Barack Obama's grassroots appeal

[T_i_B]

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/laura_flanders/2007/10/barack_obamas_grassroots_appeal.html

At Camp Obama, the campaign's twice-weekly training sessions in Chicago, participants train with Figueroa's mentors - men like Harvard professor Marshall Ganz, once a United Farm Workers organizing director - and with the people who trained Obama himself - mentees of grassroots organizer Saul Alinsky.

It's about this campaign but it's also about seeding the states with people who have the tools to make change, says Figueroa. And we're not just talking about money or virtual tools. The big news from the Obama campaign may not be Obama's ballyhooed speech on foreign policy yesterday, or the 501,000 donations he's gathered from more than 350,000 people or even Obama's lead in Iowa over Clinton and Edwards in the latest Newsweek poll.

The big news may be from South Carolina, where, according to the local newspaper The State: "Obama has put together a high-tech and grass-roots get-out-the-vote campaign unmatched by anything seen in the state before." Obama is organized in all 46 counties. On Sunday, according to the campaign's in-state bloggers, first-time canvassers went door to door from 31 staging locations in 26 of them. Among the lynchpin institutions of Obama's South Carolina campaign are local barbershops and beauty salons. This is not your standard consultants and carpetbaggers' campaign.

For all his rousing rhetoric, the sad truth is that Obama's campaign promises are milquetoast. The most specific pledge he made in New York was to raise automakers' gas-consumption standards to 40 miles per gallon. That's not going to change the world. But the last time a campaign was this excited about it participants, Howard Dean was leading it. Dean's candidacy fizzled, but the blogosphere his campaign cultivated changed campaign calculus for good. If Obama can plant as many real roots in the states as Dean sowed netroots in the blogosphere, grassroots politics may yet grow a president with enough independence and spine to break with the establishment.

[Trisket-Bisket]

1. B,O. has the yuppies,

Sen Clinton has the base. That is the working class. She "gets it".

[Apollo11]

3. It's too early to tell. Most people have yet to make up their minds.

I think history has taught us that you cannot predict the Iowa caucuses, which are more than 3 months away.

[Apollo11]

2. I strongly disagree with Laura Flanders

She wrote: "Tuesday's foreign policy speech at DePaul University came on strong, then delivered weak"

I think it was the best speech of the campaign (by any candidate) until now.

Obama explained his beliefs and his approach to America's role in the world.

He succesfully pointed out some important differences between the candidates.

You can read it here: www.barackobama.com/speeches

[Grandrose]

4. They just don't get it......

Grass-roots politics and not conventional thinking is too hard a concept for some people! Remember the "silent majority" is out there and they will be heard! Who would have thought thousands would march in Jena???:)