Volunteers swarm region to get out vote

[Bravo Zulu]

Charlie Reidy, left, of Seattle, Wash., and Kevin Kwan, of New York City, work on canvassing efforts at the Mt. Lebanon office for the Obama campaign.

Charlie Reidy couldn't bear to just watch the presidential election from the sidelines of Seattle. So he typed his name on the Internet site of Sen. Barack Obama, and two weeks later, landed three time zones away in Mt. Lebanon.

"This is where the action is," said the volunteer, working the phones from numbers on his laptop data base.

Mr. Reidy is not a Red Bull-chugging, 20-something Obama backer getting his first heady taste of presidential politics.

He is a 57-year-old retired software developer who dipped into his investments to fly across the country and spend five weeks canvassing in a state where he knows no one.

The out-of-state ground troops have landed in Pennsylvania.

This weekend, more reinforcements arrived by busload and caravan, trying to get out the vote for both Mr. Obama and his Republican Sen. John McCain.

Some were skeptical when Obama announced his 50-state strategy early in his campaign, but pundits now say he has the clear edge in the ground game.

The thousands of Obama volunteers wading into this pivotal state are not only the mainstay young, but also retirees and middle-aged professionals willing to take a leave from their jobs and sleep in someone's living room.

"Obama has created a potentially huge ground game for Nov. 4," said Terry Madonna, director of the Center for Politics and Public Affairs at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster. "He has more than 80 field offices in the state, probably the largest number of field operations ever in the state put into place in a presidential election.

"The reaction of volunteers and activists to help them is greater than anything I have seen in a long, long time, probably since Kennedy. I have not seen similar operations for Republicans at this point."

Bill Whalen, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, said Mr. Obama's campaign has attracted a big army of volunteers, but he is not sure that they have the razor-focus of the one organized by Karl Rove in 2004, when thousands of Republican volunteers knocked on doors in the final 72 hours to get out the vote for President Bush.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/08307/924764-103.stm

[John Q. Citizen]

1. Yes, "...he has the clear edge in the ground game."

They all end up saying that sooner or later, don't they?

Rove turned out thousands, according to Whalen at Hoover.

Obama is turning out hundreds of thousands. And we don't need no "razor focus" because we are better than that.