Obama's ground game sounds epic in scope - McCain is hoping Bush's ballyhooed 72-Hour Ground Game will come out for him this weekend (largely Evangelicals).

I question the viability of such a huge ground game in future elections though, because I assume that there will be further campaign finance reforms that will cap spending on campaigns.

I could see roles reversed in 2012 as far as fund raising as Obama will be the incumbent, and the challenger will be the well-funded insurgent.

I mean Obama has probably spent $80M+ on ground game alone.

(yep, I'm counting my eggs as chickens today)

any new VA polls

just got done canvassing in vienna, virginia.

we contact two types of voters here: "sporadic" and "persuasion."

"sporadic" voters are the ones who have voted dem in the past, but not regularly, i.e., they haven't been great about getting to the polls.

"persuasion" voters are those who aren't necessarily dems -- they need to be persuaded, in other words.

while i typically don't make much contact during my saturday morning canvasses, today i had one "persuasion" voter tell me he had already voted the straight dem ticket already here in virginia. another "persuasion" house didn't have anyone home, but had an Obama/Biden yard sign. that's a good sign. :)

another persuasion voter told me that he was intending to vote for obama for president, but for the republicans the rest of the way (i'm not too concerned about that, since mark warner is going to slam-dunk jim gilmore for senate anyway). but the fact that this voter is republican for the entire ticket EXCEPT for president gives you a sense of what's going on here.

among the "sporadic" voters with whom i made contact (only a couple, but my canvass list is rapidly dwindling -- only 14 doors today), all were going to vote for obama. i think i talked two of them into heading up to vote absentee in person (today is the last day).

the smaller canvass lists are a great sign, too -- it means that we've either pegged them as solid obama supporters (and they WILL get a GOTV contact on the 4th ... and will continue to get them until they say they've voted), or that they have already voted.

to paraphrase crystal gayle, "don't it make my red state blue ..."

:)

I live in True Blue Maryland. This morning two men came to our door, having gotten off a church bus in the road. They were canvassing for McCain. This makes no sense to me, especially since we have Obama signs out front and a Dick Cheney pumpkin and McCain doesn't stand a chance in MD. Virginia is 20 minutes away. I gave them some leftover Halloween candy and sent them on their way.

Obama's setting up the infrastructure so that in four years, (hopefully) it won't take too long to get up and running again...

This proves that Barack Obama will put the fate of our nation back in the hands of its people.

As our Founding Fathers intended.

Also the guy leading the Obama organization for Sterling, VA where I live (outer DC burbs) is here from Missouri working to turn VA blue. I strongly suspect that this is a strong pattern here in Virginia and other key states that Obama is trying to turn.

I also actually saw my first sign today for Jim Gilmore who is running against Mark Warner. It simply had his name and then said "Drill Here, Drill Now". That has to be one of the worst roadside campaign signs I've ever seen. My first thought was, "there's oil in Tyson's Corner, VA"?

I put in a couple of hours of phone calling this afternoon at the field office in Bethesda, Maryland. Previously I'd done calling to Virginia there, and as I left they were returning to calling Virginia, but during my couple of hours it was Ohio.

The astounding thing was, when another volunteer sat down across from me, he said that he had been out canvassing in Virginia, the Manassas area, and had expected to be doing that all day, but they finished. They literally finished knocking on all the doors in the area. There will be more door knocking there again before it's over, but for this round they had literally gotten it all done. While I'm not that experienced in election campaigns, I am involved in grassroots work professionally, and actually finishing everything you intend to is something almost unheard of in grassroots work, holy grail level.

As far as the campaign office goes, I was going to use my laptop to leave a workstation open for some other volunteer, but all the network jacks were in use. When I left, the workstation I was on immediately got put to use by another volunteer, and there was a line of volunteers waiting for workstations to open up for them. The cell phones were getting so much use that you had to plug in the charger while you called, because there was no time for them to sit and recharge. This is in addition to people's own cell phones that they brought. It's not that they didn't have plenty of computers and telephones, and it's not a small facility, there were just so many people there.

By no means should this be interpreted as suggesting that anyone able to volunteer in Virginia doesn't need to do so, however. It's not over till it's over, as they say.