When organizers run for office

In 1988 Michael Dukakis lost the state of Illinois by 100,000 votes. After graduating from Harvard Law Barack Obama moved to Chicago and headed a voter registration effort. He registered 150,000 voters prior to the 1992 election and Bill Clinton won the state and the Presidency.

Organizing communities, registering voters and turning out the vote are all important pieces of Barack Obama's past and his development as a political animal. It should then come as no surprise that a strong ground game is what Obama is banking on to carry him to a win this November.

Field operations and ground games are not sexy. They don't inspire bloggers, journalists or pundits to pontificate and wax eloquently. They don't inspire debate on the cable tv shows. In fact field operations and ground games are barely discussed outside of campaign offices and campaign staffs. Ask any campaign professional though and they will tell you that elections are won and lost on the ground - who turns out voters in key precints that swing an entire state to one candidate?

DDay at Hullabaloo has a fantastic comprehensive look at the ground game in this fall. It's an absolute must read for anyone following the presidential race. It's also an important read for anyone Obama supporter fretting over the daily tracking polls. Obama's campaign and independent expenditure groups across the country are mounting a sizeable and formidable ground attack that the Republicans will not come close to matching.

The election will likely be close and may come down to a relative handful of votes in just a few states. In elections like those it is the months of long, hard hours on the ground by scores of staff and volunteers who make the difference. They are registering voters now. Soon they will be making contacts, id'ing voters, refining their messages and targets and contacting those voters again and again before election day. When an entire presidential election may be decided by a couple of thousand votes in a single state it is the ground game that makes the difference.