The 2010 ground game

by: judy stadtman

Sun Nov 07, 2010 at 08:13:52 AM EST

"Using the most effective get-out-the-vote strategy will not guarantee victory. All the other factors that shape the electoral fortunes of a candidate - persona, platform, party, and campaign management - are relevant as well. A spectacularly successful GOTV campaign might lift an overmatched candidate from 28 to 38 percent or a competitive candidate from 48 to 58 percent. Often, winning elections is only possible when voter mobilization strategies are combined with messages that persuade voters to vote in a particular way."

In other words, when the mood of the national electorate favors the opposition party - as was abundantly clear going into this election cycle - executing a flawless field campaign can narrow a strong candidate's loss margin to a few points but it won't necessarily deliver a win.  

From what I saw on the ground, a lot of people on our side worked very hard and pretty smart this year, including several independent expenditure campaigns that ran high-contact voter persuasion and GOTV programs supporting Democratic candidates. It's also true that 2008 raised local expectations about what a winning campaign looks and feels like, and having more field offices, full-time field staff, and volunteers to work with definitely would have improved our ability to identify persuadable voters. But even added capacity would probably not have changed the election outcome.

None of these observations negates the fact that it sucks to lose, and it especially sucks to see our outstanding Democratic leaders in Congress and the state legislature replaced by a bunch of folks who can be counted on to reverse social progress and destroy educational and economic opportunities for New Hampshire's middle class. (Thank you, Carol Shea-Porter, Paul Hodes, Martha Fuller Clark, Maggie Hassan, Bev Hollingworth, and all the other incredibly hard-working dems who will be sorely missed in 2011-2012. And thank you, Team Kuster, for running such an incredible campaign!)

Even though a better ground game could not have saved us this year, I agree that it's fair to expect more from our party organizations - including a substantive investment in strategic base development and functional capacity building. Here are a couple of items on my personal wish list:

Sustained support for grassroots leadership development. It's extremely tough to mount a volunteer-dependent voter mobilization program when 400 of your most capable activists are running for public office every other year. Not only do we need a deeper bench, we also need to develop a cadre of super-skilled leaders who can concentrate their efforts on engaging volunteers and running the ground game in their districts. This kind of community-centered capacity building doesn't happen spontaneously; it requires a formal plan and trained staff to implement it. (OFA was created precisely for that purpose but fell short, partly because local activists rejected the program's arbitrary goals and top-down culture, and partly because President Obama lost control of the public narrative during the battle for health care reform.)

Less cheerleading, more leadership. It might be time to freshen up the perennial NHDP message that Democrats have an innate advantage because our GOP opponents are 1) incompetent; 2) crooks; 3) liars; 4) beholden to special interests; 5) insensitive to genuine public concerns; or 6) all of the above. Although there is obviously some truth to these claims, apparently a majority of Granite State voters do not care.

Call me old fashioned, but my idea of effective leadership is inspiring people to do what is right and what is necessary for the greater cause, even when the odds of victory are impossibly slim. I realize it is sacrilege to speak this aloud, but advancing the Democratic agenda is not always about electing Democrats - there's pleasure and power in finding the will to fight.

Finally, I am not a big fan of the popular veil-of-ignorance theory of political organizing, which seems to be based on the belief that people will work harder if they are shielded from information about adverse conditions in the field. From my perspective, this approach demeans the commitment and intelligence of the people we rely on to carry our message into the field. I'm not endorsing the practice of sharing proprietary knowledge that could make or break a campaign with random supporters. But perhaps we can learn to be less fearful of acknowledging public facts that challenge our narrative of Democratic dominance and inevitable victory. It will still hurt like hell when we run into a wall, but at least we can say we saw it coming.