I imagine the campaign won’t send any signs or stickers to Cali — Obama is up by 17 points. But they did just open a new campaign office down the hill, and it’s filled with people calling NEvada and organizing caravans. Viva Last Vegas!

If the market keeps dropping 300+ points a day we may have to scramble to get an election held at all. Check out New York City, where Mike Bloomberg has done an all-Rudy, claiming that only a billionaire like himself can afford to try to keep the town afloat in this economy, and so trying to pull an end-run on a term limits law.

Four years ago, it was really exciting to see so many Kerry/Edwards signs around in such an overwhelmingly Republican town in an overwhelmingly Republican CD. It helped energize a lot of volunteers–believe me, it was more fun to canvass when you saw at least a few Kerry signs in people’s lawns, and not just Bush signs. I understand the Obama campaign’s *Personal Touch* evangelism, but Obama will need the support of over-40 homeowners in addition to the college kids. So, I don’t quite understand the campaign’s “frugality,” from this perspective. (And, I think it will look strange to see my yard, for example, which has/will have signs out supporting Dems up and down the ticket, but no Obama sign. Don’t you? Riesberg, Markey, Udall–and no one else?)

And ej, thanks for confirming what I’ve also (not) seen in FC. The Obama campaign is out in force at Baa Ram U. between 11 and 2 every day signing up voters (today is the last day to register!!!), but I don’t get why the campaign wouldn’t want to increase the feeling of Obama support in neighborhoods.

Just to report on the supposedly-critical Philadelphia western suburbs, it’s now being said that Republican local chiefs–who are used to ruling there–are looking madly for bridges to jump off of. This may be critical, as Pennsylvania is still being listed as contested territory, and the swath of interior rural PA that I drove through on Friday was a blurred wilderness of McCain lawn cardboard.

Have to check this flick out as soon as I get back west tonight.

At most local Obama headquarters the distribution of yard signs is based on one volunteering, either to phone bank or canvas. Sometimes at big rallies you can get a yard sign but this is uncommon. There are a couple of reasons for this:

1.) The official Obama campaign stance (as I understand it) is that face to face, voter to voter contact is more important than yard signs or bumper stickers. According to this theory, people don’t vote because they see that their neighbors all have Obama or McCain yard signs but because a fellow voter took the time to talk to them face to face.

2.) The Obama “swag” that a local office gets from the central campaign is tied to their meeting certain quotas, especially with regards to phone banking. Thus if you don’t meet your quotas no swag. Thus local offices are very stingy with what swag they do have, especially the much valued yard signs.

I think the Obama stance has a lot going for it but there are some problems. Namely, that tying volunteering to swag reduces the total amount of stuff with Obama’s name on it in circulation. This can reduce the chances of marginal voters turning out for you. These sort of voters can look around their neighborhood and see vey little Obama stuff and they think that he’s doomed and that their vote doesn’t matter. So they don’t even bother to vote. In close election this can hurt you. A lot.

At the same time, blanketing an place with your swag doesn’t necessarily mean victory. When I was working for Kerry in 2004 in WV, we had more shit than we knew what to do with. Somewhere I still have a bag full of Kerry/Edwards buttons that we just could not give away. Being saturated in Kerry swag ended up doing nothing for us.

Thus there is a difficult balance I think, one that only hindsight can really judge.