Driving into work and listening to NPR (yup, really) I heard this story about Obama’s nationwide “Change is Coming” house party meetup things (there were some in Rhode Island, too). My first thought was: “It’s the holiday season, and these people have no better way to spend their Sunday than regurgitating Obama talking points at each other?”I wasn’t far from the truth.

For the house parties, the Obama campaign assembled a team of organizers from battleground states to work with local volunteers. Citizens taking leadership roles hosted the house parties. A packet — which was given to each host to play during the meetings — included a DVD of Obama’s election night speech, a three-minute “We Have a Lot of Work to Do” video showing off the volunteer efforts during the campaign, and a video from Nikki Sutton, an online Obama campaign organizer.
“Now that the campaign is over, you might be wondering what the next steps are,” Sutton says, speaking straight to the camera on the clip that was distributed to play at the house parties, “One of the goals of these house meetings is to come together with friends and neighbors and think about how you will help Barack pass legislation though grassroots acts in your community. In the course of this meeting you’ll lay the groundwork for what you can do over the coming months and years.”

Boy, sounds like a fun time.