To get the true dirt on the Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama campaigns, the Philadelphia City Paper sent two reporters undercover posing as volunteers for their respective campaigns. The articles can be found here:
The two articles show stark contrasts between the two campaigns, and in the end, clearly illustrate my own reasons for supporting Obama over Clinton. Analysis below.
(All quotes are from the respective articles)
The reporter working on the Clinton campaign describes an organization that is extremely hierarchical and tightly controlled. Hillary and her campaign operatives know best and the rest should just follow direction:
During her races to become a New York senator, Hillary embraced the focused, tight messages that cable stations allowed her to broadcast. She and her influential consultants managed the public’s perception of her from the campaigns’ highest levels, ensuring that the candidate remained likeable, and more importantly, electable, to everyday Joes like you and me. The tactics were executed in television studios and carefully scripted campaign stops across the country.
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This became evident before I finished my first week at the headquarters. We volunteers were on our own as the staffers struggled to learn the city, get the computers online, and essentially wait for more staffers to show up. No one paid us much mind.
Obama started his public career as a grassroots organizer in Chicago and was determined to run his national campaign in the same manner: Instead of telling people what to do, he wanted to get people involved and say, “Let’s see what you can do.”
Much has been written about how Obama’s campaign represents the future of presidential politics. By marrying the classic neighborhood grassroots tactics of Obama’s community organizing days with simple online social networking tools, the Obama operation has, as Rolling Stone put it, “evolved into the mother of all get-out-the-vote campaigns.” It’s succeeded in registering and wooing into action millions of previously disengaged and disenchanted voters.
The Pennsylvania campaign started long ago for the Obama camp:
The Obama campaign had an army of Philadelphia ground troops organizing on its behalf way before it became clear that Pennsylvania would be a decisive battleground. Independent groups, such as Philadelphia for Obama and Students for Barack Obama, were busy planning campaign events and voter registration drives as early as last spring.
So when the time came to actually organize for the primary, the campaign was ready:
To advertise the March 1 opening of Obama’s Philadelphia headquarters, the campaign posted a notice on mybarackobama.com, the campaign’s popular social-networking site. Three hundred people poured into the office that first Saturday morning, and were asked to line up under whichever of the 19 maps posted corresponded with their neighborhood.
The contrast in energy and local involvement is stark as each reporter describes their first day of volunteering. For the Obama reporter:
The elevator doors slide open into what feels like an adult kindergarten class. Campaign staffers pinball around the room like dizzied Duck Duck Goose contestants, stopping only to answer questions or direct traffic while volunteers leap for ringing phones, pound away at laptops, and huddle around tables covered with mounds of charted maps and voter scrolls. The carpet is a sea of crumpled paper and Dunkin’ Donuts coffee cups, and the walls are plastered with magic marker Obama portraits and finger-painted campaign banners — the artwork of college students who have descended on the office en masse. There’s a crowd in the kitchen chomping down on soft pretzels and tuna-fish hoagies, and the scene at the merchandise table resembles something you’d see on the floor of the Stock Exchange. Plus, everyone’s wearing name tags.
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I figured the place would be busy, but it’s a Monday morning in early March, six full weeks before the primary, and there must be a hundred people here. The line at the volunteer registration table is 10 deep.
Meanwhile, Clinton’s campaign showed a real lack of early organization and enthusiasm:
My first task as a Hillary Clinton volunteer was to get past the campaign’s dead-bolted front door. I began with a hearty knock, the kind you hear when a political canvasser is on your stoop. No answer. I dropped to two knees and peered into the space between the door and the thin rug. No lights. I put my ear to the door, and dialed the general number. Ring. Ring. Ring. “Hi, you’ve reached the Philadelphia office of Pennsylvanians for Hillary, our office is located at five two zero, North Delaware Avenue. … “
At 9:20 a.m., I’d been at it for 25 minutes, walking the halls, making sure the door with the blue Hillary Clinton for President sign was actually the Hillary Clinton for President office. It was.
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But by 9:30 a.m., just a week after this office opened, my desire for knowing became much simpler: Where the hell were these people?
Ten minutes later, Marc*, a recent college grad and paid field organizer, showed up and took a seat across from me on the floor. “Maybe they’re in a meeting in the back?” he said. Seven other staffers eventually trickled in. “The mayor’s office would like a memo, detailing all of the appearances we’d like Mayor Nutter to do,” a young guy in a gray blazer said into a cell phone. “You know, like what black radio stations to go on, what neighborhoods to appear in. Like two pages, OK?” We all stood in a circle around the door, staring at it. No one asked who I was. Someone eventually showed up with a key. “We gave out 20 of them yesterday,” he said to no one in particular. “Where’d they all go?”
Keep in mind, at this point, Hillary only had one field office, so this reporter didn’t go to the “unorganized” one. He went to the only field office in the city. For the Obama reporter, he chose 1 of nearly a dozen that existed in Philadelphia.
Another anecdote showing the lack of effective organization in the Clinton campaign comes from the reporter’s job of transcribing voicemails for the field office:
I was to write down messages that came in the night before to the answering service.
The first was a hang-up. The second was someone who wanted to know if there was a field office in Pittsburgh. (Not yet.) The third was a hang-up. This was easy.
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The 16th came from a woman obviously calling from downstairs. She was trying to get into the building the night before for the first Philly 4 Hillary meeting, but the door was locked. “Um, yes, we’re downstairs, trying to get in to the meeting tonight,” she said, calmly. “Can someone come in to open the door? Thank you.”
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No. 19 was the locked-out woman again, sounding a bit more desperate: “Hello? We’re still downstairs. Can someone come open the door? Hello? We’re here for the meeting.” Click.
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And finally, the 23rd call:
“Hello? We’re standing outside. Is someone there? Is the meeting here? Hellooo? Helloooooooooo?”
So you have eager Clinton supporters running up against locked doors and unanswered phone calls. The message is clear: “Sorry, we’re not ready for you. Come back tomorrow.”
On the other hand, the Obama campaign was ready because it’s “uncontrolled” but eager volunteers made themselves ready, and this trust and inclusiveness showed immediate results:
To advertise the March 1 opening of Obama’s Philadelphia headquarters, the campaign posted a notice on mybarackobama.com, the campaign’s popular social-networking site. Three hundred people poured into the office that first Saturday morning, and were asked to line up under whichever of the 19 maps posted corresponded with their neighborhood.
Empowered with the challenge to make something happen, the Obama volunteers brought a degree of creativity to the task of registering and wooing voters that never could have come from a top-down organization:
Later that day, there was a neighborhood sweep-up event organized by Obama Works, a grassroots public service organization inspired by Obama’s community activism background. The event was held at the trash-strewn Chew Park at 19th and Washington. Brooms and garbage bags and plastic gloves were supplied and there was a voter registration table. More than two hundred people showed up, and the park was swept clean.
The Clinton volunteers were left with frustration and not being able to do more:
[Watching Obama volunteers organize] was frustrating, and soon led to a semi-revolt at a Wednesday night Philly 4 Hillary meeting. A hodgepodge group arrived to talk about voter registration — the primary registration deadline was five days away — and meet a paid organizer.
The staffer talked about the importance of signing people up to vote. The volunteers said they’d heard enough of this, and wanted to actually do so.
“The other candidate’s people are knocking at my door,” said an older South Philadelphia woman who eventually just set up her own voter registration effort outside her local ShopRite. “When do we do that?”
The Clinton campaign disparages Obama supporters as “cult-like” or “brainwashed”. But in the bottom line is,
“They gave us a degree of ownership,” says [Obama volunteer Emma] Tramble of the campaign, “and we went full steam ahead with it.”
This difference is not lost on the Hillary volunteers:
There’s also an undercurrent of envy. Obama supporters were everywhere in Philadelphia, and in March and the first days of April, we were not. Tales came in from friends of friends: Obama’s people get to organize their own rallies; they have local offices all over the city.
When it comes down to it, this is the real difference in the two campaigns. Hillary’s attitude is that she knows best and she’ll tell everyone what to do. Obama is challenging everyone to join him in trying to fix what ails our country. One is hierarchical and the other is inclusive. One knows the secret and the other says that the answer in inside of every one of us.
There may not be much sunlight between the two candidates when it comes to policy issues but judging from their campaigns, there is a huge difference in how they will run the country.
This is the choice before the Pennsylvania voters. Here’s hoping that they pull the lever for Barack.
approach the work – “journalism standards” – “build assets” – “describe your blog in about 10 words, or less” – “it’s about process” – “track it” – passion – “head, heart and meaning in the life of the reader” – “why not you!”: these where the messages I took away from a good set of presentations well delivered and sincere. 
Reviewing the tale of the tape, the extent of Obama’s dominance is clear. Obama doubled up Clinton in each of the six metrics listed below. Time spent on the candidate’s YouTube channels was particularly disproportionate in Obama’s favor thanks specifically to the popularly
The chart below compares each candidate’s share of monthly 
