Obama readies plan to reshape the electorate

[DeepModem Mom]

The Politico: Obama readies plan to reshape the electorate
By: Ben Smith
April 2, 2008

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....

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."...

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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....

http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=0E4B85A3-3048-5C12-004206AE3B8256C0

[Rosa Luxemburg]

1. Obama is really shaking and shaping things up!

He's talking like a president

[polichick]

2. Two of the volunteers I worked with tonight were so disillusioned...

...about politics that they thought they'd never vote again ~ now they're working their tails off to help Barack win. More and more voters see this as the people's chance to take back their country, and they're willing to fight for it ~ Barack is right when he says this is much bigger than him.

[aquart]

3. "The African-American community." That's some dowry.

But it's not racism. LOL!