We all remember the 2011 Canadian federal election clusterfuck right?  And we won’t go into all the digging I went through to find out what happened and who did it.  But suffice to say, I’m taking those lessons I learned both from the dirty tricks of the Tories and the lapses in judgement by the Liberals and applying it to what I’m doing on the Obama campaign.

I see some major inefficiencies in the operations of the local offices — ways we could phone bank better, get more volunteers to commit to days of action and events.  Our team (Sterling/Loudoun County) is already kicking ass in our area — beating Fairfax, Alexandria, and Arlington..  But there are so many weak links in the system that could bring the well-oiled machine we all saw in 2008 to a halt.

For instance, the next 24 hours could guarantee Claire McCaskill keeps her seat, while at the same time going for the jugular of what the GOP has become.  Where the fuck is our rapid response?  I should wake up tomorrow to Morning Joe (I would never watch Morning Joe) and see ads telling Americans about the Ryan-Akin rape redefinition bill.  More ads about Governor “Ultrasound” McConnell being in Tampa setting the GOP policy for the convention.  Considering the timing of what the campaign is doing this week, it couldn’t have come at a better time.  But still, our messaging is being drowned out while the few and proud of us toil away, mostly unpaid or underpaid.

In another instance, and I don’t know if this has to do with the budget each office is allocated, but the difference between how the Liberals in 2011 and the Democrats in 2012 are utilizing their staff, volunteers, and technology is a little disheartening.  I won’t go into details because I am being followed by Team RMONEY on here and on Twitter, but in Canada we did a better job, and we had the same software and far less money.  Liberalist and VoteBuilder are designed by the same company, but Liberalist is by far better utilized and provides even volunteers more powerful tools (it takes about 10 minutes for a self guided tutorial for a newbie).  This isn’t VAN’s fault, it was clearly a strategic decision by the DNC to use the same ground game as in 2008.  This isn’t 2008.  If 2010 didn’t go so badly, I wouldn’t be as concerned.  But we’re going to battle with the army we have, if I can be allowed to borrow a famous phrase.

The “war on women” isn’t dead; far from it.  It would be a tragedy not to take advantage of the worst gaffe a political party can make: actually telling the truth, especially horrible truths.

[Side note: I still have unauthorized access to CIMS and therefore access to confidential/classified files I shouldn’t have because someone set up the system in the worst way possible. Their security flaw(s) still haven’t been fixed.

Half of the time I’m keeping watch on the other side (and their super PACs) to see anything untoward (for an American election, anyway) so we can jump on it before it’s all over talk radio and Fox News primetime.  (Counterintelligence and psychological operations training never leaves you, no matter the situation.)  I’m approaching this as my position in the last Canadian election, as a political operative and adviser, with military style precision and planning.  Some of the same archconservative-U.S. firms that (illegally or immorally) took an active role in the federal election and set back democracy are already at it again.  If I could track down and interview the impossible to find “Pierre Poutine” and half the Conservative Party executive (as well as find out the RCMP bugged the Liberals and NDP offices/phones/email), it would be far easier to spot an emerging target and neutralize it before it becomes a non-issue issue.

I have many ideas to engage the independents and the Republicans that might think twice about voting GOP this year, but of course they have to go up the chain of command.  But they’re cheap, and they work.

Let’s more forward.  Now.

Let us overthrow the totems, break the taboos. Or better, let us consider them cancelled. Coldly, let us be intelligent.  We peer so suspiciously at each other that we cannot see that we Americans are standing on the mountaintop of human wealth, freedom and privilege.
- Pierre Elliott Trudeau