11-12 January 1945

In the United States there exists an understandable reluctance to compare anything positive to the old Soviet Union, and least of all the Soviet Red Army. But for some reason as unconnected with the politics of the Soviet Union as one can imagine, the more I hear about the Obama campaign, the more my mind feeds back the odd comparison of the Red Army's Oder-Vistula campaign, the great leap across the last significant natural obstacles between a triumphant and vengeful Red Army and "the lair of the fascist beast" in Berlin. If you read "The Audacity of Hope", there was a certain passage where Obama discusses his campaign style: in an early race for city councilman, he was underfunded and being pressured by advisors to spend his money early in the election to counterbalance public perceptions. Obama disagreed, and waited until late in the election to use his limited resources in a media blitz that brought victory. Now, ahead or at least tied in fundraising resources, with money saved from restraint in the early half of the campaign, a network of volunteers and organizers in place, the offensive can begin.

From FiveThirtyEight.com:

I recalled our conversation with Nevada's Republican State Party Executive Director, who in so many words argued that this is what they expected from Nevada Democratic turnout. A bunch of kids organizing other kids who ultimately wouldn't turn out in a non-caucus election. They really do think it's Dean's Iowa 2004 ground campaign.
...
So, an invitation to Barone. Mike, come out on the road with us. You'll have to ride in a relatively cramped backseat, but we'll make room. We go into all these offices. Not as in, "we simply don't know." As in, you can walk inside and see for yourself whether it's just kids driving this effort, or whether there's a single stocking cap. Peer-to-peer on a mass scale is what we've directly seen with our own eyes and what we've been chronicling for a month.

By the way, it wasn't kids who just tied up Washoe County, Nevada. It was an organization the likes of which we haven't seen in American politics, ever.

From Anthony Read and David Fisher's The Fall of Berlin:

With as many as 450 medium and heavy guns deployed in each mile of front, the result was probably the heaviest and most terrifying concentration of firepower ever seen at that time. Behind the barrage, reconnaissance battalions, stiffened by penal units, moved forward to take the front line of German trenches. Once they had accomplished this, the guns began to fire again, in a bombardment so ferocious that the first German prisoners brought in were incoherent and shaking uncontrollably as if suffering from ague.
...
Five days after the start of the operation, Koniev had blasted a hole in the German defences 75-85 miles deep and more than 150 miles wide. And everywhere his troops were advancing.

Obviously I can't guarantee anything. But I think, in the chill of approaching fall, that I may hear something resembling the squeal of tank treads.