This sentence is taken from Chapter 1 of Barack Obama's new book 'A promised land':
"It seemed like it sprang out of nowhere, as grassroots a political campaign as anything mordern politics had ever seen."
Can anyone explain why there are 2 nouns following the first 'as'? Thanks in advance.
Grassroots is being used as an adjective here to describe "political campaign" and it means something like "authentic" or "populist."
It is a typical "as... as" usage to compare two things, but one is specified and one isn't. In that way it functions to say that the thing being compared is superlatively [adjective].
The campaign was as grassroots as anything. → The campaign was more grassroots than the others.
Consider a similar "as... as" structure:
He had never seen as blue a sky as he did after the storm.
She had never smelled as delicious a cake as the one baking in the oven.
