grassroots

The tea leaves are ready, and the crystal balls are out. Now that the campaign is over, everyone's attention is focused on predicting what sort of president Barack Obama will be. The real answer is that it is too early to tell: the degree to which he moves the country to the left will be limited not by his plans but by what is politically feasible, and that will be revealed by events yet to come.

It is true that some of Obama's recent actions seem almost designed to test his left-wing base's patience. He has reportedly offered the position of secretary of state to Hillary Clinton, who he pilloried in the primaries as a symbol of nineties triangulation. Clinton was never popular with the party's left wing or 'netroots', and Ben Smith at Politico reports that they are reacting to her reemergence with some dismay.

Likewise, the possibility of Lawrence Summers becoming Treasury Secretary is generating anger among feminists; they reacted badly (and in my opinion unfairly) to a notorious remark he made mentioning the possibility of gender differences in aptitude and interest in science. Obama's tolerant attitude towards Joe Lieberman, which yesterday resulted in the Connecticut Senator earning only the mildest of punishments, has also irritated some on the left.

However, these actions tell us more about Obama's attitude to HR than about his governing agenda. Neither Clinton nor Summers would drag the administration notably towards the left; both show signs of having moved away from the centrist nineties. As for the Democrats' leniency towards Lieberman, I argued earlier this week that it was the smart political choice, and this consideration appears to have been what drove Obama's decision.

Karl Rove's voter mobilisation organisation was widely credited with winning George W. Bush re-election four years ago. This time, the Democrats appear to have the edge in the "ground game". Barack Obama built up a formidable organisation over the primaries, and it was widely credited with winning him the nomination (had there been fewer caucuses, in which organisation is all important, Hillary Clinton would likely have been the Democrats' choice). Armed with a financial warchest far larger than McCain's, he has opened over 700 campaign offices in key battleground states and paid thousands of organisers to create a grassroots army which should make a significant difference come November.

Two recent articles describe the novel - and, by the sounds of it, very successful - approach being taken by the Obama campaign. In Sunday's Washington Post, Alec MacGillis quotes Steve Rosenthal of the AFL-CIO explaining how it can help mitigate the "race factor": "Having white validators, people working these neighborhoods who live in those neighborhoods and are of those neighborhoods, who are saying, 'Get out and vote for this guy,' is really important." MacGillis goes on to report that research shows that face-to-face talks increase a voter's chances of turning out by up to 10 percent. That could make an enormous difference in some of the closer swing states.

To his credit, John McCain has started taking on some of the wilder anti-Obama sentiments in his crowds. He took back the microphone from a supporter at a town hall meeting in Minnesota who called Obama an Arab and said: "No, ma'am. He's a decent family man [and] citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues and that's what this campaign's all about. He's not." The implication that Arabs can't be decent family men is regrettable, but let's not be churlish. Even more creditable is the way McCain replied to a man who merely said he was "scared" of an Obama presidency and the Supreme Court judges it might bring. McCain said: "I have to tell you. Senator Obama is a decent person and a person you don’t have to be scared of as president of the United States." This earned him boos from a crowd that clearly did not share that attitude.

Update: Ken Vogel reports that Obama himself drew boos by acknowledging his rival's comments at a rally in Philadelphia. So this phenomenon is not the exclusive province of Republicans.

Update 2: Michael Schaffer disputes Vogel's report, and describes the Obama crowd's mood as far more sunny.