The Democratic National Committee plans to spend at least $50 million on an ambitious grassroots get out the vote program in 2010, according to today’s Washington Post. The program, which aims to energize the new voters who turned out for the Democrats in 2008, will leverage the party’s biggest star — President Obama — to target Republicans directly and repeatedly between now and November.
In a series of videos — check out the first after the jump — Obama will tell youth, minority and independent voters who turned out for him in big numbers that victory for the Republicans in 2010 means defeat for the “hope and change” campaign he ran two years ago.
“Our story begins with: Democrats are results people and the Republicans are political obstructionists,” DNC chair Tim Kaine told the paper. “Do we want to continue the direction that sees us climbing out of the recession or do we want to go back to the same policies that put us in the ditch in the first place?”
Kaine plans roll out party funding on a “community-by-community” basis, which he told the Post “plan builds upon former chairman Howard Dean’s 50-state strategy that helped Democrats win majorities in 2006.” Obama’s former campaign organization, Organize For America, will play a central role in the 2010 efforts as well, giving Democrats across the country access to the 13 million people on Obama’s lists.
How the joint operation works, from the Post:
The DNC, together with OFA, has been building a robust field operation beyond its Washington headquarters, with nearly 300 staff members in 75 offices nationwide, and 10 million volunteer hours pledged. In the most closely contested races, party staff and volunteers will call or knock on the doors of every first-time voter from 2008 and direct as many as five robo-calls and two direct-mail pieces to their homes.
Obama will be the party’s main pitchman, rolling out a series of videos designed to reengage the voters he fired up in 2008. Here’s the first:
Republicans say that relying on Obama — who has seen his once-astronomical job approval ratings slip in the past few months — will be the Democrats’ undoing.
“Independent voters have given up on that key Obama word, ‘hope,’ ” RNC spokesperson Doug Heye told the Post.
