“Who lost Ohio?”

Finally had a chance today to read Matt Bai's New York Times Magazine article "Who Lost Ohio?"

Bai spent election day with organizers from the 527 group America Coming Together:

In ACT and its partners, Democrats told me, they were building the most efficient turnout machine in political history. I returned to Ohio in the final days of the campaign to see the power of this grass-roots behemoth in action. I did — and I came to understand its limitations as well.

Bai's piece is worth reading for exactly that — an often astute description of the power and limitations of the GOTV efforts of 527 groups like ACT. But it's also an often annoying essay in which Bai often provides speculation or his own assumptions about people's motivations instead of just, you know, talking to people and asking them. For example, he writes:

… ACT had nonetheless evolved into something glamorous, a kind of sleek new political vehicle for the Volvo-driving set. Perhaps because they supported other liberal groups aligned with ACT, like Emily's List or the Sierra Club, or perhaps because ACT had a certain outsider cachet, thousands of volunteers from New York, New England and California chose to work for the organization. …

I volunteered with a 527 myself and attended meetings along with scores of other volunteers without seeing a single Volvo. In my own precinct, the team consisted of small businessmen, housewives, retirees, corporate cube-dwellers and a handful of high-school students who wanted to do something since they weren't yet able to vote. Not a Volvo-driver in the bunch.

And while Bai makes much out of the GOP's plan to organize through churches, it never seems to occur to him to ask whether the 527s and the Democrats were doing the same thing. I attended three Moveon meetings in the months leading up to the elections — all of them were in churches.

My decision to volunteer with a 527 instead of with the Kerry campaign had nothing to do with a sense of glamour or sleekness or "outsider cachet." It had to do with the fact that they asked for volunteers. The Kerry campaign did too, several weeks later, but by then I was already busily engaged in an effort that resulted in a near 90-percent turnout in my precinct with a 2-1 vote for John Kerry. The same thing seemed to be true for many of the other Moveon volunteers I encountered. Bai might have heard something similar if he had bothered to ask anybody, instead of just assuming that we're all just a bunch of Volvo-drivers in it for the glamour.

But aside from his asides, Bai's analysis rings true:

Democrats operated on the premise that they were superior in numbers … If they could mobilize every Democratic vote in America's industrial centers — and in its populist heartland as well — then they would win on math alone. Not anymore. Republicans now have their own concentrated vote, and it will probably continue to swell. Turnout operations like ACT can be remarkably successful at corralling the votes that exist, but turnout alone is no longer enough to win a national election for Democrats. The next Democrat who wins will be the one who changes enough minds.