The MoveOn political machine exceeds all expectations

Posted by Don Hazen at 6:04 PM on November 5, 2006.

According to its DC political maestro Tom Mattzie, MoveOn is involved in 57 races -- up from 30 a few weeks ago; it has 101,453 volunteers plugged into phone banks, house parties and their "Call From Home" phone system. They will have 161 staff on Election Day with 39 field offices in 25 states. Now that is a political operation.

MoveOn's goal for voter contacts through the end of Election Day was to actually talk to 450,000 people several times. They will pass that goal today, Sunday. According to lead honcho Eli Pariser, MoveOn has made 4.43 million calls to voters -- 805,000 on Saturday alone. People are holding over 3,000 parties across the country. That's 50% more parties than MoveOn has ever done in one round. at this point they are adding something like 4,000 new volunteers a day.

MoveOn leaders joke that their nickname is "Liquid Phone" because they just keep adding volunteers. They say the closer the races are, the more excited their volunteers get. The more excited the people get, the more GOTV work they can do and the more races we can compete in. Quite a nice situation to be in.

In terms of dough, MoveOn raised $5,242,432 in October... alone. That money is headed for strong Democratic candidates and VoteVets.org. In addition -- a very big number -- $27,157,797 -- was raised in this election cycle so far.

The DLCers and the Blue Dogs in the Democratic party are very likely paying close attention to MoveOn, who they have attacked, red baited, and tried to undermine, along with many Republican candidates, while MoveOn has just gotten stronger and stronger.

Some pundits and conservative Democrats are desperately trying to spin the fantasy that Democrats are succeeding in this election because they went out and got conservative candidates to run. But that is just plain silly. The country is sick and tired of war, corruption, hypocrisy, ignoring global warming, lack of healthcare, and the colossal failure of Republicans across the board. Anti-war candidates are leading the way in most of the country.

All of this portends a very promising future for 2008 and beyond for Democrats. MoveOn's success -- using the fundamental strategy of going to the people for strength, and action, and not depending on "star" consultants, or beltway based strategies, may just be leading the country, to a far better place, after 6 years of true darkness.

Tagged as: activism, voting, election06, moveon

Don Hazen is the executive editor of AlterNet.