In the country's last toss-up state, McCain has TV, but Obama has GOTV

Picture of the day: Two identical Miatas were in front of me on Ward Parkway this afternoon. The one on the left had Kansas plates; the one on the right, Missouri plates ... and an Obama 08 sticker.

The biggest city (St. Louis has bigger suburbs) in the last toss-up state in the country (if you believe master poll-cruncher Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight.com site) has gone into high gear for Barack Obama. When the candidate's Country Club Plaza campaign office opened this morning, 200 volunteers were standing outside. Everywhere I went today, I saw teams of people with clipboards. And then I came home to the door-hanger ... you've got to see this door-hanger ...

First of all, it's bigger than all the others, about 6 x 20. Second, on the reverse side is a portable and detailed voter's bill of rights, telling you that you have the right to a paper ballot (which I always ask for) and you don't need photo ID. Amazingly, it also gives you the location of your polling place -- printed in the official Obama 08 typeface -- just in case you tossed that tiny postcard from the Board of Election Commissioners the other week.

Wait, it gets better. Barack called Mrs. TVB on her cell phone about two hours later -- I hate it when he does that -- and in the middle of his message he was saying something like, "Your polling place is," and just then a female voice jumps in and gives us the polling place address again.

And you say: So what? Well, it seems that the Obama campaign is doing more than drawing large numbers of first-time donors and motivated volunteers. It's communicating constantly with them to encourage them to vote. And then, as you'll read below, it's throwing the volunteers at those same voters in order to get them to the polls, make them as comfortable in line as possible, and generally do whatever they can to ensure their votes count.

Here's what Mrs. TVB learned today at Obama's campaign office on the Plaza. On Election Day, the campaign will have lawyers at every polling place in Missouri. (I know there are 5,000 attorneys dispatched to blanket Florida, and I would assume Ohio and Pa. as well.)

Not only that, but get this. You know those stories about poor folks getting fallen arches waiting in line to early vote this week? The Obama camp has a solution for that too: Volunteers will be dispatched to all the polling places in Missouri to offer relief to voters who want to take a bathroom break, or rest their feet ...

By the way, this reminds me of a beef I had with much of the coverage of the Democratic caucuses this winter. There was a lot of griping, including in my newspaper, about what a terrible hardship this was, and how chaotic the scenes were at overwhelmed caucus sites, etc. etc. If the caucuses were such a drag, why did people endure long lines in the cold when they could've just gone home?* I love this picture, one of hundreds submitted to the New York Times' Polling Places Photo Project, that puts the lie to the notion that the caucus system is "broken" and needs to be changed.*

So, let's big picture this. The Obama campaign is using its giant cash chest to speak to all three groups of voters at the same time. To the undecideds, it continues to hammer away on the airwaves with massive ad buys. (Previously on TV Barn: Obama's infomercial and the selling of Richard Nixon.) Obama is also speaking to the opposers, flying into states like Arizona and Georgia where the chances of victory there are slim. The rationalization there is that he might win, he drains vital resources from McCain to defend home turf, and someday Obama will need those red-state voters if he's to govern effectively. (After all, Ronald Reagan didn't need a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate to get his Saudi friends their AWACS.)

And, as we are now seeing in his get-out-the-vote, or GOTV, operation, Obama is spending big bucks to deliver the decideds to the polls and make sure their vote counts.

Ever since his well-oiled surprise in Iowa in January, Obama has made his opponents look like Keystone Kops in terms of organization. (Remember Hillary Clinton's admission, days before the Texas primary-caucus-convention thingy, that she had no real idea how it worked? Obama eventually won Texas because he had the organization.)

HuffPost's Zack Exley wrote a long report last month that is must reading for anyone trying to understand how the Great Organizer did it.

One more example from today. Mrs. TVB -- who, unlike me, plans to vote straight Democratic -- reports that the Plaza office of Obama 08 was originally going to supply volunteers to three polling places for bathroom breaks etc. that I mentioned above. But once the tally of volunteers was actually counted and reported back to HQ, suddenly the Plaza office was given four more polling places to work. It's this efficient use of volunteer labor that may be looked back at someday as one of the great accomplishments of the campaign. I don't care what party you are, we coulda used some of that after 9/11.

And John McCain? Besides the persistent reports of campaign disarray, the news this weekend is that McCain 08 has decided to pull millions of dollars from its GOTV activities and engage in one last orgy of ad buys. Tonight's "SNL" appearance is going to be a piece of the McCain homestretch strategy ... by default.

Personally, I think that's an awful choice to have to make: spend money on TV or GOTV, though I share Silver's view that McCain's chances of victory are remote. John Cleese was on Keith Olbermann's show last night and pointed out that at least in the United Kingdom, political commercials on TV are forbidden. I doubt that it would reduce the total amount of money spent on elections, which isn't an excessive amount considering the fate of the free world is in the balance. (George Will's comparison to the amount Americans spend on potato chips is instructive.)

But that's the system we have now, and Obama has worked it better than any candidate. Question: If he wins, will he be able to put that same army to use in his administration? Or will Obama 08 be looked back wistfully as the high point of the first African-American president's lone term of office?

Either way, Obama looks to have put together a hell of a GOTV effort, from my keyhole vantage point in the nation's last toss-up state.