RNC’s Investment in Grassroots Door Knockers Today, Shows GOP’s Attention to Strategic Imperatives, Contrasted with the Dem Sugar-high of Impeachment

From A.B. Stoddard, Associate Editor of RealClearPolitics:

It is extremely interesting and encouraging that the GOP is building up their Get-Out-the-Vote (GOTV) capability, starting now, with a massive investment in people and a digital infrastructure. They are deploying to a whooping 19 states, far outside the limited five or six “battleground states,” that receive the investment and the lion’s share of Presidential campaign resources.

From Stoddard:

“For the 2020 campaign, RNC has staff deployed in 19 states including New Hampshire and New Mexico, with five regional communications directors and nine regional political directors.  By Election Day there will be 2 million volunteers coordinated by 60,000 “fellows,” who are trained grassroots volunteers. In 2016 the RNC had 5,000 fellows, then in 2018 that grew to 25,000, and more than 30,000 additional fellows are being trained up now.  Volunteers download an app, then go door to door in assigned teams that break down by state, then “turf,” then neighborhood. “We don’t care about offices,” said RNC spokesman Rick Gorka. In Arizona, now a swing state after decades trending red, the RNC will be tracking 207,284 so-called “disengagers” statewide — that is, people who voted in 2016 but not 2018. They already know, for example, their specific goal in “turf 24” outside of Maricopa County: to reach 14,537 swing voters they need to win over. 

“Republicans set out to emulate what Obama had built using data and those community-organizing skills. The GOP studied the book “Groundbreakers: How Obama’s 2.2 Million Volunteers Transformed Campaigning in America.” But Republicans saw what would prove to be a mistake by Democrats: making their operation candidate-focused. Obama’s decision to build his own organization left the Democratic National Committee weakened and ill-prepared not only for 2016 but for 2020. So Republicans set about creating a party structure that would help any Republican nominee in 2016.  “The legacy of what we started after the 2012 campaign, a permanent data-driven ground game, will outlive all of us,” said Gorka.

“Democrats may have built up a similar infrastructure, but they are lacking the resources the party needs to be battling Trump now and every day through their convention and right up until Election Day.  Without that money, their efforts cannot be as effective and they won’t be able to be everywhere. Republicans have a steep challenge ahead to reelect Trump, but they have prepared well for the fight. Democrats, looking at the years 2016-2019, can’t say the same.”

The strategic focus on GOTV this early is an extremely good sign. And one borne of very hard lessons. This mimicking of the Obama approach, without the candidate-specific emphasis quite simply will pay dividends for decades.

My sense is that Dems keep going for the instant sugar high of impeachment, which has about as much chance of winning PowerBall of working, without thinking through (calmly) basic strategic imperatives for winning the Presidential election.