phase II: winning the South

Reader Clay Johnson sends in this link from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. It's basically a summary of the volunteer activity in the Atlanta metro area. The article notes that the Dean movement in the south is volunteer-driven and that many of the volunteers are participating in their first national campaign. The Atlanta-area volunteers are already reaching out to the Democratic party establishment, hoping to get a leg up on the competition as the primaries approach. Jeff DiSantis is the executive director of the Georgia Democratic Party, and he says Dean supporters "are certainly the most active at the volunteer level." That's right, Jeff, because we are determined to win this race.

Also interesting to note is what the article says about the other contenders:

Democratic contenders such as Sens. John Edwards of North Carolina, John Kerry of Massachusetts and Joe Lieberman of Connecticut have treated Georgia mostly as a fund-raising stop. With Georgia's primary coming relatively late on the political calendar, most of the attention has gone to early-voting states such as Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.

Hmmm, methinks the other candidates don't have a strategy for winning in the Southern states. Not so Howard Dean, who's repeatedly stated that he's going to take this battle to the south:

I do not want to win without the South. I want to go to the South and I’m going to say to white guys that drive pick up trucks with Confederate flag decals on the back of their cars: We want your vote to, because your kids don’t have health insurance either.

It seems the Georgia volunteers are already laying the groundwork for Dean in the southern states. So, can we win the south? How about some southerners weigh in on this question. After all, nobody knows the south like the people who live there.

update My post got bloggered. *grrr* Trying to fix it right now....