techPresident - MoveOn Political Action - Comments

Here is a quote tonight from a StopPoliticalCalls.org member

shimanepdf — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 23:46:14 -0400

Plus, candidates will lose support.

Mitt Romney and friends called so many times in the two weeks before the primary that I started calling his CO headquarters back. In the end I told them that if he won the Republican nomination I would vote for any Democrat first. I meant it. If you harass me, you don't get my vote, plus I will actively talk against you.

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Cheers,

Shaun Dakin – CEO & Founder
The National Political Do Not Contact Registry
-- A non-partisan, non-profit program by Citizens for Civil Discourse
Register Your Phone Number Now for Free: http://www.StopPoliticalCalls.org/

Moveon and voter contact

shimanepdf — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 23:42:53 -0400

Great catch Micah.

Some comments on Moveon's voter outreach.

Voter phone banking is probably useless, and may be more than likely a negative for the progressive movement.

I, myself, was part of the "call for change" program in 2006 and made 100's of calls into swing districts. Most calls I made were to either A) numbers that were no longer in service B) answer phones C) voters who were mad as hell that I was interrupting their -- dinner, TV, family time, sleep, etc...

Let's just say profanities were used.

They are right that there was a study by Yale and Brookings (the authors are speaking here in DC next week at Brookings) in which they determined that the only GOTV strategy that actually produced results was door to door canvassing.

The results were limited to about a 2% lift, however. Not much.

My personal observations from the Kerry campaign as a volunteer canvasser in 2004 in Cleveland was that it was very difficult to connect on the 'street' if you were not from the neighborhood.

I felt like a poser. I often got questions about the neighborhood that I could not answer and I felt in-authentic.

This is exactly what occurred with the Dean campaign in Iowa with the "orange storm". 1000's of 20 something college kids with no understanding of Iowa and the residents trying to tell them to vote for Dean.

It was not authentic.

So while moveon may be able to generate good fundraising with these programs and give people a 'feel good' feeling (heck, I thought I was doing something good in 04 and 06) the actual data show that these programs do little good and, in my experience, may piss off voters to NOT vote for the progressive candidates.

I can't tell you how many times I got a "F*&^ You" on the other end of the "call for a change" phone line.

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Cheers,

I don't know

Dan Ancona — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 14:15:26 -0400

But this sounds a whole lot like the VAN. If they're building it from scratch, that means we have two. Which could be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on how you look at it.

I didn't really get into this in the Power to the Edge piece, but "does the right-wing have anything comparable" is a big outstanding question. My hunch is that distributed field like what Obama CA tried and what MoveOn is doing here is a strategic trail the right might not be able follow, but we're really going to have to execute.

The McCain campaign will most likely have a strong distributed component too. Bush did in 04 and I'm assuming the conservative field ops A-team will be running McCain. Remember that Matt Bai piece from 04, "The multi-level marketing of the President"...

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9502E7DE143AF936A15757C0A...