Piling On

Since it is such a good topic I will comment on Matt Bai's article as well. I have two points to make here. First, the Kerry campaign's strategy for volunteering was absolutely a mess. I was running a state Assembly campaign in Onondaga County, New York at the time so I got to have a few run ins with them. They first sucked up 3,000 volunteers and basically locked them into working for Kerry in a state he was going to win in a county he was going to win. To get them to do anything for your campaign you had to submit a request a few weeks in advance. But the real killer was their strategy, which was just to make sure Democratic turnout in every precinct was 70%, that's it. No targeting, just call everyone until you think have 70% of the Democrats in a precinct voting, and that was their idea of running up the score.

My second point deals with something I think the Bush campaign did very well, targeting specific groups; Agriculture Coalition for Bush, Viva Bush, W is for Women. It worked great for them and it's a lesson Democrats should take note of. I've actually been preaching this for a few years now myself. I learned politics in Erie County, the home of Buffalo, where ethnic politics is king. Unlike the fairly homogeneous Republican Party, the Democratic Party is extremely diverse and every group thinks they should be the one running the Party. In 2004, after Congressman Jack Quinn announced he was retiring from the second most Democratic seat held by a Republican at the time, there was sure to be a competitive Democratic primary. Now the 27th is an interesting seat, because it has more union members than any other CD in the country (about twice the average), about 50% of the voters are either of Irish, Italian or Polish decent (a fact few would let you forget), and at approximately 17% it is the most Polish district in the country. Jack Quinn had held the seat for 12 years, and he is of course Irish, and the front runner to fill his seat was then Assemblyman now Congressman Brian Higgins, who is also Irish. Candidates actually got into the race as the Polish candidate; they were running because the next Congressman should be Polish. Fast forward a few months, three State Supreme Court Justices are retiring, two Italians and one African American, and it is certain that who ever is nominated to replace them will need the right last name. Now Erie County may be an extreme example, being as Democratic politics were once referred to as Beirut on the lake, but it shows why the Democrats need to follow Bush's lead. These are all key parts of the Democratic coalition especially in the Northeast, that need to be kept involved and need to be kept happy, and marketing specifically to them is one of the best ways to do that.