My Alma Mater doesn't have much of a ground game...

...but Barack Obama sure does.

For those of you loyal readers who don't work in politics and have never worked on a campaign, consider yourselves lucky. A political cycle is like the Hobbesian state of nature; solitary, poor, nasty, and brutish. The only difference is that instead of being short, it is long. Ungodly long.

The worst part of any campaign is field work. "Field" is shorthand for knocking door-to-door, making phone calls, registering and identifying voters, and generally persuading them to (a) show up on election day, and (b) vote for your guy/gal. It isn't glamorous, but it is vital.

Remember a couple of months ago when the McCain camp ran their series of "Paris Hilton" ads? The polls narrowed, and people asked "why isn't Obama fighting back? Shouldn't he be running tons of ads to counter this? What the hell is he DOING with his money?"

This is what he was doing with his money:


From all accounts, the Obama campaign has put more money into field operations than any campaign in history. But the more important part is that he organized EVERYWHERE, not just the traditional battlegrounds. Any idiot would have open offices in Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania, and Michigan. But Indiana, North Carolina and Missouri? The latest rumors report that Obama has 25 offices open in Indiana. McCain has... none. No offices. Until recently, the "Indiana for McCain" staff operated out of Michigan. He's reportedly moving staffers to the Hoosier state, but they only have a month to organize a state-wide voter identification and mobilization effort.

Now that we're 31 days out, it's becoming clear which states are really "in play". Had the Obama folks not organized in North Carolina, they would have to dump probably a million dollars into media buys. But because they organized there, they can just throw a few extra tens of thousands of dollars to bolster the GOTV ("Get Out The vote") efforts. It's a much cheaper alternative, which also doesn't preclude additional media buys.

Long story short, Obama is in a position to exploit states that traditional campaigns couldn't. And McCain had a much tougher time getting momentum in those same states because he's just starting up there.

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A More Perfect Union

Barack Obama gave a speech on Tuesday afternoon in which he addressed the 800-pound-gorilla in the room:

Apparently, he is black.

Now, obviously everyone knows by now that Barack Obama is black. Dude has been on TV every day for like 3 years. But I say "apparently" because until now, the issue has remained at the periphery of the campaign. Questions of race have come up, but only regarding the candidate himself: Is he black enough? Can he energize black voters? What about white voters? Or latino voters? Is America ready for a black president?

It was in this context, and coupled with a conversation about an inflammatory black pastor, that Senator Obama gave the following speech. And if you have 37 free minutes, I highly recommend that you watch the entire thing. For my money, this is the best summary of current race relations I have ever heard:

This is not just a guy who happens to have darker skin than most presidential candidates. He is a Black American. He has lived the Black American experience. He has been subject to the latent racism. He has been accused of being a "product of affirmative action". He has seen the societal inequity. And those experiences have affected him.

And so begin the real questions about race. Not the questions about the relationship between the candidate and the American people, but rather the questions about the American people themselves; are we ready to deal with the racial issues that exist in our society?

Black people are mad. They are mad about slavery. They are mad about segregation. They are mad about social inequality. They are mad at a society that tells them that the competition is fair even though the runner next to them got a 300 year head start. This is the anger we saw with Reverend Wright.

White people are mad, too. They are mad about affirmative action. They are mad about welfare. They are mad about immigrants. They are mad about an America in which they are told they were born with an advantage, even if they had to scratch and claw for every inch of ground gained. This is the anger we saw with Geraldine Ferraro last week.

(Side note; my people, the Native Americans, would be mad too, but most of us are dead. Thanks a bunch, white people...)

Equality is a tough needle to thread. I feel like we've reached a point where, to a large extent, a black kid and a white kid growing up next door to each other have many of the same opportunities in life. But the fact remains that the average black kid and the average white kid are not born in the same place. I think this election may force us to face some of these issues. And it may not be pretty, but the resulting moment of gestalt could be really good for our nation.

Plus, it'll make for some really interesting speeches.

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