Yes we can! (Can't we?)

Are you among those of us who think that Barack Obama isn't quite getting the “hope” thing right? I mean, health care “reform” that leaves insurance companies in the drivers' seat? Financial “reforms” that seem to be merely cosmetic? Environmental “reforms” that do almost nothing to address the issue of human survival?

Barack Obama is no way the surrender monkey that Bill "NAFTA" Clinton was. But why does it seem that the man who represents our first, best shot at real reform in far too long might be too willing to compromise with the people who made the mess that we're in? For the answers to these and other questions, I'll turn over the floor to our greatest stand-up political analyst, Mr. Bill Maher.

It can STILL happen here.

Like a lot of you, I'm elated that Barack Obama won the election.

Like a lot of you, I'd like to take a well-deserved breather. Nothing wrong with that.

Just remember, it's not over. Not by a long shot. Check out these excerpts from a press release by People for the American Way:

Did you read Paul Krugman's column in Monday's New York Times? On the day before the Blue Wave washed over national and state elections across the country, he asked the important question, "What will defeat do to the Republicans?" and provides several reasons why we can expect the Grand Old Party to take a hard turn to the extreme Right. We agree. With the Right in its new role as "the opposition," get ready to see an invigorated right-wing grassroots, media and organizational infrastructure.

• The Heritage Foundation is already digging in its heels saying they will not let President-Elect Obama bring about the change he's promised.



• Right-wing blogs, talk radio and television outlets like Fox News will experience a boom, and new personalities will emerge (remember that the Rush Limbaughs of the world became popular during the Clinton years and the power of the progressive netroots is in many ways attributable to backlash against the Bush administration and right-wing government).



• With the failure of a Republican presidential candidate who tried to distance himself from the current administration, and the popularity of Sarah Palin, who appealed to the far-right base, many will make the case that the best political strategy is a hard-line and unabashed commitment to right-wing ideology.



• One of the only victory trends enjoyed by the Right on Tuesday was in anti-gay ballot initiatives in Arkansas, Arizona, Florida and, sadly, even California, emboldening the Religious Right to repeat these tactics in state after state.



• And finally, with President-Elect Obama and the Democratic Senate in a position to undo many of the Right's most cherished gains in its favorite area of focus: the federal courts -- this, perhaps more than anything else, will energize the Religious Right's grassroots.

...And we can't see a repeat of the early 90's. What happened was that the organized Left went dormant, became complacent and didn't keep the pressure on the administration and Congress to deliver on their promises to America. The Clinton administration was subject to unrelenting attacks from the Right -- as Obama's surely will be -- but too many progressives thought they could stop fighting once the election was over. ...

Read the entire press release here. Yeah, they're soliciting donations, but even if you don't want to contribute money, you need to know that the game is far from over. Stay current. Stay active. The worst thing we can do right now is to slack off. It's never too late for another Republican takeover, one which could make George W. Bush look like a moderate.

YES WE DID!

As I sit here, listening to John McCain wax downright rhapsodic about Mr. Obama in his concession speech on WFMU's web-only special program, "Electile Dysfunction", I can only think of the words of the late Phil Rizzuto, who once said "HOOOOOLY COWWWWW!"

Mr. Obama's win was bigger than 1992, when Bill Clinton high-speed coasted to victory leaving the first George Bush in the dust. But remember, Bill Clinton had help in the form of third-party candidate H. Ross Perot, who sucked up a substantial number of Republican votes. Mr. Obama didn't have such an advantage this time around.

More news as it happens!

Shoe Leather Democracy, Part 2

Obama headquarters, Scranton, Pennsylvania.

(Names, except those of candidates, have been changed to protect the innocent).

The last time I blogged about door-to-door canvassing, I was doing voter registration in Scranton, Pennsylvania, a major city in a critical swing state (and the hometown of vice-presidential hopeful Joe Biden). Two weeks ago, I was in Elmira, New York, going door-to-door with our organizer, Janet, for two campaigns; universal health care (the dead issue that won’t go away) and congressional hopeful Eric Massa.

The first thing you learn as a door-to-door canvasser is that there aren’t many people home on a Saturday afternoon, at least none who’ll answer the door when you knock, especially when it’s a few weeks from Election Day! We knocked on several doors in a middle-class neighborhood before being greeted by a sweet gentleman and his family. Seems that he and at least one of his relatives lived on Social Security disability benefits, so when we informed them that Eric Massa’s opponent, Republican incumbent Randy Kuhl, wanted to privatize Social Security (you know, by turning over its trust fund to Wall Street), they were very interested indeed!

Another of our prospects was a 78-year-old widow who had lived through the Great Depression of the 1930's. Like a lot of us, she was convinced that we were looking down the barrel of another one, and she had not a few choice words for the Bush clan. On our way from her house to another, we ran across two young men standing next to their parked truck. When Janet asked them if they were registered to vote, one of them remarked that he had just recently been released from prison. She informed him that as long as he wasn’t behind bars, he had just as much right to vote as anyone else. Our most interesting prospect apart from the widow was an elderly man who’d been in the Navy when John F. Kennedy was president. He related his story about how he had been standing only a few dozen feet away from the president as he reviewed the men on board his ship.

********************

Yesterday, (Saturday) several of us car-pooled once again to the critical swing state of Pennsylvania to canvass door-to-door for Barack Obama. Florence, Harvey, David and I (names once again changed to protect the innocent) all piled in to Florence’s car and drove down route 81, with a spirited discussion of our man’s standing in the polls going all the way down.

As if to remind us of just what is at stake for our nation in this election, we got a surprise when we arrived in Scranton. Normally, organizations which depend on volunteers count on 30 per cent of the people who commit actually showing up. Today was different. Today, all of the people who’d originally committed to help with the day’s work showed up, and then some. I met volunteers from as far away as Columbus, Ohio and New York City. The little storefront, behind a bakery, which served as a satellite office for Obama headquarters in that city was packed. It looked for a while as if we were all going to be fifth wheels. Not that this was necessarily a bad thing. In all the years I’ve been volunteering for political causes and candidates, I had never before seen this kind of turnout. Eventually we were given lists of voters to be contacted and set out for the appropriate neighborhoods.

The first thing you learn about Scranton is that the street corner you’re looking for might not necessarily have a street sign on it. This made our journey to our assigned neighborhood rather interesting. Fortunately, it wasn’t located too far away from a main drag. One of the first people that Florence and I encountered was a man washing his car in his driveway. Florence opened the discussion by asking who he’d planned to vote for. He replied that he had heard reports that Obama favored late-term abortions which involved the killing of babies. His concerns were obviously based upon inflammatory Republican and religious-right rhetoric. I pointed out that late-term abortions were relatively rare and were only done when absolutely necessary. I went on to remark that abortion was a megaton of cure, and that I believed in an ounce of prevention. I reminded him that in localities with legitimate sex education, where students are taught how sex and sexuality really work, and that sex isn’t the great forbidden fruit that Hollywood and popular culture make it out to be, that kids wait longer before becoming sexually active and take proper precautions when they finally do, which cuts pregnancy rates (and therefore abortion rates). Unlike a lot of right-leaning voters, our man seemed receptive not only to my arguments but to Florence’s about the state of the nation and the economy. We left him to his car-washing and wished him well.

The rest of the day went rather uneventfully. A lot of the doors that we knocked on went unanswered. Florence approached a home where three pre-teenaged boys were playing on their front lawn. Florence told one of them she was with the Obama campaign, and asked one of them if their parents were home, which they weren’t. One of the boys remarked, “I’m for McCain, because Obama has nothing to offer. But, I’m a child, so I can’t vote anyway!”.

At one point we got lost. We pulled into a nearby gas station, whereupon Florence asked a pair of young women who were passing by for directions. These recent high-school graduates were very friendly and helpful. Florence gave them some lawn signs and literature about voting rights, and sent them on their way.

********************

It’s not over yet. I’m going to be calling voters in swing states. I’m going door-to-door and dropping off campaign literature. I’m calling and e-mailing everyone I know to remind them to get out and vote tomorrow. You should seriously consider doing the same.

This just in:My sincerest condolences to Barack Obama for the passing of his grandmother, Madelyn "Toot" Dunham.

This also just in: Filmmaker Michael Moore weighs in on tomorrow's election. VERY highly-recommended reading.

The election's over, right?

Picture copyright by Stephanie Yue.

Okay, it’s a little over two weeks to go before the election.

Things look pretty good for Barack Obama. He’s ahead in the polls.

John McCain has conceded one state (Michigan) before the election has even begun*.

Prominent Republicans like conservative media mogul Christopher Buckley and former secretary of state Colin Powell have publicly endorsed Barack Obama.

It looks like our candidate is a shoo-in and we can all just sit back and watch Senator Obama coast to victory. Right?

WRONG, WRONG, WRONG!

Don’t slack off. It ain’t over till it’s over. And it’s not over yet.

If you’re going door-to-door, canvassing by phone or soliciting donations, keep on doing it. Do it as much as time will permit.

If you have a good car, please consider giving voters who cannot drive rides to the polls. Check with your local Democratic headquarters, or with independent organizations like Citizen Action about doing that.

If you have the money, please consider donating to Moveon.org’s No Stolen Elections Fund. They plan to publicly expose and legally challenge any and all attempts by the Republican party to prevent people from voting (which they, or sympathetic organizations appear to be doing, even as I write this). There's an excellent web site called http://www.stealbackyourvote.org/ which tells you more about voter-suppression and what you can do about it.

If you value your country, if you value your rights, if you value your money, keep on working.

And don’t stop until Mr.Obama becomes America’s first African-American president.

* - In some states, you can vote early by absentee ballot. I would strongly encourage you to do so if you can. Check with your local Board Of Elections, in person if you can. And whatever you do, DON’T mail in your ballot. There’s just too much likelihood of your ballot getting “lost” in the mail, if you know what I mean. Instead, deliver it in person to your local Board Of Elections. If you absolutely, positively can’t get to your Board Of Elections, mail it in certified, return receipt requested.

THIS JUST IN:

Moveon.org just sent the following message to everyone on their mailing list (including yours truly). I am including it here because I agree with their thinking points (hyperlinks added by me):

Dear MoveOn member,

If you're an Obama supporter, watching the polls or reading the news can feel pretty good right now. And we should feel good—progressives have worked hard to get this far!

But we can't listen to the pundits who say it's over. Can you share these "Top 5 reasons Obama supporters shouldn't rest easy" with your blog readers—and encourage them to volunteer for Obama between now and Election Day?

TOP 5 REASONS OBAMA SUPPORTERS SHOULDN'T REST EASY

1. The polls may be wrong. This is an unprecedented election. No one knows how racism may affect what voters tell pollsters—or what they do in the voting booth. And the polls are narrowing anyway. In the last few days, John McCain has gained ground in most national polls, as his campaign has gone even more negative.

2. Dirty tricks. Republicans are already illegally purging voters from the rolls in some states. They're whipping up hysteria over ACORN to justify more challenges to new voters. Misleading flyers about the voting process have started appearing in black neighborhoods. And of course, many counties still use unsecure voting machines.

3. October surprise. In politics, 15 days is a long time. The next McCain smear could dominate the news for a week. There could be a crisis with Iran, or Bin Laden could release another tape, or worse.

4. Those who forget history... In 2000, Al Gore won the popular vote after trailing by seven points in the final days of the race. In 1980, Reagan was eight points down in the polls in late October and came back to win. Races can shift—fast!

5. Landslide. Even with Barack Obama in the White House, passing universal health care and a new clean-energy policy is going to be hard. Insurance, drug and oil companies will fight us every step of the way. We need the kind of landslide that will give Barack a huge mandate.

If you agree that we shouldn't rest easy, please sign up to volunteer at your local Obama office by clicking here:

http://tinyurl.com/downtowire

(This is a condensed version of the URL sent to me by Moveon.org. It'll take you to their volunteer sign-up page.).

We're just two weeks away from turning the page on the Bush era—but we can't afford to take our eye off the prize. We've got to keep pushing until the very end.

= = = = = = = = = =

Thank you, Moveon.org. I couldn't have said it better!

THIS ALSO JUST IN:

Senator Obama is temporarily exiting the campaign trail to visit his seriously ailing grandmother in Hawaii this Thursday and Friday (October 24th and 25th). Watch Rachel Maddow's MSNBC video about the situation here.

Notes from the road: Shoe-Leather Democracy

(Image copyright Image Comics. All
rights resererved).

Last Saturday, I did my bit for the cause of hope. I went door-to-door doing voter registration for the Obama campaign.

Pennsylvania is a swing state. If Obama clinches it, he’s probably going to be elected. Obama got a 9-point bounce in the polls after the debate last Thursday, so things look good right now. However, we know from past experience that nothing ever can be taken for granted. We also knew that Obama lost here to Hilary Clinton in last spring’s primaries. If McCain wins in November, given the state of his health, the net result will most likely be a know-nothing moose-hunting beauty queen in the White House for 8 years or more and a Supreme Court completely owned and controlled by corporate CEO’s and television ministries. So a dozen or so of us upstate New Yorkers took up clipboards and pens, grabbed stacks of Pennsylvania voter-registration applications, piled into cars and headed for the Rust Belt city of Scranton, Pennsylvania, about an hour and change south of us. I rode with our organizer, Donna (not her real name, protect the innocent, etc.). I think she was channeling Mario Andretti that morning as she piloted her subcompact car down Route 81, its check-engine light blazing all the way. We got to town in record time.

Obama headquarters is in a theater building not far from Boscov’s department store. Here we briefly mixed with locals working on the campaign as Donna checked in with one of their honchos. There were bagels and cream cheese, which I attempted to avail myself of until I realized that what I thought was a sesame bagel turned out to actually be a garlic bagel. I threw it away because no way did I want to go pitch for Mr. Obama with a breath that could stop a vampire. I had half of a whole-wheat bagel instead. Anyway, Donna soon hustled us back into her car and headed out for our designated turf.

I’ll tell you, if you ever need driving directions, forget Google Maps. It sent us here and there just to make a simple turn. It left street names out on maps. A drunken gas-station attendant could have seriously done a better job. But eventually we got to where we were going, a housing project on the edge of town. I set out with Donna for one side of the street while another volunteer, Harvey (again, not his real name), who’d ridden with us covered the other side.

I knew that convincing people in this particular economic class to register and vote was going to be a very tough sell. I’d attempted to register voters in the projects in my own hometown several years earlier, and while the people a fellow volunteer and I met were by and large decent to us, they made it abundantly clear that they had absolutely no interest whatsoever in participating in a system which they probably believed was keeping them in poverty.

The cross-section of the population of the housing project we arrived at last Saturday was African-American, lots of Hispanics and some white elderly people. The houses themselves were boxy brick-and-wood duplexes, and others containing four apartments each which looked a suspiciously like double-wide trailers. We met several Hispanics who politely told us in broken English that they weren’t interested in voting. They were citizens, not illegals, so there was no issue with immigration, but they were just plain not interested. Donna managed to turn some of these people around and register them anyway (we made a note to bring more Spanish-language registration forms with us next time).

Single mothers proved to be our toughest clients. One was an attractive woman in her late twenties with three children who made a living (though I still don’t see how) working at a Wendy’s fast-food restaurant. She was knowledgeable and apparently paid attention to political developments, but was simply turned off to the idea of voting, period. She preferred to leave things up to chance, and that was that. I told her that I believed even voting for the lesser of two evils was better than letting the worst of them win by default. Donna reminded her of how many times John McCain had voted against raising the minimum wage in his career as a senator, but even this argument wouldn’t wash. After trying to convince her to at least register, for over 10 minutes, we bid her goodbye and set out for the other homes in the projects.

Our easiest sells were people over 65, some of whom had no doubt gone through the Great Depression of the 1930's. Many of them were Obama supporters, though we did meet one die-hard Republican who told us that Obama was trailing by 50% or so after last Thursday’s debate. His friend or housemate who was standing nearby reminded him that Obama had in fact gained several points. Donna and I suspected that the guy had been watching Fox News. The most bizarre encounter of the day was a buxom woman of about 60, who appeared outside her front door dressed only in a worn, ripped body-length T-shirt which didn’t hide very much. She proceeded to rant incomprehensibly about Hilary Clinton. She basically repeated the same sentences over and over, ignoring whatever Donna or I said. Finally, Donna and I politely excused ourselves and took off to the next home.

When we’d finished, Harvey had signed up five people, Donna and I had signed up eight. We went downtown to get some lunch and talk strategy with the other volunteers. I noticed that there was a comic shop nearby, so after finishing my meal, I sauntered on over and bought a few interesting titles, including an R. Crumb book which I’d never seen before. On my way out, I thumbed through the new-release shelves and found the book whose cover is reproduced above. When I showed it to the other volunteers, they stormed the comic shop and bought up every last copy.

I’ll be doing it again next weekend. Film at 11.

Can it be? Yes it can!

You may count me among the jillions of bloggers who saw Barack Obama’s nomination acceptance speech tonight and had their eyes glaze over, but not from the usual ennui which occurs while watching candidates for public office speak on TV. No, this time it was a magnificent case of not believing what I’m seeing.

African-Americans have held federal office since the late 19th century. But the idea of one getting this close to the presidency, and actually having a fair shot at it has, to say the least, blown this observer’s mind. When I was a kid (a very considerable period of time after the late 19th century), my country was only beginning to get that African-Americans were human beings and ought to be treated like them. Whatever you might think of Senator Obama’s politics, there’s no denying the trail blazed by those who came before and the barriers he himself has crashed through. Racial politics in America will never be the same.

For the record, I intend to vote for Senator Obama. I know better than to think he or any candidate is a knight in shining armor. But I definitely expect better from him than from his rival, Senator John McCain, who, far from being the second coming of George W. Bush is actually far more dangerous. When Ronald Reagan made his infamous “bombing in five minutes” wisecrack in 1984, it was meant as a private joke. He didn’t know he was being recorded. When Senator McCain nonchalantly made light of the idea of attacking Iran by parodying a Beach Boys tune, he did it in front of a roomful of supporters and reporters.

Senator Obama’s got charisma. He’s got class. He’s articulate, smart and as he’s proven by his rise to Democratic presidential nominee, he knows how to get things done. And if he’s elected president, as I hope he is, he will have made history twice.