The American presidential election (44)

For a political junkie like me who has been blogging about Barack Obama for over four years (which is before he entered the US Senate) [my first posting here], last night I was close to overdosing. Thanks to my good American friend Eric Lee, i was able to attend the first meeting of the Obama London Group as part of the general election. It was held at the “Duke of York” pub in central London.
It was convened by Karin Robinson, a long-time Obama supporter who runs a very informative blog here.
A campaign briefing was given by Bill Rubin, now an Obama for America staffer. He announced Obama’s decision not to take public funding for his presidential campaign, the first candidate to adopt this position since such funds became available. Instead Obama will depend on the 1.5m donors to his campaign.
Stephanie Stewart, Vice-Chair of Democrats Abroad, ran through a quick voter registration training exercise. Since the situation on voter registration is different in the 50 states, it takes a 466 page guide to explain the situation across the country.
Finally Democrats Abroad Chair Bill Barnard gave us a quick overview on the shape of the general election. As a professional historian, he put Obama’s achievement as the first black presidential candidate of a major party in an historic context, pointing out that Obama’s speech to the Democratic National Convention on 28 August will be made on the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. He called the forthcoming ballot “genuinely a realignment election”.
My wife and I were not the only British attendees at this meeting because Obama’s candidature has caught the imagination of British politicos in way that I’ve never seen before. There was a young woman in her 20s who’d already spent time over in the States working for Obama in the primaries and she was planning to return to help out in the general election.
What was very clear from this meeting was that Obama has excited and inspired people in a way that is drawing thousands into an immense grassroots campaign supported by a massive number who have donated funds. In addition, the professionalism of the campaign organisation – based overwhelmingly on volunteers – is stunning and enabling a genuine 50-state effort to be mounted.


 




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