Barack Obama made a surprise visit to an Ohio organizer training on Friday afternoon, popping in at a statewide gathering of field organizers in Columbus, according to a Democratic source in Ohio.

Obama spent most of his day with much larger crowds, at rallies in Chillicothe and in Genoa Park in Columbus. (The two "Americans Jobs Tour Rallies" were on the senator's official schedule, but the pop-in was not.) By carving out time for his Get-Out-The-Vote team, however, Obama sent another signal to his staff and supporters that grassroots organizing is a priority -- from the top of the campaign on down.

For more about Obama's Ohio field organizing, check out this reported essay by longtime labor and netroots organizer Zack Exley.

Comments (16)

1. Guarenteed....the GOP in 2012 will try to imitate the Obama campaign playbook.

   Doesn't matter if you agree with him and them on issues or whatever...

   they took out the Clintons in an "inevitable primary" and created a campaign that McCain envies...both in organization AND (more importantly) in focus and discipline (which Maverick's lacks).

   Posted by Maskdelta at 10/10/2008 @ 3:12pm

2. Posted by Maskdelta at 10/10/2008 @ 3:12pm

   You're saying that the important ingredient is the right candidate. A good/great general campaign means the party picked the right candidate that picks the right people to run the campaign the candidate wants.

   One can easily understand that the new con repubs will have none of that....

   Posted by hsuBfools at 10/10/2008 @ 3:21pm

3. No fog machines and Straight Talk Express Train appearing through the mist?

   Gosh.........the times are a changing.....

   Posted by OneVote at 10/10/2008 @ 3:21pm

4. Posted by Maskdelta at 10/10/2008 @ 3:12pm

   You're probably right.

   But first the GOP will need a candidate like Obama.

   And a set of issues like those the GOP has created under W&Co.

   And an opposition -- Obama -- as hubristic as the Clintons & as mediocre as the field of GOP candidates in '08.

   Will Obama be undergoing such a metamorphosis?

   Posted by sloper at 10/10/2008 @ 3:23pm

5. Obama is doing & will in all likelihood continue to do smashingly well ... with very little help from the Clintons.

   Is their sun at long last setting?

   Posted by sloper at 10/10/2008 @ 3:26pm

6. Obama is a pro to be sure. Sometimes it's the "little things" that count like actually talking one on one with the "little folks" who support or who are considering him.

   Posted by OneVote at 10/10/2008 @ 3:26pm

7. Consider, though, that the GOP will have an electorate angered by a depression, and that the probable Obama executive will not have had time to fully lift the economy out of its nosedive. We still don't know how deep it will dive, or even if it will crash and burn.

   This is the perfect breeding-ground for fascism. If the GOP can find a charismatic fascist leader, or if they can school the Moose Barbie to become one, some very nasty things could ensue.

   Posted by mikecope at 10/10/2008 @ 3:32pm

8. If the GOP can find a charismatic fascist leader, or if they can school the Moose Barbie to become one, some very nasty things could ensue. Posted by mikecope at 10/10/2008 @ 3:32pm

   Hope not, but the GOP is most certainly not above fascism ... witness the last 8 years & a chunk of the Reagan years.

   A female front person might make fascism appear less threatening & more difficult to attack.

   Sarah might earn herself 2 footnotes in history.

   Or an entire chapter, "The End of the American Republic."

   Posted by sloper at 10/10/2008 @ 3:47pm

9. This is the perfect breeding-ground for fascism. If the GOP can find a charismatic fascist leader, or if they can school the Moose Barbie to become one, some very nasty things could ensue.

   Posted by mikecope at 10/10/2008 @ 3:32pm | ignore this person | warn this person

   If Obama gives the heaveho to all the Clinton advisers, says no to lobbyists and corporations looking for a bailout, enforces existing regulations as well as new regulations, this storm will pass. He should not be afraid to let corporations fail, and he should let the private sector take care of their own. After the dust clears, he can invoke anti-trust were he deems necessary. Banks that are deliberately freezing credit to force panic should lose the license. He needs to get the Justice Department after the criminals. It is amazing to see all the vested pundits and politicians discuss the freeze on credit on the boob tube interrupted by financial services advertising begging to give a loan or 0% on a car loan. Lots of false information is being push by vested interests to create panic and profit.

   Posted by OneVote at 10/10/2008 @ 3:52pm

10. Obama needs to concentrate on small business owners right now. There is a mass scare and we feel the effects everyday at Initial Underwriting Group. Politics are too tricky these days.

    Sincerely,

    Ilya Bodner Small Business Owner Initial Underwriting

    Posted by ilyabodner at 10/10/2008 @ 3:58pm

11. Posted by mikecope at 10/10/2008 @ 3:32pm

    If McCain loses, Palin's national career is over.

    The smarter Repubs know she's a light-weight and a ditz who was lucky to have gotten Governor of Tundra-land.

    She was red meat for the base. Plus, Repubs (like Dems since Mondale) are not eager to put a #2 losing face on a #1 top of the slot ticket.

    People like proven winners, not proven losers.

    The GOP knows this and would crush any strong move to get Palin into their 2012 primaries.

    Posted by Maskdelta at 10/10/2008 @ 4:26pm

12. el MASKBO is correct about palin. i would not worry about "that one" after this election.

    lets not talk about the 2012 election, ok? this 08 one has been long enough, folks...

    Posted by dexter666 at 10/10/2008 @ 4:46pm

13. obama's organization is amazing. i've seen political organizations and this one is amazing.

    Posted by dexter666 at 10/10/2008 @ 4:56pm

14. Here's a fascinating piece from the latest issue of Christianity Today that was pointed out to me the other day. It is rather astounding that this outreach to the evangelical camp has been so well camouflaged thus far.

    It's another reason to perhaps suspect a landslide of perhaps greater magnitude than we're currently seeing predicted.

    tinyurl.com/3urf7j

    Excerpt:

    As the junior U.S. senator from Chicago, Obama has for years been beholden to working-class voters, African Americans, feminists, gay-rights groups, and pro-choice advocates. But for the first time since Jimmy Carter ran in 1976, a presidential candidate from the Democratic Party is enthusiastically courting evangelicals and Catholics.

    This effort is showing results: An August poll by the Barna Group shows McCain with greater support among self-identified evangelicals, but by only two percentage points (39 to 37 percent) over Obama.....

    To gain a clearer perspective on these developments, this summer Christianity Today conducted in-depth interviews with a broad range of evangelicals, including Ron Sider, Richard Cizik, Kirbyjon Caldwell, Jim Wallis, Tom Minnery, and Tony Campolo, to see how they assess the Obama for President campaign.

    Rather than criticizing his Republican opponent for pandering to the Religious Right, Obama hopes to siphon off sufficient evangelical votes to put him over the top in November. It helps that he speaks the language of faith comfortably. Speaking to CT recently, Ron Sider, founder of Evangelicals for Social Action, said Obama "understands evangelicals better than any Democrat since Carter."

    In June, Sider was among the 40 Christians invited to a private, off-the-record Chicago meeting hosted by Obama.

    Posted by b_kool_66 at 10/10/2008 @ 5:19pm

15. Other attendees included Cizik, Franklin Graham, T. D. Jakes, Eugene Rivers, Max Lucado, and CT editor in chief David Neff. Cizik, vice president for governmental affairs for the National Association of Evangelicals, says that Obama's invitation was the first time a Democratic presidential candidate had requested a meeting with an nae official in the 28 years Cizik has worked there.

    He says he found Obama reflective and willing to bridge divisions. Cizik told CT, "He's willing to tackle problems that the Bush administration hasn't, like health care and climate change." The nae has been receiving weekly communication from the Obama camp, but nothing from McCain.....

    The Chicago meeting focused primarily on abortion and gay marriage. "You can't help but listen to the man and come away believing he's given a fair amount of thought to these issues," Cizik says. "I was both impressed by him and inclined to disagree with him."

    Obama has succeeded in gaining the attention of conservative evangelicals in a way that Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Michael Dukakis, and Al Gore failed to during their respective presidential bids. He has done this in part by doing the unexpected. For instance, in July Obama proposed expanding President Bush's faith-based initiative, which many liberals opposed from the get-go over church-state separation concerns. Obama has also succeeded in winning over at least one very high profile Bush supporter: Kirbyjon Caldwell, the Houston megachurch pastor. Caldwell offered the benediction at both of George W. Bush's presidential inaugurations, and he performed the wedding ceremony of Bush's daughter Jenna in May.

    Posted by b_kool_66 at 10/10/2008 @ 5:19pm

16. Last year, the pastor of the largest United Methodist church in the nation attended an Obama fundraiser and said he was deeply impressed. As Caldwell handed him a campaign donation check, Obama told Caldwell that he remembered a speech Caldwell had given 20 years earlier at Harvard, and that he had been following the pastor's career ever since.

    Another prominent African American leader, Bishop Harry R. Jackson Jr., senior pastor of Hope Christian Church in Washington, D.C., isn't in the Obama camp. But Jackson says McCain's relative silence on conservative social issues has motivated evangelicals to take a second look at Obama.

    The short supply of evangelical enthusiasm for any single Republican candidate has also worked to Obama's advantage. "There is tremendous apathy on the Religious Right," says Jackson. "Folks are feeling betrayed and left out. That can work in Obama's favor."

    The rest:

    tinyurl.com/3urf7j

    Posted by b_kool_66 at 10/10/2008 @ 5:19pm