Fizzled Out

I feel I need to apologize ahead of time for my writing. Frankly, I don’t know what the heck I am doing right now. I have taken five weeks off and have sort of forgotten how to be a halfway decent writer. I have forgotten how to be precise. Maybe I was never those things. Either way, I feel like a poorer writer now.

Sorry. I just had to get that out.

The fellowship officially ends on Saturday, but it could be over now. The program has pretty much dissolved into nothing at this point. That was the status I was given by a staffer yesterday. There are lots of reasons I think it has come to be that way and I will elaborate about some of them now, and some later, but I must say my frustration with the program has grown exponentially in the last couple of weeks.

As soon as the fellows completed their fourth week of the program I noticed a difference in how some people were being treated. By noticed, I don’t mean imagined. In essence, there has been an aura of inclusiveness extended to people willing to be staffers for the next four months. If you aren’t willing to be a staffer, that would be me, you have a window of time in which you are giving 40+ hours a week. This window closes on July 26th.

I completely understand why the campaign must recognize those fellows that are willing to work “100” hours a week. It is necessary for the campaign to take those people under their wing and start preparing them for the work that they will be expected to do for the next four months. If they didn’t do this, there would be time lost after the end of the program before those fellows were completely ready to take on the role of a campaign staffer. However, there is no downtime in a campaign. Time lost for one person translates into voters being lost. Multiply that by several hundred across the country and it could mean the election.

Now that I’ve established an understanding of the expediency of finding new staffers, I can move on to something I think is just as important—providing an accurate and defined work template for the duration of the program. For those fellows that won’t become staffers, meaning most of us, there should be a clear end to the program. There shouldn’t be miscommunication just because we aren’t going to be in the office every day after Saturday. To have such a program dissolve with two weeks to go should be unacceptable, but that is what has happened in Milwaukee. My team started with 7. There are three or four of us now, depending on which day of the week it is. The other teams in Milwaukee are nearly nonexistent as well, or they have dwindled away to a few people.

I wish there was a formal evaluation of the program to be completed by the fellows this week, but I haven’t heard of such an evaluation. I would give the first two weeks an A+. The middle two would receive a B to C+. The last two weeks, although not concluded, receive, without a doubt, an F.