Well, Chris, your question is really easy to answer. There are two things that will have a major impact:

1) Obama running a pro-coattails campaign, which includes, among other things, ads asking people to give him "help" in Washington "because he can't do it alone".

2) Specifically identifying the undervote (now possible to do because undervote is public information - which is why we know about it), and contacting those voters directly and asking them to vote the whole ticket.

This latter is one of the reasons how Jean Cowan won on the coast. In 2004 there was a significant undervote for Jean by Kerry voters, so her campaign went out and contacted each of those people personally. The difference put her over the top.

That's how you do it. Simple to say - a lot of hard work to do.

Steve, that's not right.

An undervote is a vote - and it's part of the secret ballot. We know that 94,000 people voted for either Obama or Clinton but not in the U.S. Senate race - but there's no way to know who those people are or to identify them in any way.

Thank you Kari--I thought I'd gone to bed and woken up insane. You could target high undervote areas, but I don't see how you could find out who undervoted.

Steve, exactly right, it's simple to say but a lot of work. My point, insofar as there was one, would be that a first step to doing the work would be to identify it as being needed.

It's exactly people like yourself who understand the work involved whose opinion would be particularly valuable on whether the distinctiveness of new registrants makes them worth special focus, despite extra effort required. I've done canvasses a few times in the past, though I have to overcome some personality barriers to do it, and these days have peculiar family constraints as a divorced father, but I've never organized one.

In the abstract this seems as if it might be a "strike while the iron is hot" opportunity for focued party-building and consolidation. But maybe I'm just sucking that out of my thumb (it's been known to happen ;->).

My questions would be first, is this something worthwhile doing as a separate process from general voter contact & later GOTV, or is the extra effort not worth the candle?

And if it may be worthwhile, would it be something to aim for in general across the state, or possibly targeted to places where it might be particularly valuable, or places where there are the resources?

Doing it places where it might be valuable because it could cement strength where the party has been relatively weaker presumably would require more resources & work. The thought was inspired by the Bus Project's good work along that line, could also maybe come via other routes?

A flip side of the question is whether the DPO's neighbor outreach program (& Precinct Person recruitment) could be strengthened by saying to people who are sitting on the fence about getting involved "here is a special opportunity to make a lasting difference, by making people feel welcomed and valued, by showing we are paying attention." It seems like a slightly more definite goal. And since it seems as if a proportion of people who start doing that kind of work discover they like it, it could generalize.

Relatedly, in areas where the party has been relatively weak but may be gaining strength, could an infusion of effort to help cement new growth could be a morale boost for those who have been fighting the good fight and could have improving prospects?

Regarding Kari's point, what I had in mind is that it ought to be possible to identify "new Democrats" by registration. It also seems as if there might be somewhat different messages to entirely new registrants vs. people who have switched from NAV or Republican or something else to Democrat.

I don't know if any special trainings (even short pre-canvass ones) or sample scripts relating to addressing new registrants would be worthwhile.

The point about "Obama's going to need help" as an approach / message certainly makes sense, esp. if people identify him as reason they changed (I do think there may be numbers who changed for Clinton too). If the DPO and the Oregon Obama campaign could coordinate for mutual benefit -- Obama benefits from follow-up to keep new voters involved, DPO benefits by follow-up to deepen the involvement, newly mobilized Obama activists for the presidential cycle get brought into contact & involvement with the persisting party, & become able to influence it, that all seems good.

The Jackson County Democrats are conducting a phone survey of the 7,531 new Democrats. We are welcoming the new Democrats to the party, weeding out the Rush Limbough Dems and conducting an issues poll. The information will be provided to our local candidates. We predict a hot race against State Representative R-Sal Esquival and newcomer Ms. Lynn Howe. As most of you readers know, Sal hasn't exactly been Oregon's pal regarding insuring 100,000 needy kids and at the last second decided the Domestic Partnership law needed to be overturned. The other good news is when you add the Obama and Clinton votes together in our county from the Primary..we trounced the Republicans.

Chris, looks like paulie answers your question. That's an out-of-sight plan in Jackson County! Fast work.

I also wanted to say that I'm not a single dad, but I sure get what it's like to work political volunteerism in with family responsibilities. I don't know how old your kids are, but my youngest is eight--and we were all pleasantly surprised how much they actually LIKED walking around town (even on a not-so-nice day) with a lit bag helping Dad. I wrote a little piece about the experience at DKos.

Paulie, you guys ROCK. Can't wait to hear how that process goes.

That trip on June 14th to Hood River sounds like a fun Bus trip. Great area, sort of a purple area with all kinds of (white) folks. And who knows, maybe some time to sneak out to the Hood Valley orchards and pick some fruit. :)

I heard a lot of talk about how successful this union or that special interest was in their support success rate. I think Bus is 18 for 20 in the last two cycles. That's dynamite, and I bet a good research study would find it was at least partially causal.

Kari: We know that 94,000 people voted for either Obama or Clinton but not in the U.S. Senate race - but there's no way to know who those people are or to identify them in any way.

Maybe in Portland. But in most other places, it's not all that hard to figure out. You get a hundred new registered party members in a house district, and your undervote goes up by a nearly identical amount, it's really not too hard to figure out who to talk to.

Security envelopes don't trump simple logic.

Party registration is public information known about each individual, as is whether that person voted in an election. You also know things in aggregate. The overlap of very small HDs, which can further be broken down by county, can give you a pretty good clue about vote preferences and undervotes.

But please don't associate me with bashing Rep. Hunt. His point - that people vote up a ticket - is well taken. We just need to ask people for their votes.

as someone excited by Obama long enough ago to be supporting him when he had no chance, i'm not about to dismiss the power that lies at the top of the ticket. i expect his coattails to be very strong (unlike Bill's, which were virtually non-existant).

yet you don't build a movement from the top-down (and thank god both Howard Dean & Obama know this). you also don't build it in one or two election cycles. what we are seeing this year began in 2003, with the Dean for America campaign (and, to a lesser but not insignificant extent, the Kucinich) campaign. in 2006 we saw progress, and this year is very exciting. but this still is only the start of what has to be a long-term process.

we will see unprecendented turnout this year, but also massive undervotes. the task will be to convert 2008 Obama voters into 2010 Oregon House, Senate, Governer, etc voters. each county -- hell, each precinct -- has to identify and woo the voters who will support not just an amazing presidential candidate but wonderful citizens like Brent Barton. he needs and deserves the votes of all those newly registered citizens in HD 51 just as much as Obama. if we cannot deliver the same votes to each this year, that simply shows what we need to work on for 2010: building from the ground-up. cuz one day we won't have an amazing presidential candidate leading the way; we'll just have the ordinary folks. and if we haven't built the foundation of a movement for real democracy, we'll be in trouble.

but i think we are on the right path, and 2008 is going to be a wonderful step forward. just not the last step.

OK, I thought a phone survey and welcome was pretty smart, but handwritten notes and an invite to a BBQ? Clackamas has set the bar; which county will top that for outreach?

Speaking of Clackamas Democrats, I saw Lynn Peterson and her (husband?) looking at Macs at the Apple Store in Bridgeport today.

I believe it is a mistake to filter this through zero-sum "D versus R" glasses. Doing so just reinforces one of the chief reasons many NAV's give for why they prefer to be NAV even though some (many?) of them typically vote a straight ticket or very close to a straight ticket. Especially considering that many registered D's, some of whom are long-time party members, don't always vote a strictly straight party ticket (think "Democrats for Smith") either. Being a formal member of the Party is a guarantee of absolutely nothing in electoral terms. So why focus on it as if it did?

I very much like the approach that Paulie reports the Jackson County Dems are taking - a survey of issues important to newly registered Dems. That, I believe, will do more to make reluctant new D's feel warm and fuzzy about the Democratic Party (at least at the County level) than a year's worth of BBQs because it goes to the very heart of why they registered D in the first place.

Look, TJ made a comment here at B.O. shortly before the Primary to the effect that he votes the candidate not the party - which describes me to a "T" as well. That assertion describes a huge swath of these newly minted D's more succinctly than perhaps many long-time D's would like to think. It seems to me that the bulk of those newly minted D's are D's because of one or more issues rather than because of anything inherent about the Democratic Party. Which is why the approach taken by Jackson County D's strikes me as brilliant and very worthwhile being copied more widely.

Lifelong Democrat,

I would respectfully suggest that you are overthinking this by several orders of magnitude.

I would further suggest that leading off by characterizing what I clearly framed as an opinion (i.e., "seems to me...") as an assertion and then, later, suggesting that I exhibited superficial reasoning skills is... well, ironic.

Speaking of superficial reasoning skills, I'm curious... Which currupt faction of the Party did Novick's public approval of the Healthy Kids Measure & it's patently regressive funding scheme place him in? Would it be the same faction as Merkley, since Merkley also supported it? Or is there some sort of sub-faction where only certain regressive tax systems are considered bad public policy while others receive a complete pass? I confess to never having fully understood how that particular line of... um... reasoning is supposed to work...

Unless some major event occurs I'll be giving my vote to Obama, but it will be as much a vote against McCain as it will be a vote for Obama.

Interesting.

I wonder how many said that a vote for Gore in 2000 was as much against a vote for Bush....

And look where we are.

I'm citing this because I find attitudes like Bill's somewhat perplexing. As a registered NAV until April of this year, I didn't register as a Dem mostly because I've enjoyed the retention of my independence (not to mention I get all the stuff from all the candidates--which makes for great blogging fodder).

The idea that Obama (or Hillary for that matter) is just a marginal difference from McCain (or Bush) flabbergasts me. Especially after all we've lived through under Bush/Republican rule in the last eight years.

Crazy, defined.

I'd love to see impeachment investigations go forward. But frankly, to watch the country embroiled in another impeachment suck with everything else we need to deal with would be an inept use of the nation's time.

I do agree that the Dems should have stepped up and forced the Iraq issue. I've found that incredibly frustrating. But I've yet to see evidence that our lack of extraction from that situation is a bendover for corporate masters. I think it has a lot more to do with Dems being cowed by political pressure from their constituencies and an unwillingness to be tarred with the label as the group who took money out of the mouths of troops that Bush left hanging in Iraq. Not that this makes it right..but its certainly more plausible (and less intellectually lazy) than "the two wings on the corporate bird of prey".

Its as if nothing has been learned in the last eight years. As if Clinton or Gore would have traipsed us into Iraq..or jacked us with tax cuts/breaks for the uber rich...or saddled us with right-wing SCOTUS justices who are chomping at the bit to overturn Roe.

Learn, dammit.

Bill Bodden: There are reasons why many of us abandoned or ignored the Democratic party. ... the Democratic and Republican parties are the two wings on the corporate bird of prey

If you look at polling data, Bill, you'll find your hatred of capitalism doesn't put you in the "many" camp. It puts you on the "vanishingly few" side of the line - at least in the United States.

When over 90% of Americans are employed by corporations, attacking corporations as inherently evil doesn't fly.

A much more accurate analysis is that swing voters in the American electorate are largely poor, uneducated, anti-environmentalist whites, prone to various forms of bigotry and/or religious intolerance. Democratic refusal to pander to their hate gave them reason to vote against their own economic interests. It was especially easy during the 1990s, when peace and prosperity from moderate Democratic governance took economic issues off the front burner.

This is self correcting. As Republican governance makes the country poor, suddenly bigotry isn't quite as important as it was before. I don't doubt, however, that as soon as President Obama fixes the economy, swing voters will once again feel safe in voting their hates.

Bill Bodden: There are reasons why many of us abandoned or ignored the Democratic party. ... the Democratic and Republican parties are the two wings on the corporate bird of prey

If you look at polling data, Bill, you'll find your hatred of capitalism doesn't put you in the "many" camp. It puts you on the "vanishingly few" side of the line - at least in the United States.

When over 90% of Americans are employed by corporations, attacking corporations as inherently evil doesn't fly.

A much more accurate analysis is that swing voters in the American electorate are largely poor, uneducated, anti-environmentalist whites, prone to various forms of bigotry and/or religious intolerance. Democratic refusal to pander to their hate gave them reason to vote against their own economic interests. It was especially easy during the 1990s, when peace and prosperity from moderate Democratic governance took economic issues off the front burner.

This is self correcting. As Republican governance makes the country poor, suddenly bigotry isn't quite as important as it was before. I don't doubt, however, that as soon as President Obama fixes the economy, swing voters will once again feel safe in voting their hates.

That's a weird error. This is the second time in two weeks that I've posted as me, and gotten an error from Typepad about a network error, and had the final post appear to come from the post of the person above me.

I never post as anything by Steve Maurer or Steven Maurer, so something is definitely wrong in the way typepad is working.

It is possible this is happening somehow during a simultaneous post? I did a refresh, and now carla has a post between mine and Bill's.

Actually Carla I think that on ending the occupation the D leadership is mostly cowed by itself. A plurality of their constituents are strong about getting us out of Iraq ASAP, and another big chunk say that's what they want if asked simply and directly, but become less clear if complexities are added about either risks to U.S. troops or Iraqi civil war or both. Those questions could have been taken on, fought out with the Rs, and won, I believe. It might take a form like forcing a filibuster and/or veto battle, exposing that it is the Rs who are preventing the change, giving in to their intransigence, and making that a campaign issue. Pretty much the leadership has blown the moment, however. Bush might still conceivably veto the war supplemental that is likely to reach him due to attached domestic spending, but that's not the same as fighting over restrictions on the war and occupation.

Also, I think Bill B.s' argument may have some relevance to the question of why Obama is so squishy on Iraq. While he has a longish specific timeline for withdrawal, compared to none for Hillary, both are extremely vague about size of "residual forces," Obama specifically has said he isn't talking about mercenary contractors, and he has been hedging increasingly about the timeline itself.

This may be driven in part by fear of being rolled by McCain and the Rs on having a deficient bellicosity quotient, which certainly has been a destructive part of national Democratic psychology. But it is also true that the bi-partisan foreign policy establishment, even leaving the neo-con fantasists out of it, backed up by the corporate media, regularly amplify such messages in defense of corporate interests projected as national interests, that are not really the interests of the whole nation, just the interests of U.S. corporations as opposed to those of other countries.

None of this makes the Democrats the same as the Republicans. But it does mean that electing Obama and increasing a D majority in Congress, if we can, is still only part of the struggle to get the U.S. out of Iraq, and that it will take continued pressure from both inside and outside the DP to get the electeds to do the right thing.

All that is to suggest undervotes will be a factor this term and it is clear the DPO so far is not planning to respond to that in any principled way.

On this one, the state party is an aggregator and a cheerleader, but it's really up to the counties and the house districts to implement it.

The first time I met Zach Koutsky who coordinated Clackamas County for Obama, I braced him on the new contact issure. YHe told me at the time that Obama's policy was to caputure any and al;l info possible and pass it on to the party after th primary.

I can't speak for other parts of the state, but he did exactly as promised here in our HD and we have been going after them.

Additionally, our state rep candidates will be goiing after the new guys and the NAVs with backing from FuturePAC.

I see us as being way better organized and ready with Dean 2.0 than we were in '04, with Dean Beta. Now it's up to us to go get these new guys and indies our own selves.........

"Which currupt faction of the Party did Novick's public approval of the Healthy Kids Measure & it's patently regressive funding scheme place him in? Would it be the same faction as Merkley, since Merkley also supported it?"

Novick supported it because he realized there was no other avenue at that point for giving kids health care. Merkley shepherded the legislation that Novick felt he had no choice but to support, despite the faults attributed to it.

Actually Carla I think that on ending the occupation the D leadership is mostly cowed by itself. A plurality of their constituents are strong about getting us out of Iraq ASAP, and another big chunk say that's what they want if asked simply and directly, but become less clear if complexities are added about either risks to U.S. troops or Iraqi civil war or both.

I'm not sure that the "plurality" argument is true, especially among the blue dogs. I think based on districting and the constituencies, it might be less so than you surmise..especially because without considering the complexities you cite, its pretty tough to even have the conversation beyond a mere surface chat. This is not to excuse them from doing it, mind you. Its simply the pragmatics of the situation.

None of this makes the Democrats the same as the Republicans. But it does mean that electing Obama and increasing a D majority in Congress, if we can, is still only part of the struggle to get the U.S. out of Iraq, and that it will take continued pressure from both inside and outside the DP to get the electeds to do the right thing.

Nor would I ever suggest otherwise. That's why activists like you and me must continue to push..and why we should never stop. But--its important to call BS when someone tries to pigeonhole Dems and Repubs as two sides of the same coin. In my view, that line of thinking is what helped bring us to the place we are today.

Bill,

In a sense Buchanan may hate aspects of capitalism, as he is rooted in a 19th century-style authoritarian-communitarian Catholic tradition, that hated all modernity, partly in defense of "natural" inequality and aristocratic privilege, but also in defense of moral mutual obligation within communities. Buchanan for instance is against "free trade" globally, as well as being "isolationist" in other respects, though in an ethnocentric-to-racist nationalist form that can become bellicose easily.

It is one of the central contradictions of the Republican coalition that unfettered free markets are bad for families and communities, both "traditional" and otherwise.

Karp seems to have developed an earlier apothegm by Eugene V. Debs, who said that the U.S. had one political party with two right wings.

Carla, I don't think we disagree much. We might be talking past one another, when talking about a plurality I meant among constituents, "the people," not members of Congress and Senate, your reference to Blue Dogs makes me think you might be looking at the latter. On the other hand, general national poll results don't adequately reflect divergent distributions in different states, I suppose.