cross-posted around the blogosphere

Barack Obama’s campaign held kickoff events in 15 Iowa field offices on Saturday, coinciding with the first statewide canvass of the general election campaign. In addition, the Obama campaign plans to open at least two more field offices in Iowa.

The Des Moines Register published an alphabetical list of cities and towns with Obama field offices. In this diary, I group the offices according to Congressional district.

If 17 field offices sounds like a lot for a medium-sized state like Iowa, keep in mind that Obama had at least 40 field offices here before the caucuses in January.

Also, the Iowa Democratic Party has in effect shut down its “coordinated campaign” for getting out the vote, which means that Obama’s field offices will coordinate GOTV for all Democratic candidates in the state.

Follow me after the jump for details.

Cross-posted at MyDD, Daily Kos, and the EENRblog. Slightly revised from the version posted at MyDD, thanks to feedback from several thoughtful readers. Note: If Hillary Clinton were the nominee, I would have written a similar diary addressing her volunteers.

This diary is for people planning to volunteer for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign this summer and fall. My goal is to help you be more effective in communicating with voters like me, who don’t care for Obama.

I know that the Obama campaign has scripts and training sessions for its volunteers, and those worked well in the primaries.

Now you have to reach out to Democrats who weren’t buying what Obama was selling in the primaries. It seems to me that many Obama supporters respond in a counter-productive way when they encounter people who are not sold on the candidate.

In this diary, I will offer two basic principles to guide your conversations with non-supporters.

Then I will cover types of comments you may hear from resistant Democrats when you are doing GOTV for Obama. Those are all based on things I have heard people say (not comments I have read on blogs).

I will give examples of what I consider ineffective and constructive responses to those comments.

Follow me after the jump if you care to hear more.