Obama's convention crowd: Biggest phone bank ever . THIS IS AWESOME! MUST READ

[Perky]

(snipped for copyright purposes-proud patriot Moderator Democratic Underground)


By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: July 30, 2008
Filed at 10:02 p.m. ET

DENVER (AP) -- Those 75,000 Democrats who will pack a football stadium for Barack Obama's convention speech won't be there just to whoop and holler on television. They'll form the world's largest phone bank to boost voter registration -- fired-up supporters using computer targeting the campaign has spent months putting together.

The move to the Invesco Field at Mile High stadium for the convention's final night next month -- at an additional cost of $5 million -- will capture a huge crowd the Obama campaign plans to put to work. They'll be armed with data gleaned through ''microtargeting'' unregistered voters the campaign believes are ripe to back Obama if pressed to get on board.

''If we do this right, we'll be unbeatable,'' said Steve Hildebrand, the Obama adviser overseeing the effort.

One key to Obama's victory plan is to expand the electorate, bringing in more young voters, minorities, suburban women, seniors on fixed incomes and people who have been disaffected by politics and might respond to the freshman Illinois senator's message of change over the more experienced Republican John McCain.

President Bush used microtargeting techniques effectively in 2004, but his target was regular voters who were likely to vote for him. Obama's focus is more on finding people who are not registered to vote and figuring out how to persuade them to sign up and back him.

[JeffR]

1. Yes we can!

:woohoo:

[grantcart]

2. How would you like to be the McCain operative who is sitting in the office

when somebody comes by and says - good idea let's do it - you take care of it. lol

[Perky]

4. The response: "What's a Cell Phone"?

[goclark]

9. A Simulcast in various venues would expand their GOTV

I love your idea grantcart.

:bounce:

[IDemo]

16. They have the communications technology to do it ->

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

3. Here's a link for it:

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iv65dWFozYKp8tdz6Gpjoz3fZZXQD928HRH00

[babylonsister]

5. Talk about a ground game! Wheee! I'm impressed all over again! nt

[mzmolly]

6. ''If we do it right, we can be the dominant party for the next decade,''

Hell, we could be the dominant party for the next century!

:D

[FrenchieCat]

7. Most excellent!

Yeah!

[SoonerPride]

8. Error: You've already recommended that thread.

want to rec it 20 times!

[Cha]

10. I would love to be in that Denver stadium audience..

my home state. I gotta donate to Obama tomorrow and get the backstage with Barack chance:)

Good Luck with all this Steve Hildebrand..that's some mighty big challenges..no wonder the m$m is pulling out all the stops.

[Perky]

11. They are gointg to need some serious COWs

Cellsite on Wheels. Otherwise their will be no phone calls leaving the stadium. Its the euivalent at what happens with a wirellessnetwork when you have an earthquake. Everyone jumps on at once and no one can get through.

[Alexander]

12. The Obama campaign's organizational skills will be studied for years to come.

This is a team that really has their shit together.

[tishaLA]

13. Smartest fucking campaign. Ever.

They are just amazing. Like a perennial Christmas stocking, you just never reach the bottom of their surprises.

[wakemeupwhenitsover]

14. Hi Perky,

Please be aware that DU copyright rules require that excerpts of copyrighted material be limited to four paragraphs and must include a link to the original source.

best,
wakemeupwhenitsover
DU Moderator

[barack the house]

15. How can we fail McCain's only just learned to switch the PC on, but still work to do.

[Triana]

17. We NEED to be the dominant party for the next several decades at least...

... it will take that to clean up the GOP's fvcking me$$.

[Shine]

18. What's really amazing about this story is the 55 million unregistered voters.

:wow: That's a huge well to draw from and I'm glad there's a plan in place to do that.......but on the other hand, why the hell do so many people not give a damn??

It's kind of a sad testament to our times, don't ya think?

I remember reading somewhere that more people voted for the American Idol season finale than voted in the 2004 presidential election.

Crazy.

[rebel with a cause]

20. Some of these people may think that they are registered.

remember the GOPers have been up to their dirty tricks of getting rid of registrations instead of filing them and some of those already registered are being taken off the books by some means. :grr:

[Imagevision]

19. The guy who started Facebook.com works in the Obama camp 24/7

That ain't too slick! - http://www.facebook.com/barackobama

[silverweb]

21. They did something similar before...

...at one of the rallies with Oprah, if I remember correctly.

"There will be a lot of idle time. We put idle people to work." Love it! :D

[YvonneCa]

28. And during LIVE Earth. n/t

[silverweb]

29. Now that you mention it...

...I remember that, too. A great idea! :)

[eridani]

22. Like many others who will not be in Denver--

--I'll be attending a satellite event in my home state. What are the chances of getting events like this hooked into the process?

[silverweb]

30. I'll betcha there will be.

Obama's site had a way to get volunteers phone banking from home or anywhere during the primaries, and I'd be willing to bet they'll have something similar again.

I'd suggest using the campaign website's _contact page_ to ask if they'll have a similar setup to coincide with the convention event.

[Hope And Change]

23. K & R!

[Perky]

24. kick

[Renew Deal]

25. Can cell phone networks handle that?

I'm not sure if that's going to work technologically.

[Perky]

27. You have to think they thought of that. That is why you bring in COWs

Verizon Witeless and AT&T can ramp up. A single Cellsite On WHeels can handle about 10,000 simultaneous calls. They just have to make sure that the bandwidth out of the COW going back to the cll switching site can handle the volume,

[Scurrilous]

26. K & R

:thumbsup:

[Frank Booth]

31. Shouldn't they be trying to keep this under wraps a bit more?

It's going to get out eventually, but now seems a bit early to announce it. It gives the Republicans a small window to try to counter.