Why Obama Lost Massachusetts

Hillary won Massachusetts and 61% of the vote in my home county.  The Obama campaign was almost invisible here.  Discover the hows and whys below the fold.

Truth in advertising: I am an Obama supporter and have given him my money and my time, which is why I am not happy about how his campaign was run here.  Contemplate these contrasts.

How to do it right.  There were "Hillary!" signs and buttons all over the place around here, multiple Hillary standouts were held in my town, I received mailings and phone calls from her campaign, and Chelsea Clinton visited my area right before the primary.  Several local Democratic Town Committees held a meeting a week before the primary, and a paid Clinton staffer showed up with armloads of literature, buttons, and yard signs, and gave a speech about why people should support Hillary.

How not to do it right.  On several occasions I called Obama state headquarters pleading for yard signs, buttons, and signs for standouts.  None were available, and they could not tell me when they would be available or how to go about getting any.  Hence, there were no Obama yard signs seen locally, no standouts were held, and no buttons were worn.  I received no Obama mailings or phone calls.  No one from the campaign bothered to set foot in our county even though there are tens of thousands of Democratic voters here.

I invited the local paid Obama staffer to our local Town Democratic Committees meeting.  We had a room full of 40+ activists who would have made perfect volunteers for the campaign.  The local paid Obama staffer said he would "get back to me" about coming to the meeting, but of course he never showed up.  As I had volunteered to get someone from the Obama campaign to the meeting, this left me with egg on my face.  In the end, I gave an impassioned 3-minute speech about why I support Barack Obama, but it just wasn't the same as having someone there from the campaign with signs and buttons to pass out.

Two days before Super Tuesday I was contacted by a group of 5 kids from our local Young Democrats group.  They asked me if I could get them signs and coordinate standouts at polling places on primary day.  I would have loved to have spent the day with these young people holding signs.  But since I had no signs to hold there was nothing I could do for them.  Chances are we lost the support of these enthusiastic young people as a result.  In the end the local paid Obama staffer was so incompetent an unpaid local volunteer had to seize control of the campaign and at least try to organize some phone banks before the primary (if anyone from the campaign reads this, I am willing to name names.  Our local paid staffer should be fired.)

I have heard much about the vaunted "ground game" of the Obama campaign.  It was not in evidence in my area.  If he wins the Presidency, I hope he runs the country better than he ran his campaign here.