{"id":424,"date":"2008-10-27T13:26:50","date_gmt":"2008-10-27T17:26:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/?p=424"},"modified":"2008-10-27T13:28:10","modified_gmt":"2008-10-27T17:28:10","slug":"extended-primary-was-a-boon-to-the-democrats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/2008\/10\/extended-primary-was-a-boon-to-the-democrats\/","title":{"rendered":"Extended primary WAS a boon to the Democrats"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Back in February <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/2008\/02\/27\/extended-primary-season-could-be-a-boon-to-the-democrats\/\">I made this claim<\/a> while most Obama supporters were chewing their fingernails over the showdown with Hillary Clinton. Results from the field are backing me up: a 50 state+ primary benefited both Obama and the Democrats tremendously, pushing up the Dems&#8217; voter rolls and helping Obama build a veteran ground team that McCain just isn&#8217;t matching:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>An observation we&#8217;ve heard repeated in Obama offices across America, Crandall emphasized how beneficial the contested primary had been for building the foundation for record turnout. &#8220;We had real hints of it in the primary,&#8221; Crandall said. The first-time voters the campaign energized for the May 6 vote foreshadowed what North Carolina is seeing today. Crandall remembers thinking &#8220;these are NOT your typical primary voters.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>&#8211; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fivethirtyeight.com\/2008\/10\/on-road-charlotte-north-carolina.html\">FiveThirtyEight.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve spoken to enough Hillary supporters in NH who felt, in fact, that the contest didn&#8217;t run long enough (many wanted a floor battle). Ending this contest any sooner would have been a disaster.<\/p>\n<p>In any event, what Obama has now is the envy of any political operation anywhere: thousands of battle-hardened organizers spread throughout the 50 states. This is not just a benefit to Obama on Nov 4 &#8212; it benefits all of American democracy. It may even yet become a thorn in Obama&#8217;s side: a people who have stood up do not easily sit back down again. And that&#8217;s how democracy should be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Back in February I made this claim while most Obama supporters were chewing their fingernails over the showdown with Hillary Clinton. Results from the field are backing me up: a 50 state+ primary benefited both Obama and the Democrats tremendously, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/2008\/10\/extended-primary-was-a-boon-to-the-democrats\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":271,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[96],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/271"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=424"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}