Nice write-up on the Vermont grassroots effort for Obama from Dan Barlow.

For some reason, I liked this part the best…

Obama may have Neil Jensen of Monkton to thank for his win here Tuesday night. Jensen, a web designer, began talking to friends about the Illinois senator in the fall of 2006 — long before he was even a declared candidate.

A meet-up of Obama supporters at a restaurant in Burlington in December 2006 attracted about 30 people, Jensen said. Soon, the monthly meetings began drawing more and more interested Vermonters — a base that the campaign easily tapped into when it began its groundwork this year in the state.

“Our goal at first was to help out in New Hampshire,” Jensen said. “But once it became clear that Vermont might actually be important in this, we shifted focus.”

Thankfully, Obama’s campaign did not take a top-down approach to generating support in Vermont, he added, and instead facilitated the efforts and outreach brainstormed by supporters on the grass-roots-level, Jensen said. Now, many of the Vermont Obama supporters will be using call-bank technology on the candidate’s Web site to reach out to voters in the next primary states.

“The results were actually exactly what I expected,” he said. “The early polls and the support we saw made it clear that Vermont would support Obama. But we never took it for granted.”

Read the whole thing.