NOTES FROM THE FIELD. The netroots may get all the attention, but elections are won from the grassroots up, and last weekend Barack Obama's campaign launched a voter registration and voter contact drive in South Carolina, Iowa, and New Hampshire, as well as visibility events in California and New York to make sure that, come election time, his media buzz can translate into votes on the ground. Now the Obama campaign has posted videos of some of those campaign events, and they have a quality about them that's different from the usual highly-edited, highly-scripted campaign videos that makes them quite charming.

First of all, these are videos of volunteers, not political pros, but they are also like little newsreels about the nature of life in particular communities. This video of the Rev. Scipio registering African-American voters in economically depressed North Charleston, S.C., takes us to a community that looks like pre-Katrina New Orleans, and as he tells us about Naval shipyard jobs leaving and drug dealers and liquor stores moving in, his pride and hope that an Obama election might mean that everything is going to be different is so palpably real that it's quite moving. For all the cynicism we have about politics and politicians, it's also worth recalling the optimism of true believers. In Las Vegas, two female volunteers trudge about in the suburbs under the hot sun as a dog barks in the background, and form a new friendship. The campaign also has testimonials from organizers talking about why they support Obama, but those more orderly narratives are less interesting than the more leisurely video snapshots of American communities that precede them.

--Garance Franke-Ruta