Some of you knew this was coming: The 72 Hour Plan, and We Should Have Seen It Coming
The New York Times > Magazine > Who Lost Ohio? (free registration required)
Read this for an amazing - and frankly, horrifying - look into how the "historic" 527 organizations couldn't bridge the gap between Kerry's nonexistent field strategy and the Bush campaign's perfectly executed field strategy. Many reading this blog have mocked me endlessly for mentioning the RNC's "72 Hour Plan" as THE formidable factor in this campaign that would not be overcome (full disclosure: I may have deserved some mocking, since I did in fact talk about it incessantly since last spring), and to you I say: read 'em and weep. Literally. I did.
Thinking about this has raised a chicken and egg question in my mind: did we abandon our grassroots lo' those many years ago because we lost our vision and thus had no idea what to say to people, or did we run out of things to say because we lost our connection to our grassroots?
(Also, I updated this post about Ken Gordon with a sample letter to the good Senator.)
2 Comments:
I haven't read previous posts about the importance of the GOP's '72 hour plan,' so forgive me if I misundertand your views here, but I think the main point of Bai's article is not that the Dems have lost touch with their grassroots, but that they have failed to expand their base beyond their usual labor-urban coalition, which is now being swamped by the growth of white, middle-class exurban sprawl areas (hooray--a self-perpetuating symbiosis of two of my least favorite things, the Republican party and urban sprawl).
The prescriptive implication of the article, I think, is that appealing to the Democratic base will no longer win elections--the Dems need to plant some new grassroots in rural and exurban areas (or wait for some national calamity like the Great Depression of 1930s to forge a new coalition).
Great clarification. My point is actually that by losing touch with the grassroots - as evidenced by a great many things, not least of which the decline of all of our state parties - we've lost not the ability to turn out our base, but to build it. The basics of the 72-hour plan are simple: neighbors persuading and then turning out their neighbors. It works, it's always worked, and it can't be outsourced to paid, imported organizers.
In addition the the mechanics, I believe strongly that strong grassroots feeds the "message building" aspect of the party - again, something that's clearly missing. Great ideas, priorities, red flags, and talent percolate up. Without a strong state-and-local level presence, those things go missing.
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