Two stories today illustrate just how bad it’s going to get before things get better.  First, via Calculated Risk, the story of one company and its sales in 3Q 2008 versus 3Q 2007:

[T]ruckmaker Volvo admitted demand across the [European] Continent has crashed by 99.7 percent as it took orders for just 115 new lorries in the last three months.   That compares to orders totalling 41,970 in the third quarter of 2007.

Just to be clear, this is sales of semis in Europe.  But look at those numbers again:  42,000 in 2007 and 115 in 2008.  That’s beyond ugly.

The second story, from today’s Washington Post, describes conditions in Cleveland as a result of the subprime mortgage crisis and the subsequent collapse (and sale to PNC ) of National City Bank:

By 2003. . . property values began to soar. Wood-frame houses built nearly a century ago were fetching $70,000, $80,000 and even $90,000 — multiples of their previous peaks. Tax revenue accelerated, punctuating Cleveland’s claim as a comeback city. National City got in on what turned out to be a national boom, as it rapidly expanded its mortgage business into the fast-growing Sun Belt and ventured deeply into the subprime lending market. For a time, the strategy was wildly profitable, as the bank reported profit of more than $13 billion from 2000 to 2006.

And then the boom fizzled, leaving both the bank and its home town faltering. Overall, nearly 10 percent of the city’s properties have gone into foreclosure.  National City has lost more than 80 percent of its market value this year. On Tuesday, chief executive Peter E. Raskind said 4,000 positions would be eliminated from its overall workforce of 29,000 over the next three years. The bank slashed 3,400 jobs a year earlier. . . .

Much of that money, from National City and other banks, found its way to Slavic Village, the childhood home of Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich (D), which local officials call ground zero for the foreclosure crisis. For decades, the neighborhood, which abuts a steel mill in the city’s southeast, was a struggling working-class community with an aging population and few new residents. But Slavic Village underwent a dramatic change beginning in the late 1990s as the tide of mortgage money flooded the area with new homeowners, lifting prices to unprecedented heights. Thousands of the neighborhood’s small wooden homes turned over, with investors selling to new buyers at multiples of their purchase price, sometimes within months, and often after making only cosmetic repairs.

“The deals became toxic immediately,” said City Council member Anthony Brancatelli, who for 17 years headed the Slavic Village Development Corp. “What should have been $20,000 or $30,000 homes became $80,000 or $90,000 homes with toxic loans.” The result has been a rush of foreclosures. The number of foreclosure sales in the five-square-mile neighborhood swelled from 114 in 2001 to 840 last year. In the first six months of this year, 316 Slavic Village properties have been through foreclosure, according to figures compiled by the development corporation.

This is the dark side of the crisis that most Americans really aren’t thinking about yet.  It’s a vicious cycle: mortgages become toxic, jobs in sectors like banking and technology start to disappear, property values fall, the tax base erodes, and city revenues start to decline.

The bailout isn’t going to make any of this go away tomorrow, nor is it going to convince European companies to start buying semis.

I was in Cleveland last spring, and came away quite impressed with its dynamic central business district and its residents’ optimism that they were coming back from the worst of the seventies and eighties.  Molly and I even talked (briefly) about moving there, given the relatively cheap mortgages (even at $90,000 the homes looked cheap to someone used to DC house prices) and its proximity to her mom in Michigan.

Sad to say, we made the right decision.  It’s going to be a while before Cleveland rocks again.

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Joe Biden just did a bus tour of southern Ohio, focusing on the fact that Ohio went to Bush by 118,000 votes in 2004.

Obama has 89 offices in Ohio. That means each office has to find an additional 1,326 voters.

Based on my experience during the primary season, each office needs to deploy somewhere in the range of 300 canvassers on election day, plus another 50 making phone calls.  Those are probably on the conservative end of what is likely to happen.

If we assume that each bank of phone canvassers can get an additional 100-125 voters to the polls in the 10-12 hours they make calls, and that only 300 canvassers show up at each office, then each canvasser needs to convince four people who didn’t vote for Kerry four years ago to vote for Obama.  That includes those not registered to vote four years ago, those who failed to vote, and disillusioned Bush supporters.  It does not include absentee or early voters.

Four voters for every volunteer — if the campaign can put 27,000 volunteers on the ground.  If it can get 35,600 volunteers, that’s three votes for every volunteer.

Think that’s not plausible?  When I was in South Carolina for the primary, I drove five people to the polls who otherwise would not have voted.  Five others immediately got in their cars and head to the polls after I reminded them that it was election day.  When I was in North Carolina, I got more than a dozen folks to do early voting, and another five to go to the polls on election day.

If you live in Michigan, Kentucky, Illinois, or western New York, vote absentee and get to Ohio.  (If you live in Indiana, Pennsylvania, or West Virginia, vote absentee and help get those states in the win column).

Unless, of course, you want Sarah Palin to be our next vice president.

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Over the weekend, a friend sent me the link to a picture taken at a party celebrating Obama’s Super Tuesday win in Delaware:

I had a blast working with these guys.  We were operating out of a Longshoreman’s Union hall in South Wilmington. My job was to get canvassers out the door and make sure that they knew what to do and where to go.  If I remember correctly, we sent out over 800 volunteers that day.

Going into the weekend before Super Tuesday, Obama was behind in Delaware.  That Sunday, over five thousand people came out to see him at a rally in Wilmington.  That helped narrow the margin, but going into Tuesday, most polls had Obama and Clinton tied or within a point or two of one another.

Obama won Delaware by nine points.  Although some of that was momentum, a big part of it was the ground game.  I remember hearing on the radio that turnout in Wilmington was double what people had expected.  I also remember an interview with Hillary’s Delaware campaign manager, who said that her candidate had lost because of extraordinary turnout in the Second Congressional District.

Here is what The New York Times had to say about that race:

Obama won in Delaware, capturing two of the state’s three counties after recruiting large numbers of volunteers in recent days. His widest margin of victory was in the north of the state, in New Castle County, which includes Wilmington, where candidates fought for 4 of the 15 delegates Delaware was set to award on Tuesday.

Now I recognize that Delaware is not representative — it’s a lot easier to generate that kind of turnout in a small, densely populated state.  But what I saw in Wilmington — intensive canvassing in the days leading up to Super Tuesday, precisely targeted GOTV in high density neighborhoods, and a strong phone bank — is the kind of operation that the Obama campaign will have on the ground in every battleground state come election day.

During the primaries, I volunteered in five states:  South Carolina, Delaware, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina.  With the exception of Pennsylvania (where I was assigned to the Hillary stronghold of Scranton), Obama had similar operations everywhere I worked.  In Virginia, for example, I helped manage a phone bank where 400 volunteers made over 35,000 calls in seven days.

Most analysts think the Obama campaign’s organizing efforts will net him two or three points in key states.  I don’t disagree.  But I think there’s also a very real chance that the margin it provides be even greater than that.

Come election day, watch the turnout in places like Gary, Indianapolis, Bloomington, and Evansville, Indiana; Columbus, Cleveland, Akron, and Toledo, Ohio; Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, State College and Scranton, Pennsylvania; and Detroit, Ann Arbor, Lansing, Saginaw, Flint, and Pontiac, Michigan.  The Obama campaign will try to win these cities by margins of at least 2 to 1 or even 3 to 1.

Somewhere on election day — perhaps Indiana, North Carolina, or Virginia — that approach will help Obama pull off an upset.  And that might end up being the difference between Obama becoming President or an also-ran.

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Today’s loser winner is Pastor David Allison of the Havens Corner Church in Blacklick, Ohio, who posted the sign below in response to Katy Perry’s hit song “I Kissed a Girl (and I Liked It).”  When asked by a local television station, Allison said

We love homosexuals, but if they come to our church, they will hear. . .that, um, uh, those things have to be repented of.

I have a question for the good Reverend: have you ever kissed a girl?  Because your sign really isn’t as gender-specific (or sexual orientation-specific) as you think it is. . . .

Congratulations, Pastor Allison.  You’re our latest Dillweed of the Day.

Hat tip:  Feministing via Matt Yglesias

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