did you read this on fivethirtyeight.com about McCain's decision to not put $ into GOTV?

[renate]

It's a very, very reassuring article about his chronic lack of ground operations (i.e., it's not just about this weekend but about the past two months). I've seen a few of the pictures on DU already but it's pretty fun to see them all together.

From the article:
Offices in Troy, Ohio were closed on Saturday October 11. With perfect coincidental timing, two elderly women dropped by to volunteer but found the office shut. At Republican state headquarters in Columbus later the same day, one lonely dialer sat in a sea of unoccupied chairs. In Des Moines on September 25, another empty office. In Santa Fe on September 17, one dialer made calls while six chatted amongst themselves about how they didn't like Obama. In Raleigh this past Saturday, ten days before the election with early voting already open, two women dialed and a male staffer watched the Georgia-LSU game. In Durango, Colorado on September 20, the Republican office was locked and closed. Indiana didn't have McCain Victory offices when we were there in early October.

snip

In Cortez, CO, we had Republican volunteers pose for action-shot photos. The same in Española, New Mexico. Posed. For some time at the outset, we were willing to give Republicans the benefit of the doubt. They convinced us they were really working, and that we had just had unfortunate timing. It wasn't until the pattern of "just missed it" started to sound like a drumbeat in our ears that we began to grow skeptical. We never "just missed" any of the Obama volunteer work, because it goes on nonstop, every day, in every office, in every corner of America.

snip

We read the published comments from McCain spokespeople that argue the dialing/canvassing numbers are ahead of where they were at the same time four years ago. Well, either the Bush ground game of 2004 was the Big Myth, or those spokespeople are flat lying to reporters, who have no context to challenge those claims because they haven't seen the empty offices the way we have.

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/10/big-empty.html

[renate]

1. shameless self-kick because I for one found this article reassuring

I know it's absurd but I'm so totally on tenterhooks about this election that even Hannity's and Limbaugh's OBVIOUS hot-air-blowing can rattle me. So I find it comforting to know that, whatever the campaign may be BS-ing about, McCain really doesn't have a ground organization to mobilize (which, now that I think about it, might be the reason he's putting his money into ads rather than into getting out the vote--there's nobody in place to do that even if he wanted to).