Jeff’s success in St. Louis City can’t be explained by endorsements or ideology. What Jeff did was turn ordinary voters—the kind who don’t run ward committees or cut $2,000 checks—into activists. One example illustrates the model of organizing we used. A little over a week before election day, one of Jeff’s early supporters suggested that we make 10,000 copies of our campaign documentary. Jeff, a few staff and a handful of early supporters were eating pizza at a supporter’s house and talking about a television ad we were planning to run when the supporter, Matt Coen, threw out the idea. As the field director, I knew we would never be able to distribute 10,000 videos in a week, but, filled with the hubris of youth and afraid to admit weakness, I mumbled something implying that we could get 10,000 videos to primary voters before election day. When the first shipment of videos arrived a few days later, I still hadn’t figured out how to get them out the door. By our next campaign event, I was certain we were going to have 9,000 paperweights when the election was over. I had brought a box of videos to the event, and I was planning to hand them out afterwards, but I knew we wouldn’t get more than 30 handed out. The first person to leave the event saved me. As I handed him a copy of the video, he mentioned that a friend of his hadn’t been able to attend the event. I suggested he take a copy of the video for his friend, and he offered to take a few extra copies for his neighbors. With that offer, we had a new activist, and a new organizing plan. The voters who left that event took an average of five videos with them. They pledged to pass them to friends and neighbors, and we offered to get them more if they needed them.

After the event, the organizer in charge of that area and I went to a local pub for some food. On the way out, we handed some videos to a group of young people drinking on the patio. I assumed we’d just wasted a couple of videos, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to try. A few days later, I ran into the same people at a coffee shop on the other side of town. They had passed the videos out to their friends and organized a viewing party for their neighbors. They hadn’t bothered to tell the campaign that they were helping. They just did it.

Having voters pass out videos to their friends wasn’t just a way of getting our message out. The videos gave people an excuse to talk to their neighbors about politics. People started bringing them to neighborhood gatherings and handing them out to strangers. Young people turned keggers into video watching parties. Senior citizens showed the videos at their nursing homes. The videos allowed everybody to participate in the campaign. They gave people a sense of ownership and power.

But the videos were just one part of a broader strategy. If voters weren’t delivering videos for Jeff, they could host a neighborhood event, knock on a couple of doors or just talk to their friends. Jeff’s campaign gave everybody a way to participate, and it allowed them to start by reaching out their own communities. Jeff knew he was never going to get the traditional political players, so he went after the majority of voters who have never been part of a political campaign. Jeff won St. Louis because he recognized that everybody is a leader. He won because, although he didn’t win the support of those few people who are officially honored as leaders by the Democratic Party, he won the help of thousands of people who were leaders in other ways.

If Jeff’s organizing model works, it is good news for democracy. Jeff’s model encourages political discussions in all areas of life, not just in official meetings. Even better, it emphasizes all the people who are traditionally left out of politics. It emphasizes minorities, who have too often been excluded from official party organizations. It emphasizes young people, who are rarely major players in party politics. It emphasizes independent voters who care about politics but don’t want to tie themselves to a political party. What we found in Missouri is that minorities, young people and independents have tremendous political power because they generally belong to large and tight-knit communities. Nobody has tapped that power because these groups do not have party leaders, and these groups have disproportionately avoided politics. Jeff’s campaign was dominated by people who had never been active in politics before, because Jeff gave them a chance to use their power. If Democrats want to reengage their base, they need to forget the party establishment and create a strategy that recognizes the power of every voter.

Samuel M. Simon ’06, a social studies concentrator in Eliot House, is an editorial editor of The Crimson. He will be asleep until classes start.