In the wake of the loss of Martha Coakley in the Massachusetts lots of progressives have been looking for explanations and casting around for the way forward.
Well Wellstone Action executive director Jeff Blodgett, the Minnesota State Director for Obama for America in 2008, has by far the best take I've seen. "Three Lessons for Progressives from Massachusetts" It's a fairly short piece, but I recomend everyone reads it and takes it to heart. Run good candidates with good campaigns, reconnect on bread and butter issues and get stuff done. I hope the Democratic Party is listening.
Rep. Frank Hornstein (DFL-SD60B) regularly hosts events at which Jeff Blodgett talks about politics and strategy. Jeff Blodgett is most recently famous for running Obama's MN campaign. He's also famous for running Paul Wellstone's three campaigns and founding Wellstone Action after Paul's tragic death.
That's Jeff on the left and Frank on the right.
Last night, Jeff joined about 100 DFLers above Tom Braun's Wild Rumpus bookstore to discuss Obama's MN campaign.
The Obama campaign's video player technology doesn't play nicely as far as making embedding easy, but luckily your humble blogger is a technical genius of sorts.
I am the New Media Director for the Obama Campaign. Jeff Blodgett, our State Director, just wrote a note to our grassroots supporters on the MN.BarackObama.com blog and I wanted to share it here.
Jeff writes:
On the third day of the Republican National Convention what’s become clear is that John McCain and his Vice Presidential pick have one thing to offer voters: four more years of the same failed leadership we’ve endured through eight long years under George W. Bush. What you saw last night, and what you’ll see tonight, are a lot of speeches proving that John McCain’s campaign manager meant what he said when he declared that their campaign wouldn’t be “about issues.”
What you didn’t hear last night was a single mention about the economy. At a time when millions of Americans are struggling like never before to pay their mortgage, their medical bills, and their gas bills, last night’s speakers at John McCain’s Republican convention proved how out of touch their candidate is. That’s a great disservice to this country. The American People are hurting. Minnesotans are hurting. We have big problems that require real solutions, and we just can’t afford more of the same.
(Thanks to Xavier for putting this together -- I hope we'll see plenty of these over the next ten weeks. - promoted by Joe Bodell)
Disclosure: I am the New Media Director for the Obama campaign in Minnesota.
I wanted to share with the community a post Jeff Blodgett, the State Director for the Obama campaign here in Minnesota, wrote over on the Minnesota for Obama blog. Subscribe to our RSS feed!
From Jeff:
This campaign is about winning the White House and fundamentally changing our politics.
In Minnesota, we are working hard to deliver that change by running a massive grassroots campaign fueled by the effort and energy of volunteers and supporters from across the state who are out on the doors and on the phones talking to their family, friends, and neighbors about why they believe Barack Obama is the candidate who will bring real change to Washington.
This week the campaign held a successful event focused on senior voters, and next week we also have a lot planned as we continue to move quickly toward Election Day.
Here’s a quick run-down on the week that was and the week ahead:
Obama for President announced the upcoming addition of Wellstone Action's Jeff Blodgett to run its Minnesota operation.
Is it an insider-y thing to be spending so many electrons writing about staffing decisions? Sure. But state-level campaign leadership is an important thing, especially in states like Minnesota (site of the Republican National Convention) and Virginia (an uber-swing state, if polls are to be believed), where plenty of dollars and volunteer hours are going to be spent by both presidential campaigns.
Blodgett knows Minnesota, he knows DFL politics, and he knows how to win statewide races here. Expect plenty more high-profile hirings of experienced, wining operatives for the Obama campaign in Minnesota and across the country.
