Good news in Florida for Obama!

As I've mentioned before, my neighbors are news journalists who are covering election 2008. This past week the husband, Steve, has been traveling all over Florida with (I believe) Frontline, to try to find out if either candidate is pulling ahead in the state. When he left for the investigation last weekend be believed that McCain had the state locked up, but on his return this evening he's changed his mind and thinks that Obama has the best chance of winning Florida. Why? Because the Obama "machine" is vast, well organized, and motivated. He visited many towns where the McCain campaign doesn't even have an office, but Obama did, and a well staffed one at that! When he did find a McCain office it often had only 3-5 people working the phone banks. Obama's, by comparison, were usually staffed by 40-50 volunteers. It's looking to me like "YES WE CAN" isn't just a slogan!

..... EVERY Obama supporter should watch this ..... David Plouffe describing exactly HOW we will TAKE FLORIDA!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUAiGbNp8oI

The numbers are mind blowing ......... the most infamous state from the 2000 election could turn out to be a landslide for us, "my friends." ;)

And I love your cats!

voluteers working all over Florida on the ground..thanks, Lorien.

Is it too early to start thinking 'landslide'?

He told me Florida was saturated with Obama staff and volunteers. Hell, we have 16 offices just in NH, so I can imagine what's in FL.

They have 7 paid staffers and 2 full-time interns for Polk County alone. Kerry sent only one staffer here in 2004.

Voter registrations are piling in by the ton. Hundreds of volunteers are making calls. The county is divided up into around 40 neighborhood teams, one of which I am a captain.

I heard there are over 350 paid staff in the entire state, and there are more than 50 official offices open right now. Additionally, I've heard about a couple more volunteer-run offices elsewhere in smaller towns that aren't even included in the above numbers.

Turnout down here is going to be truly awesome.

She is great!

I am a little bit skeptical of the other counties, though.

Leon, which is tiny in comparison and which has been blue for a long time has at least four paid staff for it and several more which using the Leon office as a base for getting out to the outlying counties around us.

A lot of the paid staff pulled out of Georgia have come to Florida. We had some of them come to Tallahassee on the way to other offices in the state.

FL would ensure the election goes to Obama.

So, we need to keep the pressure on!

he really needs a wide lead to keep them from stealing it too easily. We also need EXIT POLLING!

I really hope we can pull it off, that would make me feel so much better about 2000.

They are giving them the location of the Obama office and encouraging them to volunteer. This is good, because pretty much 95% of the campaign activity is focused on fence-sitters and undecideds. We don't have time to call the base voters. But volunteers called by move on are starting to stream in to the office now!

haters will turn out big time because of the anti gay marriage amendment on the ballot while Chain Gang Charlie and his lackey, the Secretary of State, supress Democratic votes.

but he is no JEB. He has niether the power nor the skills. Touchscreens are only available for handicap access. Every precinct now has optical scan ballots with a paper trail. This alone would have put us over the top in 2000. The level of organization and preparation so vastly exceeds the efforts in 2000 and 2004, I predict the results to be a stunner, to favor Obama.

he's still a repug, but I'll take him over Jebby any day!

Would it hurt or help? Sometime after Oct. 15, get Al on the stump around the state, reminding people of how it was stolen in 2000 and inspiring major, major get-out-the-vote efforts. I know Obama has the organizational efforts, but if Gore wanted to do one big push in one key state, this would be it, I think.

and how he'll be able to topple the corrupt Republican machinery set in place! It took a while for Obama's groundwork to show up in the polls but it will! He and his team are just good strategist up against Machiavellian tacticians. Obama DOES know the difference between strategy and tactics, McCain! And he's gonna personally make sure that YOU know the fucking difference too, Mr. 894th out of 899!

Seriously, McCain himself is incompetent but it's probably true that the "vast right wing conspiracy" does exist in the various state infrastructures that still haven't purged them. Plus, with the right wing media being so guerrilla-like, the terrorist activities they promote is harder to catch (sorry but pissed off about the fucking chemical attack unleashed on Muslim kids in an Ohio mosque after those fucking DVDs were circulated with newspapers :grr: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-rodda/muslim-children-gassed-at_b_130076.html).

Let's turn as many states blue as we can!!!

I really hope your neighbor is right. I really really hope so. I stayed up late last night watching the DVD American Blackout. I couldn't sleep after watching it - and I consider myself VERY well informed on the 2000 and 2004 disenfranchisements. If Florida is good to go, then what state will it be this year where they steal the votes?

If your neighbor is correct - Florida is one less state we have to worry about. Except - I swear I read on here late last week that someone in TX had either a friend/relative that received an absentee ballot for Florida . . . and the recipient had never lived in Florida. That's scary scary crap.

operative who details how the election can be stolen, but I haven't heard back from him yet. I think Steve's piece will air on Frontline later this week (check listings), so I guess we can all draw our own conclusions from it.

He might change his mind.

Though I don't know if Frontline will cover that angle. PBS is still headed up by repugs who don't permit them to cover certain topics.

:kick: