Walk the Walk

With all of the noise from the 24-hour news machine distracting us, it’s easy to forget the major reason Barack Obama was able to survive the primaries and position himself so well going into the last three weeks of the general election– the ground game.

It’s been discussed at length in myriad other places, so I won’t go into a lot of detail here, but the basic idea behind the most consistent of Obama’s long-term strategies has been that the most effective tool to persuade voters and win elections is simple interaction among those who are already familiar to each other. Neighbors talking to neighbors, people who know each other and trust each other and are (theoretically) the most tuned-in to the local value-set (“All politics is local”) are the most likely to connect and drive up enthusiasm. Walking around and talking to real people goes so much farther than any commercial or newspaper article ever can. You can’t win if the people who support you don’t go vote, so if you can create an infrastructure that’s designed to mine every last bit of support from every last area available, you maximize your chances as much as possible. You leave everything on the field, so to speak.

But this isn’t something that grabs a ton of headlines, it’s not flashy, it’s not new, it’s not very exciting. It’s a grind-it-out game, it’s the San Antonio Spurs. So it was heartening to see a few articles over the weekend that brought to light just how much the man at the top of the ticket believes in the effectiveness of this strategy.

Barack Obama arrived in Ohio a little early in order to prepare for Wednesday’s debate, and he spent a little time walking around Toledo, going door-to-door and talking with residents face-to-face about their concerns and answering their questions. From the Toledo Blade:

Mr. Obama talked sports with several young men, discussed the price of gas and milk, described Congress’s $700 billion economic rescue, and shook many hands.

His longest conversation was with a man who said afterward that he likes Sarah Palin, the Republican nominee for vice president. Joe Wurzelbacher, 34, who is buying a plumbing business, debated with Senator Obama about his tax plan, suggesting it would discourage entrepreneurship.

Mr. Obama tried to convince him that his plans to give a tax cut to 95 percent of Americans and to raise taxes on those earning more than $250,000 would ultimately be good for the plumbing business by helping get the economy righted.

Chicago Tribune:

Sue Sekel, a 43-year old healthcare worker dressed for a day of Sunday housecleaning, opened her front door to discover Obama standing before her.

He asked her what she did for a living and how she was managing in the economic downturn. Sekel said she was doing fine and that she voted early.

Later, she declined to tell reporters who she voted for, but she said, “I told him what I did.” She also said Sunday was “the one day I come home to clean ceiling fans and look like crap, and then this happens.”

and

As word spread that Obama was in the neighborhood, a few dozen people gathered across the street to watch, as three teenage girls raced across the street in bare feet and socks, armed with cameras.

“Where are your shoes?” Obama asked them, before taking photos with them and crossing the street. There he shook hands with about a dozen neighbors, asking them what they did for a living and offering words of concern.

Shelly Kretz, a 38-year old Proctor & Gamble worker who lives around the corner, said that she had been on the fence, but that Obama made her a believer with his answers to her neighbors’ questions.

“It’s really awesome that he takes the time to talk to the middle class and answer questions,” she said, adding that her brothers, who live in the neighborhood, were in the group and also were swayed by Obama’s appearance.

The guy’s got a lot on his plate, and yet he still believes in this enough that he’ll get out and do it himself when he’s got a moment. That’s the sort of thing that energizes supporters even more, to see the man they support beating the streets just like they are to turn out votes. The guy gets it.

I was reminded a little of this video of Obama talking to his campaign staff, taken shortly after he wrapped up the primaries– you may have seen it already, but it’s really worth revisiting. And if you haven’t seen it, take the time to watch, you’ll see why people work so damned hard for him: