Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Building the Party, One State At a Time

Thanks to ThickCulture for pointing this out to me. The American Prospect writes about Senator Obama's grand ambition of building the Democratic Party for the long haul, well past his (potential) presidency has come and gone.

Of course, Karl Rove and George Bush entered office in January 2001 with similar ambitions. Failures on Iraq, Social Security, a bloated budget and the return of deficits have disabused most die hard conservatives that the current Bush administration would be the return of Reagan. Instead, Bush, Rove and Cheney followed policies that divided, rather than united.

Analysis
Learning from this lesson, Obama's campaign is investing heavily in states it knows it probably won't win in November. Why? To build the infrastructure and provide monetary support to down-ballot candidates that can win. Doing so enables the Democratic Party to build a deeper and stronger farm team of capable candidates to run for office in places Dems previously would not have thought possible. In short, Obama is investing money from the top to help Democrats build from the bottom.

1 comment:

Brian said...

Welcome Dr. Marvin King to the co-bloggers list.

Hopefully you can spend some time sharing your commentary & insight on this blog....

(View Dr. Kings info from the "About the Bloggers" tab).

And I agree.... Obama is using a long haul strategy... the 50 State strategy worked during the primary... and hopefully it will work for the General election.
Although his strategy now seems more targeted to battleground States. I wish he would visit Colorado, New Mexico, Missouri, Arkansas, Nevada, Montana, Indiana and a few other places more often (battleground States but also more off-beat places that you wouldn't think are important...but that might end up securing a victory in November... in the end it may come down to 1 or 2 States).