couple of months, how fast do you need people in 30 states? you know, i think we can have people there pretty early. we believe very strongly in grass roots organizing. we believe that elections are determined not by, you know, decisions made in political decisions made in washington, but by decisionses that people make at the grass roots and that the most effective salespeople for a ticket or party or candidate are neighbors talking to neighbors. and so that is a labor intensive process and obviously the new technology is helpful in that regard. but you also need people on the ground. so we ll have people working very soon. by spring? i think it will begin in the spring. you always made the point that you were not a creature of washington and you were die to
doesn t see an see an inspiring character. what i think one mistake that they did make i mean i take all steve s points. one mistake i think they did do is when they came into office, they charted a very conventional course. all the grass roots organizing, organizing for obama, which turned into organizing for america sort of dropped dead. and they didn t do anything to keep people their people engaged. and so all of these big factors that steve referred to were allowed to do the work you would expect them to do on the general body politic. and obama s troops were sort of left to the side. i also think the war in afghanistan has truly demobilized a lot of the liberals and a lot of the progressive parts of the base. a lot of energy has been lost due to that. let s take a look at the president s poll numbers in the pollster.com trend line. they show disapproval ratings well above his approval race. let me go to another question before we even we don t have much time here tonigh
606,758 h. 1 $,80 for grass roots organizing. in 2009 alone. $144.5 million on lobbying a variety of issues. that is a lot of money but i didn t hear concern about the union spending 420 million in the 08 elections to elect this majority. reporter: you guys spend the most money on lobbying? so, we re a lobbying organization. reporter: he doesn t think the president s plan is a good one. i think where the public gets a little ascant where they hear we re going to cut half a trillion over medicare and create long care entitlement trust fund and that is not enough for any center in the
and they don t care whether you applied a million times, if you ve been unemployed for nine months, if you tried everything you could to get a job. that is what jon kyl thinks about people who are unemployed and americans should really understand who s in their corner in this sort of thing. before we leave the senate today, chris, i want to talk about democrats and primary challenges. we have arkansas democratic incumbent getting a primary challenge and in new york a new democratic incumbent scaring off yet another primary challenge. harold ford that the hour has announced he will not challenge the democrat in new york. what are the politics of the way those two incumbent senators have played this situation, what does it tell incumbent democrats about how to handle challenges in primaries? i think the primary challenge in arkansas, which has been the result of a lot of very excellent grass roots organizing, accountability now, move on is doing fund raising, a lot of the net roots,
job. that s what the republican caucus message is. and they don t care whether you applied a million times, if you ve been unemployed for nine months, if you tried everything you could to get a job. that is what john kyl thinks about people who are unemployed and americans should really understand who s in their corner in this sort of thing. before we leave the senate today, chris, i want to talk about democrats and primary challenges. we have arkansas democratic incumbent getting a primary challenge and in new york a new democratic incumbent scaring off yet another primary challenge. harold ford that the hour has announced he will not challenge the democrat in new york. what are the politics of the way those two incumbent senators have played this situation, what does it tell incumbent democrats about how to handle challenges in primaries? i think the primary challenge in arkansas, which has been the result of a lot of very excellent grass roots organizing, accountability now, mov