One reason I’m fairly confident Kerry will win: he has the best ground game. I’ve been assuming that get out the vote efforts were a major component of the DNC’s strategy this election for a few reasons; most obviously, I’ve just seen a lot of activity oriented towards getting people to the polls this year. More importantly, though, I watched John Kerry win in Iowa because of an absolutely perfect get out the vote operation run by Michael Whouley. Any campaign with Whouley at the center is going to be one that has a good ground game, regardless of anything else.
The really significant thing about the “chaos” in the Kerry campaign last month was not Joe Lockhart’s arrival. The media gets very excited about every Clinton signing, so it was nice for them to be able to run stories about the Clintonistas taking over the campaign — Lockhart was Clinton’s press secretary. The real news, however, was that John Sasso, another experienced Massachusetts political operative, joined the campaign. That made it possible for Michael Whouley to go over to the DNC to be their General Election Manager.
And who’s outsourcing a lot of their get out the vote effort to 527s? The DNC, which now has the best ground game in the business. If Kerry loses this election, it will not be because of poor voter turnout.
Be First to Comment