Obama’s army

100,000 active volunteers.
And that’s just in Florida.

Marc Ambinder, not an Obama partisan, reports that there are 100,000 active Obama volunteers in Florida alone. I’d find that impossible to believe, rather than merely astounding, if I hadn’t read Zack Exley’s account of the brilliant architecture of the Obama organization. (Exley doesn’t say so, but Obama seems to have figured out how to combine Booz, Allen with an equal-parts mixture of Saul Alinsky and Bill W.)

One hundred thousand active volunteers. Roll that number around in your mind. That’s not a campaign; that’s an army. By Election Day, Obama will have more troops in Florida than we have in Iraq.

It occurs to me that what seems to be the futile and semi-insane fury of the Republicans against Obama reflects a well-grounded fear of how much power he might actually wield as President.

Author: Mark Kleiman

Professor of Public Policy at the NYU Marron Institute for Urban Management and editor of the Journal of Drug Policy Analysis. Teaches about the methods of policy analysis about drug abuse control and crime control policy, working out the implications of two principles: that swift and certain sanctions don't have to be severe to be effective, and that well-designed threats usually don't have to be carried out. Books: Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know (with Jonathan Caulkins and Angela Hawken) When Brute Force Fails: How to Have Less Crime and Less Punishment (Princeton, 2009; named one of the "books of the year" by The Economist Against Excess: Drug Policy for Results (Basic, 1993) Marijuana: Costs of Abuse, Costs of Control (Greenwood, 1989) UCLA Homepage Curriculum Vitae Contact: Markarkleiman-at-gmail.com