When a Campaign is too Big to Fail

Big fundraising totals. Big concerts. Huge call numbers. Gigantic staff. Lots of ads. Multiple Presidents on the stump. Huge metrics.

One gigantic loss.

With about two weeks left in the election, I explained to our organizers that the basic organizing principle behind the Clinton campaign was large metrics. More shifts. More organizers. More calls. More door knocks. More volunteers. Quantity was the name of the game. Even if that came at the expense of quality.

Follow up suffered. Relationships suffered. Volunteers didn't feel the connection. I didn't hear it from one person, or two, or three. I heard it from multiple people, in multiple regions, in multiple states. And I don't blame the people on the ground. In fact, I don't know that I blame any individual.

Grassroots organizing is not a quantity thing. It's not a "more" thing. It's not a "productivity" industry, but that's what it's been turned into. A "management" culture has overtaken it. It encourages organizers to cast-off or ignore the local leadership, if they aren't contributing to bigger numbers all the time.

Some of the main skills of organizing are being forgotten in the interest of "more." Relationships matter. Quality matters. We need to remember that moving forward.