INTERESTING CAMPAIGN NEWS

The news this morning that David Plouffe is joining the Harris campaign as a Senior Advisor is good news indeed.

Why? you ask.

Because David Plouffe was the guy who put together the “Obama coalition” in the field. He was the guy who oversaw what I thought at the time was the most effective grass roots political campaign I had ever seen.

Rebuilding that coalition and organizing that kind of campaign means some very serious changes from the way the Biden campaign has been working. It’s not something you can put together and put into the field in 94 days, with enough time to be effective, unless you have the people who don’t have to do more than riffle through their rolodexes to put such a campaign together - again.

The potential to rebuild that coalition is there to be seen in several things that have happened in the past 15 days: the 100,000-plus people who have signed up to volunteer for the campaign; the big numbers of newly-registered voters - the majority of them younger than 34; the fund-rasing that’s seen $200,000 of the $310,000 the campaign raised in July come from first time donors in average donations of $200, and the majority of those donations come from millenials and Gen-Z people who haven’t been previously engaged in politics.

All of that means there is enthusiasm and momentum, the two things that were there in abundance that became quickly apparent to anyone with political experience who joined the Obama campaign in 2007-08.

On his show this afternoon, Ari Melber pointed out something I had forgotten: Kamala Harris was involved in the Obama field campaign in 2007-08. That means she experienced all that I mentioned above. Nobody has to explain to her how important it is to channel that enthusiasm into an effective grassroots-oriented field campaign.

And the fact she goes back to the beginning with guys like Plouffe is why he came out of retirement from active politics to do this.

That connection to Obama back in the beginning is also why he supported her and did commercials and appearances for her going back to her run for San Francisco District Attorney, California Attorney General and Senator. Just remember, Barack and Michelle Obama are still the most popular Democrats in the country. That’s why they made that public committment of support as soon as she had demonstrated she could get the support of the convention delegates.

This kind of news isn’t the stuff that ends up on the front page, or even on the back page, but it’s the news that tells someone like me that this campaign can indeed go the distance and maintain this momentum over 12 crucial weeks.

So - as used to be said back in 2008: Yes, we can!

And this time I think we might really get “change we can believe in.”

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