Good from bad--A Clark supporter attends his 1st Kerry Meetup

[tameszu]

So this morning I logged into DU and was so frustrated by antagonistic Edwards supporters here that I decided to attend the Kerry Meetup and see what was up, even though my support for Sen. Kerry is pretty tepid (although I think he would make a much better president than Edwards, because I think it's crucial that the Democrats take pro-active foreign policy steps to undo the damage the neocons have done).

Anyway, so I got there a bit late, because it was in a different town, but, wow, did I ever get a warm fuzzy from seeing a gaggle of my local Clarkie friends there, making up nearly half the remaining crowd! One of them was even sort of running the show--this was only the Kerry people's 2nd Meetup in our area (the first drew 7 people), and so they didn't really know what they were doing. So our old ex-Clarkie friend, who we hadn't seen in a while, was collecting everyone's names so we could start up an email list. Apparently, the "indigenous" Kerry people had been pretty much outnumbered by new refugees all night, because just before I had gotten there, a bunch of Greens who had wanted to sign on with JFK had just left.

The indigenous Kerry people there were really nice, but really wide-eyed about this whole Meetup deal. I mean, pretty much like the draft movement 8 months ago--they were waiting for people to contact them, and a lot of them sort of assumed we wouldn't have much to do, because "everything is done by party insiders anyway." Wow, did we ever have a lot to share with them!

I think this is going to be neat--it was telling that the last 4 people to leave were all ex-Clarkistas. I'm a bit pooped, but I'm kinda thinking that if you're an ex-Clarkie or ex-Deanie and are wanting to sign on with Kerry, you could easily take a big leadership role in your local Kerry Meetup, since we have so much experience compared to them. I dunno if the Kerry staffers are really ready to handle us, but would they really turn down the kind of fundraising and volunteer capacity that Dean and Clark had if offered to them on a silver platter?

[WiseMen]

1. Great Report: Clark and Dean activist will rule. That is how it is because

Kerry really did not get the MeetUp process going in most states.
This was cause by too factors:

1. The first campaign manager was really following a top-down
campaign organization strategy in which initial national outreach was
to leadership folk and fundraisers.

2. When Kerry fired him he basically took over the campaign himself
and after significant analysis with key persons decide to throw
all his effort into doing grassroots in Iowa only with a plan to
just go from 1 state to the next if he managed to convince Iowa
that he was the best man for the job.

So, apart from Iowa, NH and perhaps a few other areas, grassroots
organization in the rest of the country is just beginning with
the rallying of activist behind Kerry now that he seems to have won
the general support of most of the party faithful.

This is going to be exciting going into the GE because Kerry himself
is really committed to depending on a nationwide grass roots movement
to rally the county and target some of the swing states to be captured
from Bush.

Good Luck.

[democratreformed]

8. This is really great to hear

Especially since I have heard from some that the Kerry organization did not want our help. I didn't know whether to believe that or not.

[King of New Orleans]

2. Went to my 1st meetup tonight

Since we're a March 9th state, we had a couple of Kerry staffers there with signup sheets for phone calling and canvassing.

There were about 80 people there. Including several Clark people (the Clark organizer had already been absorbed into the Kerry organization) and, yes, a couple of Dean people. People wanted to talk about alot of things (mainly about convincing others to vote against Bush), but the Kerry staffer was correctly focused on his task at hand, the primary.

I know the Edwards people weren't able to get a meetup going this month (Edwards doesn't seem to have been able to take advantage of meetup as other campaigns have).

[WiseMen]

3. Great to hear things hopping in New Orleans. You are in a critical swing

state so the campaign should be fun.

[jpgpenn]

4. Thanks for the update!

:toast:

[Shakespeare]

5. "The indigenous Kerry people"

I'm not picking on you, but this line just gives me a complete case of the giggles. Brings up all sorts of tribal images....

Thanks for the laugh, and TGIF. ;-)

[janx]

6. Same here. Very much so!

;-)

[sangh0]

7. Me too

"Hey ma, look at me. I'm an indigenous Kerry person!"

:-)