I approve.

Get a head start by voting early this year! Early voting in Texas starts October 20th and ends October 31st. pic.twitter.com/b6LMyUIpmy

— AFP – Texas (@TexasAFP) October 20, 2014

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: It occurs to me that people who were never Democrats may not get the full effect of that poster.  Trust me: the iconography and style is deliberately designed to send Commies and/or progressives into a frothing rage, which is why Americans for Prosperity did it – and why I’m posting it on the front page here.  It really and truly is a calculated vicious insult, on a variety of levels…

PPS: Let’s talk about early voting for a second, or just voting in general. I’d like to offer some practical advice, for those of my readers who might be worried about ground games.  Take this advice or not, as you see fit.

There are folks out there who are… worried… that the Democrats have this great, terrifying, and all-encompassing group out there dedicated to the ‘ground game,’ which is a phrase that many people intone without ever really thinking about.  Basically, the belief is that there are hordes of robotic staffers out there who will work twenty hours a day to squeeze every possible Democratic voter that they can find into the ballot box.  This will thus cause us to lose every race that we don’t have a twenty point lead going in, jump-start the End Times, and generally cause cats and dogs to live together.  No, that’s what the mythology says.  What the Democrats actually have is… Bob.

Bob’s a guy.  He’s a Democrat, but aside from that particular character flaw he’s an all right guy.  Bob is involved in politics, a little; he doesn’t really like it or he’d be in a different position, but citizens are supposed to do civic stuff, and so he’s doing civic stuff.  They have Bob going around and knocking on doors, or maybe he’s making phone calls.  Bob is, again, not really into this sort of thing, but the person running the door-knocking and phone-banking is, and Bob thinks that that person is all right, so Bob goes along.  Bob does a couple of shifts a week, and mentions how important it is to vote to his family and loved ones for precisely as much as they’ll let him, and that’s pretty much what Bob will do.

Is this representative of the average Democratic volunteer? I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter.  Focus.  This isn’t about the average volunteer; this is about Bob.  Keep focusing on Bob.

But here’s the thing about this election: when it comes to GOTV and support, you, personally, don’t have to do better than the Democrats or the Bannock Street Project or the Secret Progressive Political Brownies: you just have to do better than Bob.  Because Bob ain’t gonna recruit five hundred new Democratic voters all on his lonesome.  If he could, they’d pay him. Bob is going to get… I’m going to say five people to vote who wouldn’t have done so otherwise.  Again, I don’t know if that’s the average; and again, it doesn’t matter. What matters is, that if you really are concerned about the election in two weeks, then you go and get six people to vote against the Democrat*.  If you do that, you’ve neutralized Bob.  And that’s all that you need to worry about; neutralizing Bob.

Shorter Moe Lane: don’t concentrate on the whole job. Concentrate on the part of the job right in front of you, and do it.

*If you’re the sort of person who refuses to vote for the Republicans this cycle, then go get seven people to vote against the Democrat.