the
> ruling class -- was more partisan, more committed to the party's
> presidentially candidate, far better organized, more participatory, and
> (most importantly) far more local-volunteer-driven than the Democratic
> Party's.
The last three I agree with entirely. But one of the most remarkable things about the earlier Bai article is how much the first two thing seem not to be true. Both sides were equally partisan. (No one who does organizing, even the tiniest bit of organizing, is not partisan.) But if Bai's profile is accurate, it's remarkably how *little* the republican pyramidal volunteers were jazzed up about their candidate or his positions -- and how exclusively it seemed they were in it for the pleasures of social networking or the promise of personal advancement:
http://www.zonaeuropa.com/01496.htm
The colonel told me he couldn't respect a man, like John Kerry, who
had so vocally opposed a war while other men continued to fight it.
But *as with other volunteers I met*, there was, in Ashenhurst's
disdain, a notable dispassion. The actual politics of the election
didn't seem to interest them all that much. From the ground, the
campaign as it is being fought in Washington seems like an
abstraction -- a parallel line moving along the same axis, but far
out of sight. The volunteers are more concerned with meeting their
quotas of yard signs and bumper stickers.
<snip>
Ashenhurst, it turned out, once sold sports apparel, in between his
two Army stints, and his personality seemed to me more suited to
sales than engineering. In the weeks I spent in Ohio, I ran into
him at several Republican events around Columbus, and each time, I
had the impression that he knew everyone in the room. He laughed a
lot. It seemed he was usually the last to leave.
''This is my hobby,'' said the colonel, who is twice divorced.
''And hopefully, someday, when I retire, it'll keep me mentally
alert and alive. Most of my social circle now revolves around
politics. It's where my friends are.''
<end excerpt>
Michael