Inside the Obama Campaign: A Grassroots View

By Patrick Levine Rose, AlterNet. Posted November 5, 2008.

I believe that the Obama Campaign for Change of 2008 has changed American Politics. But even more importantly, It has changed my life in ways unrelated to politics. I have lived in my community for five years, and due to this campaign, I feel like I have just moved in. I know many of my neighbors I had never met, and feel a greater bond to many I already knew.

This is how grass roots politics takes root. But leadership of this sort starts at the top. For me, the one single event that symbolizes how bottom-up change started at the top was "The Call." The strange thing is that I was not supposed to be on "The Call" -- I got it by accident and just listened in. But it tied me into the campaign and made me realize I was part of something much bigger than myself.

Campaigner

I got involved in the Obama campaign as much due to my wife's efforts as anything else. She is dynamic, energetic, and very committed. She volunteered to be a Team Leader for Sen. Obama. It meant recruiting volunteers -- and having a daily call with the paid organizer and committing to achieve daily targets (to register voters and recruit volunteers and canvas door to door, etc.) There was the daily call between team members and the emails sent out to volunteers.

My wife and other team leaders on her team recruited more than 50 volunteers at house parties and calling them up. The Obama campaign taught us to find those we knew, and get them involved. The local organizer we met spoke about how we were in the "relationship" business and that this campaign would be won one relationship at a time.

After my wife joined her team, we were told that Michigan was a must win. The campaign elites impressed upon the new Lieutenants what they had to know.

We were told that Obama had to win Michigan to be President.

We were told that Barack Obama could not win without putting away this state.

We were told Kerry won by only 100,000 votes in 2004. We were told that 485,000 voters had moved out of Michigan since 2004 -- and 85 percent plus of these were union or Democratically registered households.

We were told that we started out as a result over 385,000 votes behind. It became the goal to win Michigan without which the Presidency could not be won.

My wife worked tirelessly. She got so many to register to vote. What amazing me most is that East Lansing, a small town, had eight teams off campus, and many more teams on the university campus. My wife's work as a co-leader of just one of eight teams was not at all unique. Many others made the same high level of commitment. The teams were working for months.

Fast forward almost three months. The East Lansing team registered 10,800 newly registered voters -- fully 10 percent of those newly registered in the entire State of Michigan. It was all going to come down to the last three days.

The Call

Then came "The Call." It was on Saturday night just before Election Day. In many of our minds, the Election was already over. The polls showed Obama with a commanding lead. I figured he was a "shoe-in." Complacency was setting in. We were already counting the Electoral College votes and figuring we had this one in the bag.

But "The Call" changed that. The phone rang. I was home -- my wife was at the Obama office. It was a recording of Barack Obama telling us -- as one of 20,000 team leaders nationwide, that he was going to ask us about the last 3 days.

After "The Call" began, we listened for about ten minutes before Barack Obama came on the line. During this part of "The Call," we saw the last weeks and months flash before our eyes. The campaign top brass reviewed what teams (as a group) had accomplished. Specifically, we heard from Jon Carson, the national field organizer, and David Plouffe, the national campaign manager. It was Saturday night, and we were told this is the final push.

This call put all of the work we were doing in our small town in a much larger context. It made it all seem more real and more important. It create a sense of national community. All this intense organizing that had gone one was made palpable by a series of anecdotes and statutes.

See more stories tagged with: michigan, obama campaign, grassroots campaigning, campaign technology

Patrick Levine Rose is an appellate specialist and election attorney in East Lansing, Michigan.

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