As it turned out, Obama won the White House because of that experience. The ground team he put together -- voter registration, neighborhood groups, church groups, students, get-out-the vote groups -- won him the day.
None other than Karl Rove made that point today in the Wall Street Journal:
registered millions of voters in states the Obama campaign picked as battlegrounds, especially where there were many heretofore-disinterested African Americans and younger Democrats. Messrs. Plouffe and Axelrod understood that over the last 28 years only 11 of 20 eligible Americans on average cast a presidential ballot. They focused on registering and motivating the other nine who don't usually vote. This decision, perhaps more than any other, allowed Mr. Obama to win such previously red states as Virginia, Indiana, Colorado and Nevada. It forced Mr. McCain to spend most of the fall on defense, unable to take once-reliably Republican states for granted.
Second, Messrs. Plouffe and Axelrod pried away from the GOP ranks small but decisive slices of the Republican presidential coalition.... Obama ran better among frequent churchgoers (perhaps getting 10 points more than John Kerry did), independents (perhaps five points more than Kerry and eight points more than Al Gore), Hispanics and white men. He even made special appeals to gun owners and sent his wife to cultivate military families. This allowed him to carry previously red states like Florida, New Mexico and Iowa.
Of course, it is not just about organizing. You need to have a message, policies and a personna to win the big one. But organizing won millions of votes for Obama. Palin probably knows that by now. Will she she'll be candid enough to acknowledge it.
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