blogging the special elections

[cos]

Yesterday, after spending the afternoon and early evening canvassing and attending poll-check training over at the Tim Schofield campaign in Brighton, I wrote a blog post about the three special elections for open state house seats in Massachusetts tomorrow. This afternoon it got posted on Blog for America (what started out as the Dean campaign blog in 2003), so now I want to show it off :) They asked me for 500 words, my first draft was almost 690 words, and then I spent a few hours whittling it down (with some useful help from friends, including beah). The final version I sent in was 538 words and got posted in full. Yay!

So, yes, Massachusetts is electing three new members of the house, at the tail end of winter - two in Boston and one in Pittsfield. The votes tomorrow are primaries, but all three districts almost always elect Democrats, so the Democratic primaries are what count the most. You can read more about it in my post and the articles I linked to from there. If you're interested in how blogs played into these campaigs, read my comment on this dailykos diary.

Some late-breaking news: Our local anti-gay group, the Article 8 Alliance, has stepped in with some gay-bashing flyers in at least one election, targeting Linda Dorcena Forry. They're probably gonna try something against Tim Schofield too, since he actually is gay.

If you live around here and wanna help, we could use more volunteers! Tonight, and tomorrow until 8pm (even if you're working, 5-8pm is one of the busiest parts of the day in a get-out-the-vote drive).

Comments

[yehoshua.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure who the Article 8 Alliance would support, though. It's not like Mike Moran is a right winger. Indeed, unlike some elections where we've gotten to choose the evil of two lessers, this campaign has me stuck deciding between two guys who both strike me as capable, qualified, and generally in favor of the things I support (which is a nice change).

[cos]

Glennon, probably - he was an aide to Golden. I do note his politic response to the question in the Allston-Brighton TAB questionnaire, where he merely supports putting the amendment on the ballot, but I suspect he'll try his best to oppose gay marriage.

[simonbillenness.livejournal.com]

See you at the Kells tonight. I've not been able to do work on the ground but I've raised some money for Tim.

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

any comment on this article? It intrigues me...
pyramid structure for campaigns

building a long term structure

[cos]

I got that article on a Deanie mailing list recently. There's nothing new in it, to me, and yes, I think he's exactly right. So do a lot of other people. It's good that he's writing about it, and getting it published in the New York Times, because it'll spread the message more. But this is pretty much the consensus of Democratic Party reformers and many of the new Democratic-leaning organizations and leaders of the past few years.

For example, having a permanent ground campaign like the Republicans, instead of forming a new one for each Presidential election, is precisely ACT's founding mission. If you canvassed for Kerry last year, you were helping build the Kerry in 2004 support database; if you canvassed for ACT, you were helping build the long term "elect Democrats to the presidency and Senate" support database for multiple elections. Mary Beth Cahill, Kerry's campaign manager, is now giving talks on "a permanent ground campaign" - I might go to one of hers at Harvard this week.

The progressive media has been full of articles about the right wing's use of think tanks and funding of campus groups, ever since people started wondering how we got such an extremist presidency and spent some time going over the history. The consensus Bradley is expressing began to form around 2002 and had wide currency by late 2003.

Some more reading, if you're interested:
how the conservative message machine was built, and how we can do it
Powell's manifesto, to the US Chamber of Commerce, 1971
progressives need to build a movement of persuasion
Frank Luntz advice for Republicans