Mercenaries vs. Volunteers

Each candidate has secret weapons.  Romney  has delegated get out the vote to the party.  But as reported by Politico, Koch brothers funded Americans for Prosperity, and other groups, are paying $15 per hour for canvassers and callers to supplement GOP efforts.  These groups are spending,  an estimated, 70 million on GOTV.  Finally, Romney has a jobs plan. 

The President's secret weapon is the cell phone.  Much is said about Obama having many more campaign offices than Romney.  But while the 800 to 300 edge in key states is important, in actuality, Obama has almost 6000 call centers.  Traditionally, a campaign would set up an office with multiple, and often expensive, phone lines.  Volunteers would have to go to the headquarters, which could be some distance, to make calls.

The President's campaign recognized the power of the cell phone.  Almost everyone has unlimited minutes on weekends, and many have unlimited calling, even during the week.  Any room or home with a few sockets for chargers can be a phone bank.

Obama's other secret ingredient is time.  The canvassing operation has been developed through, and since, the last election.  The campaign has a good model of who to contact, and where possible, neighbors are knocking on the doors of prospective voters.

Community organizing, pitted against paid help, is a fitting end to this campaign.

2016

This was a memorable convention, but for the wrong reasons.  All week the media was teased about a mystery speaker.  But the mystery was not the speaker but the speech.  Michael Moore said it best in today's Daily Beast.  "Speaking to Invisible Obama last night, in a performance that seemed to have been written by Timothy Leary and performed by Cheech & Chong, Clint Eastwood  was able to drive home to tens of millions of viewers the central message of this year's Republican National Convention: "We Are Delusional and Detached from Reality. Vote for Us!"

Fittingly, this bumped an excellent biographical video of Romney out of prime time.  Over the three days Romney seemed more a party crasher than a party leader.  Never in the modern history of staged conventions has a nominee's name been so infrequently invoked.  Marco Rubio, charged with introducing Romney, did not let that task interfere with his opening speech of the 2016 presidential campaign.  In this he was merely following the precedent of the speeches by Chris Christie and Rick Santorum.

With the help of speech writers, speech coaches, ample rehearsal time and two teleprompters, Governor Romney gave, what is universally acclaimed, as the best speech of his life.  Sadly, it was still the least memorable speech ever given by a nominee.  But the bar was low.  Whereas the president had to prove he was born in America, Mitt merely had to prove he was born.  His sometimes touching stories about his parents, his sons and his wife, did enough to dispel the internet rumor that he is an automaton financed, and built, by the Koch brothers.  That is just as well, since they might have asked for their money back.

The speech had another distinction.  Never in the history of the republic, during a time when our armed services are engaged in a conflict, has a major party nominee failed to mention the war or thank the troops who are in harm's way.