Thursday Open Thread

I seem to have struck a chord here with my griping about paid staff ignoring the wisdom of locals. I'm actually fine with most of the benefits of national organizations – consistency, savvy, dedicated people, good data and targeting, efficient organizing of voter contact, and, yes, money.

But organizing could improve if there was at least acknowledgement that maybe activists, people who have lived in a community, might know a bit about what messages and strategies will actually persuade local voters.

In Pueblo's case, I'm not sure if "listening to locals"  would have made a difference.  There actually were plenty of local people involved in the anti-recall campaign, especially at the beginning. As I said, I don't think we had much influence on camapaign policies.

The combination of an off-year election and banning of mail ballots until too late screwed the election for Democrats. Most of the factors that turned people away from voting were external (right wing propaganda fueled by NRA $$, confusion about how and where to vote, inconvenience of in-person voting vs mail ballots. 

Internal factors within the campaign structure may have been a minor, but in my opinion, not a major, factor in Pueblo. 

However, I sure would like it if, in the future, national organizations would at least ask and listen to local people on what would work well in the target communities.  It would be a lot cheaper and more effective than paying a ginormous "push poll " company to figure out how to reach out to local voters.

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