The evidence is pretty overwhelming that door knocking just isn't useful for Federal campaigns. We tried this in 2018 too, funding some of the best-organized field teams in the country, and got a null result.
Door knocking and turf cutting are good for one thing: creating a powerful sense of loyalty, camaraderie, and shared purpose among organizers and volunteers. But it's an expensive kind of team-building exercise to fetishize.
Note that I'm talking about only about Senate and House campaigns. Maybe door-knocking is super effective for state campaigns, ballot initiatives, local neighborhood stuff. I hope it is! I would like for it to be an effective tool because that is a hopeful story to tell myself.
Most of my frustration with progressives in 2020 is not ideological, but a failure to learn from experience. No, you are not going to turn out record numbers of non-voters and youth by calling every house and knocking every door. Try something else! Don't fail the same way!
Part of this is just common sense. Personal conversations are powerful, but door knocking and phone banking are just political telemarketing. They are NOT personal conversations unless the people have some kind of preexisting relationship that didn't start by interrupting dinner.
Again, no disrespect to the comrades. But I raised a huge amount of money precisely for the kind of field campaigns that everybody is in love with again in 2020. They were awesome. But they did *nothing* to win us votes, either in primary or general election House races.
