Grassroots Political Campaign Quotes

That road to a remedy of Nigeria’s political problems will not come easily. The key, as I see it, lies in the manner in which the leadership of the country is selected. When I refer to leadership I am really talking about leaders at every level of government and sphere of society, from the local government council and governors right up to the presidency. What I am calling for is for Nigeria to develop a version of campaign election and campaign finance reform, so that the country can transform its political system from the grassroots level right through to the national party structures at the federal level. Nigerians will have to find a way to do away with the present system of godfatherism—an archaic, corrupt practice in which individuals with lots of money and time to spare (many of them half-baked, poorly educated thugs) sponsor their chosen candidates and push them right through to the desired political position, bribing, threatening, and, on occasion, murdering any opposition in the process.

Back in 2008, Hillary Clinton was the most formidable primary candidate in modern history who was not an incumbent president. As with Dewhurst, the conventional wisdom was that she was unbeatable. But Obama ran a scrappy, grassroots, guerrilla campaign—phenomenal in the annals of politics—and beat her. He was the David to her Goliath.

Why did it get such a big grassroots response? We were the first campaign to really understand the power of parasocial relationships between supporters and the candidate and

Not surprisingly, as civil rights advocates converted a grassroots movement into a legal campaign, and as civil rights leaders became political insiders, many civil rights organizations became top-heavy with lawyers. This development enhanced their ability to wage legal battles but impeded their ability to acknowledge or respond to the emergence of a new caste system.

The general’s greater reliance on a grassroots presidential campaign in 1824, a real break with Early Republic presidential politics, pointed toward future standard practice in presidential mass politics.