{"id":4832,"date":"2009-05-27T06:05:59","date_gmt":"2009-05-27T11:05:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=4832"},"modified":"2009-06-14T13:48:37","modified_gmt":"2009-06-14T18:48:37","slug":"losing-steam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=4832","title":{"rendered":"Losing Steam?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Obama’s Campaign That Never Ends is finding that peoples’ enthusiasm for endless campaigning has limits:<\/a><\/p>\n

It’s not so surprising that activity [on the campaign list-servers that served so many of the campaign’s communications needs last year] is way down from the election. In one Gmail inbox I used to track groups in swing states, MyBO group emails went from 4,200 messages in October to just under 300 in the last 30 days — a decline of 93%. However, the content too is considerably less upbeat. Here’s part of a message I got to my local group summing up recent election results and looking forward to the June Virginia primary:<\/p>\n

Let’s prove that 2008 wasn’t a fluke because of the cult of Obama….the long term demographic trends are in our favor but WE CAN’T BRING CENSUS AND POLLING DATA TO THE BALLOT BOX and declare victory.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So far this year there have been several special elections in Virginia and the results haven’t been good….WE RECENTLY LOST TWO CITY COUNCIL SEATS IN ALEXANDRIA (voted 72% for Obama) and came close to losing Brian Moran’s Delegate seat and Rep. Gerry Connolly’s Chairmanship of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors (home of 1 million people). \u00a0Because of EXTREMELY LOW TURNOUT these races came down to a handful of votes as the ELECTORATE OF THE “PAST” DECIDED THE WINNER.<\/em><\/p>\n

On a similar note, PRESIDENT OBAMA NEEDS US to get involved in the upcoming HEALTH CARE REFORM BATTLE. \u00a0So, keep in mind that elections might require the most work for the “community organizer” in us, but WE NEED TO STAY ENGAGED IN OUR COMMUNITY TO GET THE RESULTS WE WANT after our candidates get elected.<\/em><\/p>\n

The all-caps exhortations seem kind of…. forced, no? Like it isn’t as easy anymore without Obama on the ballot. As the e-mail accurately notes, there is a partisan realignment of sorts going on in Northern Virginia local elections, with Republicans coming within one percent of capturing the chairmanship of the Fairfax Board of Supervisors, a Republican picking up the supervisor seat of the newly elected chair in a quite Democratic, close-in district, a pickup of two seats on the Alexandria City Council, and the almost inexplicable near-win of Brian Moran’s old House of Delegates seat.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I don’t think you’re going to see a lot of talk about Obama swinging formerly “red” States in 2012, at this rate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Obama’s Campaign That Never Ends is finding that peoples’ enthusiasm for endless campaigning has limits: It’s not so surprising that activity [on the campaign list-servers that served so many of the campaign’s communications needs last year] is way down from the election. In one Gmail inbox I used to track groups in swing states, MyBO […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-president-obama"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4832"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4832\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}