BREATHING
FIRE
them, in turn, to listen to the folks
in their neighborhoods who were
possible supporters.
“The biggest thing is listening
and not just barking at [voters].
People don’t want to know our
10 point plan,” Jeremy Bird, the
34-year-old organizer who oversaw
the Obama campaign’s field operation, told me. “They want to know
that we’re listening to them, and
that last time we talked to them,
and they told us their son was an
Iraq war vet, we listened to that
and therefore we’re going to talk to
them about that and not come at
them like political marketers.
“That was just huge for us.
People stopped thinking of us as
political marketers once they knew
we were listening to them.”
In the end, the Obama crew
wedded astute listening to a magnificent ground game built on
technology and data, completely
outclassing the Romney campaign
by increasing turnout, particularly
among minorities and youth, in
key swing states. Black turnout in
Ohio, for example, went from 11
percent of the electorate in 2008
to 15 percent in 2012.
Nationally, the country’s biggest
and fastest-