U.S. Politics Online: A Political Discussion Forum - View Single Post - Obama Building Autocracy Through Intimidation And Smearing The Opposition

mudwhistle · #32 (**permalink**) 10-28-2008

Quote:

Originally Posted by picaro

He's been busy building a personality cult. Have you read about 'Camp Obama'? It's an interesting little indoctrination camp. Reverend Moon would be proud.

I hadn't. I didn't know it already existed. Now I do.

'Camp Obama' Trains Campaign Volunteers : NPR

This is his where his ties to ACORN surfaces. The ACORN leaders and workers went through this training. Obama was the first trainer paid for by the University.

Quote:

All campaigns rely heavily on volunteers to carry the candidate's message and do much of the campaign grunt work. And all campaigns spend a significant amount of time and money training volunteers to be more effective. But Riemer says the Obama campaign is trying something different in order to capitalize on the huge number of young people expressing an interest in the Illinois Democratic senator's run for the White House, a demographic that Reimer says campaigns usually ignore or view as unreliable on Election Day.

"Historically, campaigns have looked at young people as the hardest demographics to mobilize," he says. "In reality, if you know what you're doing, they can be one of the easiest to mobilize."

He adds: "The most important thing is that they understand they are an important part of our strategy to win the election. This is not for show, this is not to feel good; this is to get trained and help us to win this election."

Reimer says the campaign needs to equip young volunteers for the long battle ahead in the key early primary and caucus states.

"It's not rocket science," he says. "What we have to do is give them the tools to create a plan and just keep in touch with them as they create their plan and execute it. Winning an election is just a matter of breaking it down into manageable pieces, so we show them what those pieces are, and then turn them loose. As long as we can do that, there's no problem. They can make it happen."

The Obama campaign seems out to avoid the mistakes of some past campaigns, such as that of former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean. Dean's electrifying campaign in late 2003 helped mobilize an estimated 1,200 enthusiastic volunteers into Iowa ahead of that state's January 2004 caucuses. But the results were disappointing: Dean's inexperienced and ill-trained team came in third behind the better-organized John Kerry and John Edwards.

Camp Obama director Jocelyn Woodards says her job is capture the enthusiasm of these political novices, who are so eager to volunteer for Obama's bid for the Democratic nomination and teach them the nuts and bolts of presidential campaigning.

"Our campaign has had the benefit of having a lot of enthusiastic volunteers, and so we wanted to make sure that they had real concrete ways to be involved and organize in their local communities. We go through everything from canvassing, phone banking, volunteer recruitment, our campaign message, how to develop an organization locally," she says.

She says the four-day training sessions, with about 50 volunteers in each weekly session, cost the volunteers nothing, though they are responsible for their own transportation and lodging.

University of Iowa student Andrew Wiess, a 21-year-old intern in Obama's Iowa City office, says he hopes the camp makes him and other volunteers greater assets to the campaign, so "you go back to Iowa City, or where ever you're from, and just be able to make more of an impact and really know what you're doing, to maximize your potential that way."