Obama Seeks To Reshape The Electorate

Politico: Campaign Turns Attention To Ambitious General Election Plan To Bring New Voters To The Polls

(The Politico)  This story was written by Ben Smith.

---

Even as he fends off Senator Hillary Clinton in the Democratic nomination contest, Senator Barack Obama is already turning his attention to the general election, and to an ambitious plan to reshape the American electorate in his favor.

Bringing new voters to the polls "is going to be a very big part of how we win," said Obama's deputy campaign manager, Steve Hildebrand, in an interview. "Barack's appeal to independent voters is also going to be key."

Hildebrand said the campaign is likely to turn its attention and the energy of its massive volunteer army this fall on registering African-American voters, and voters under 35 years old, in key states.

"Can it change the math in Ohio? Very much so," he said. "If you look at the vote spread between Bush and Kerry in 2004 - we could potentially erase that."

President George W. Bush carried Ohio by about 119,000 votes in 2004, winning the state despite a massive, expensive Democratic effort to mobilize voters there. And there's some reason for skepticism that Obama can do better than Senator John Kerry and his allies. Every four years, Democrats claim, and reporters write, that a massive voter registration and field operation will reshape the electorate in their favor. In recent years, they've been matched or bested by the Republican National Committee's targeted outreach to likely Republican voters.

"It's something that Democrats have tried," said Bill Steiner, the Republican National Committee's director of strategy. "The 2004 election kind of speaks for itself, particularly in Ohio, where that was a big fear."

But there are signs that this year could be different. In the Obama campaign, youth turnout and Internet-based organizing - so often promised, and rarely delivered in the past - have been made real. And the first black nominee could reach deep into the large non-voting tracts within the African-American community.

"There's the potential here to change American politics for a while. Under-35 voters are just so overwhelmingly Democrats. Getting them registered is a simple, important, not-easy part of that - and Obama can," said Jim Jordan, a consultant who ran the independent group that headed Democrats' national field operation in 2004, America Coming Together. "And the voters who do register will actually vote. African-American voters, under-30 voters will be hugely self-motivated. They'll get to the polls in numbers that aren't typical for new registrants, and they'll do it on their own, on top of the strong turn out mechanics that the Obama guys will surely bring to bear."

Michael Slater, the deputy director of the non-partisan Project Vote, also said he found the Obama campaign's hopes of a dramatic increase in the participation "very plausible" for younger and black voters, groups, he said, which are under-represented in the electorate.

"There's a long history of a lot of hype not delivering on election day," he said. But in this case, "there certainly is a great potential for an African-American candidate to appeal to some voters who have been out of the electorate."

Obama's massive, smoothly integrated volunteer organization has been a mainstay of his campaign. It has been central to his success in caucus states such as Minnesota and Idaho, where a volunteer army - organized online - preceded and noticeably bolstered his staff's organizing efforts, helping to build the huge victory margins that have made him the frontrunner.

His voter registration efforts have drawn far less attention. But they were there from the start. When Obama toured Iowa last February in his first campaign swing, his campaign brought along voter registration cards. As the race there heated up, voter registration became a quiet focus, with registration drives in colleges and even high schools that helped drive Obama's victory.

South Carolina, Hildebrand said,was the site of another intensive effort. "A great case study for voter registration was the South Carolina primary, where we dramatically expanded the African-American vote and dramatically expanded the youth vote," he said. "It was such a big part of getting us to that 28-point margin of victory."

Another high-stakes voter registration drive just concluded in Pennsylvania, where the deadline to register as a Democrat and participate in the primary was March 24. The Pennsylvania Department of State reports that more than 234,000 voters have either newly registered as Democrats or switched from other parties, and the state hasn't finished counting the new registrations.

"We put together a massive effort," said Hildebrand, saying that the numbers include "over 200k Obama supporters" - an impressive number, and likely more than 10 percent of the total turnout in the primary.

Hildebrand declined to discuss in detail the campaign's preparations for this summer and fall, but he said planning has begun for a major voter registration push.

"We are pretty convinced that Barack is going to be the nominee, and so we're going to prepare for a general election no matter how long this two-person race goes," he said. "What we did with those two demographic groups [in South Carolina and elsewhere] is what we will have the capacity to do in the general election in every state where there's large pockets of under-35s and African-Americans" - states that include Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, and other battlegrounds.

The recent Pennsylvania drive reveals elements of that effort. It includes a traditional ground operation, with staffers flooding the state from offices across Pennsylvania. Obama also ran radio ads aimed at young people and at African-Americans, encouraging them to register. His website, meanwhile, includes a section that facilitates registration in each of the primary states by filling out a completed registration form in each of the states, and offering details on where and how to submit it.

But Obama - whose campaign is entwined with his biography on many levels - has also made his own experience registering voters part of the story, something that's likely to gain a higher profile as national efforts step up. In 1992, he served as the director of Project Vote's Chicago successful Chicago effort to raise minority voter participation, a chapter that's the subject of a video Obama narrates on his website. The video suggests that the project helped turn Illinois to Bill Clinton that year.

Together with Obama's proven appeal to independent voters, his campaign's focus on increasing turnout of younger and black voters -- his base -- could counterbalance hints of weakness among more traditional swing voters like the working-class whites known as Reagan Democrats.

Senator John McCain is running strong in many polls in key states, and is expected to challenge Obama for many of those voters. But McCain lacks a motivated new cadre of supporters, and even the traditional Republican volunteer base - evangelical Christians - views him with skepticism.

"Where Obama really has the comparative advantage is his volunteers," said Michael McDonald, an expert on voter turnout at George Mason University. "When you look at McCain, one of his weaknesses is that he's not a candidate who is going to excite the Evangelical hard conservative base. He's not going to have the volunteers in place to do the same sort of mobilization efforts that an Obama would do."

The record turnout in many Democratic primaries suggests the same. Obama, for instance, received more votes in Virginia than the leading Republicans combined.

"There's a big difference in what's happening in the two parties," said Simon Rosenberg, a Democratic strategist, who cited the Democratic candidates' superior online organizing.

"The possibility of running avery large, very powerful, and very effective campaign to register voters is something the Obama campaign could pull off this summer."

[jonesforch]

vmcneal2 at 02:04 PM.

McCain has a few skeletons in his closet that have not come out. McCain is not as clean as some people think he is. There are even different accounts of the time he spent as a POW.

Can you please post those I would love to read them. Thanks.

[vmcneal2]

McCain''s application to the National War College was rejected but again daddy pulled some strings to get him in.

[vmcneal2]

McCain graduated 894 out of 899 from US Naval Academy.

[vmcneal2]

Hillarygrl34..McCain still needs to be educated on the basics of the economy!!!!

[arealist]

CHANGE we can believe in. Yeah, all whiteys and garlic noses get ready. Obama will be taking your change and giving it to put EVERYONE in day care and paying their bill through College. Everyone will be brilliant like Obama, but you can''t eat paper. Someone''s got to actually do the labor. Oh, I forgot the illegal aliens will provide the slave labor through the porous border. Then they can sign up to get all the benefits Obama is going to pull out of his a-- and we will need a new wave of illegal aliens for that, and the cycle continues.

[vmcneal2]

Quote of the century

"We should stay in Iraq 100 years if necessary"

John McCain

[vmcneal2]

Quote of the year.

"I don''t understand the economy"

John McCain

[mudrose-2009]

Quote of the Week - maybe the Century

"My friends, we live in the greatest nation in the history of the world. I hope you''ll join with me as we try to change it."

-- Barack Obama

[vmcneal2]

NEVERKOOLAID..I''M REPORTING YOU FOR BEING STUPID

[vmcneal2]

NEVERKOOLAID..LOL...FIRST, OBAMA''S FATHER WAS BORN IN KENYA. KENYA IS LOCATED IN EAST AFRICA AND IS NOT AN ARAB COUNTRY DUMMY.I''VE SEEN SOME IGNORANT POSTS BUT YOURS IS AT THE TOP OF THE LIST.

[neverkoolaid]

Obama is 6.25% African,...43.75% Arab and 50% caucasion.
Federal law states that he is not considered African American unless he is 1/8 or 12.5% African,...Even if elected, He will never be the first African American president.

Do you think he lied on his Harvard application?

The only racists that I see are the ones who assumed Obama was African American because of the color of his skin.

[neverkoolaid]

You can''''t count delegates in FL. Obama couldn''''t campaign there.
____________________________________________________
Obama was the one who broke the rules in Florida after playing dumb and buying ads in a national package where spots were aired on CNN in Florida (reaching 93% of homes).
In reality he was the only one to campaign there.

[popstom1]

I like how they keep the Emil Jones story out of Pa.

[jedi08]

You can''t count delegates in FL. Obama couldn''t campaign there. Everywhere else he got to campaign he has closed the gap on her. Of course whe won there, her last name is Clinton, most people didn''t know who Obama was yet.

In Michigan (where I live) he wasn''t even on the ballot so I voted in the Rep for McCain. If there was a revote I wouldn''t be alowed to vote of Obama because I voted in the Rep primary. That wouldn''t be fair eiter.

Its too bad for Hillary becasue she probably would of picked up a few more delegates from FL then Obama would from MI but those were the rules before the election started. All Obama''s campain will have to to is show everyone the clip of Hllary saying over and over again, "its clear that MI and FL will not count".

[jedi08]

Posted by RoudyTexan2

The Delegates will be seated 50 percent for Hillary. 50 Percent for Obama. That is how its going to end up. Hillary doesn''t deserve anymore then half. She would of lost Michigan if it was a real race and won FL. There is no way they let those numbers count. its a shaddy attemp by Billary to steel the election and wont work

[ddrbc]

The way Obama could change how the world looks at the US, according to author Alice Walker in an op-ed in the Guardian of London supporting Obama. "It is hard to relate what it feels like to see Mrs Clinton (I wish she felt self-assured enough to use her own name) referred to as %u2018a woman%u2019 while Barack Obama is always referred to as %u2018a black man%u2019. One would think she is just any woman, but she is not. She carries all the history of white womanhood in the US in her person; it would be a miracle if we, and the world, did not react to this fact. How dishonest it is, to try to make her innocent of her racial inheritance.%u201D

%u201CI can easily imagine Obama sitting down and talking to any leader -- or any person -- in the world, with no baggage of past servitude or race supremacy to mar their talks. I cannot see the same scenario with Clinton, who would drag into 21st-century US leadership the same image of white privilege and distance from others'' lives that has so marred the country''s contacts with the rest of the world."

[rowdytexan2]

Posted by BLKPRESIDENT at 10:01 PM : Apr 02, 2008

Sir, the DNC has already said the Florida and Michigan delegates will be seated at the convention. They have just not come to agreement on being fair about the votes and delegates already cast.

That is why Hillary must go on to Convention, in order to get the support she certainly earned


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Posted by RowdyTexan2 at 10:47 PM : Apr 02, 2008

And the fact to really crown off her earning these votes is that she didn''t even have to campaign in either state to get them! They just came out and voted for her anyway!

And Obama tried to pull a shyster with a national ad campaign including Florida, broke the DNC rules, and broke them again holding press conferences there, and when they allocate the Florida and Michigan votes, he''s in fact not eligible for them after breaking the rules.

[chitown639]

Its like one or two superdelegates are announcing their support for Obama everyday. Hillary is doomed!!! They called it Death by A Thousand Cuts, and its a beautiful thing to watch. Its only a matter of time before Hillary is giving her consession speech, it will be music to my ears.

[rowdytexan2]

Where I understand the analogy that you used, Don''''t you believe that someone being banned from a political forum pales in comparison to going from stiff penalties if the states not follow established DNC rules to, oh, well--we''''ll let Florida and Michigan be seated anyway. If that lil'''' woman is behind these shenanigans she''''ll lose more than the projected 20% threatened if Obama isn''''t the nominee. Is there anyone in charge at the DNC?


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Posted by BLKPRESIDENT at 10:01 PM : Apr 02, 2008

Sir, the DNC has already said the Florida and Michigan delegates will be seated at the convention. They have just not come to agreement on being fair about the votes already cast.

That is why Hillary must go on to Convention, in order to get the support she certainly earned

[candide777]

Pro gun people go around talking about how felons can''t legally buy guns but they fail to mention that at least one third of the felonies committed each year do not result in a conviction. Bottom line is that there are a LOT of people running around out there who have committed multiple felonies but never been convicted. There is no way to keep them from legally purchasing guns because that would cut into the gun manufacturers'' profits and they won''t stand for that! They won''t rest until every one in the country feels the need to buy a gun, and they''re making that happen by legally arming people who commit felonies but are too smart to get caught.

Censor this CBS/"BillORights"!