Matt's Excellent Keystone Adventure

Eleven Points!

Obama wins Pennsylvania 55-44. The margin was over 600,000 votes. Let's think about the conventional wisdom of Pennsylvania politics for a moment. Pretend that instead of winning Philly by 450,000 votes, Obama had split the vote with McCain. Obama would still have won Pennsylvania yesterday. An African-American in Pennsylvania can win state-wide if Philadelphia were out of the equation entirely. Are we going to think about race and Pennsylvania politics a bit differently in the future?

On the other hand: YO PHILLY WAY TO GO! I saw most of the heavy-lifting of the campaign around Philadelphia and the suburbs.

Oh, and Obama took Delco 60-39%; that's a 60,000-vote margin. Bwahahahhahahahaha.

Delaware County Republicans: Still Jerks

Delco Republicans setting up fake check-in tables and intimidating voters. Nothing has changed apparently.

Diary of a Phone Banker

I really enjoy canvassing in person. I loved doing the work I was doing for SEIU in Pennsylvania. But I HATE phone banking. I feel like I'm intruding, it's not the same kind of personal connection, and I never am quite sure if I'm doing more good than harm. It's all I did in 2004, and my unhappiness with that kind of connection is one reason I set out on my Keystone Adventure this year.

So...this was the only thing I could do, in fits and starts, because of my obligations as a caregiver since I had to leave PA mid-month. The one thing about phonebanking in this day and age is you can do it from home, one call at a time, from your cell phone, during idle moments. I gritted my teeth, signed up for the My Barack Obama list, and I did get in quite a number of calls to Pennsyvlania (not quite sure of the final number, but around 200). It wasn't much. I hope it did some good.

One day left: I don't need to remind readers to vote -- but if you have a chance to take tomorrow off, please do so, and go down to local Obama HQ and see what you can do to help GOTV. Even if it's taking water and food to the workers in the field, driving one person on an errand, or just standing in line to give somebody else a place in line who needs to get to work, your willingness to work election day can make a difference.

I started out on the Adventure because I didn't want to have to tell my kids years hence I sat by and did nothing while the Republicans wrecked this country, while we had a person of tremendous ability and vision in Barack Obama at hand to do the job. It's not too late to help change history.

Why is Matt back in California?

And not California, PA (a great little town,  by the way). I had to head back to California a week ago for the proverbial urgent family matter.

I had to suspend my Excellent Keystone Adventure, in Allentown, because we had a 15-month old foster child placed with us on about two hours' notice. He's a great kid, and basically the only reason I would've left the work in mid-stream. But I'm confident my colleagues and fellow citizens in Pennsylvania are going to pull this through -- McCain may be throwing another hail mary and trying to win Pennsylvania for his Mavericky I don't believe in Mathematics approach, but the defense is ready and Pennsylvania's going to make Barack Obama the 44th President of the United States.

I'm not sure if I'll be posting to this blog again, it was meant to be focussed on just this month. I will if I can get some news and notes from friends and family and colleagues back in PA. But I do want to thank my readers for their support - I feel like I did good work in my two weeks in the state, and as much as I wanted to have seen it through to the end, there's going to be a happy ending for us all.

Let's Hear it For Independents!

I'm in Chicago Midway airport as I write this (not Harrisburg) for reasons that I will explain shortly...all good...

In any event, this is Barack's home town, and it was no surprise (as in Denver) there was plenty of Obama bling for sale at various stands. One did catch my eye, though, in that there was no apparent "equal time" gear for the McCain campaign. I asked the lady behind the counter where the McCain stuff was? She gave me the evil eye and said, "honey, we don't sell no John McCain stuff at MY store!"  (I showed her my Obama button and we had a good yuk over that mean old John McCain together.) Yep, she was an independent owner-operator, a rare enough thing in general and at airports in general. And sometimes being independent also means you can make better business decisions -- the unsold marked down McCain crap I saw at Denver is an indication that corporate equal time is not necessarily the fiscally sound decision.

A Good Reason to Vote Red and/or Green

Talk about a relapse! A day after swearing off any more Palin tidbits, here I go again.

Letter to the editor in the Philly Inquirer today:

Of course Philadelphia fans booed vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin...We booed Santa Claus, and he is more qualified to be president than Palin. Don't forget, the North Pole shares a border with Russia. -- Adam Schwartz, Merion Station

Santa Claus might be good for Homeland Security Secretary as well. He does have a list of everybody! He knows what you've been doing and whether you've been bad or good!

Voters: Can't Have Democracy Without 'Em

So this is a tale from a suburban canvasser here, and not one I haven't heard or experienced myself before. Talk to the voter, ask if they're supporting Obama. Voter says, "well, he's so far up in the polls right now, my vote isn't going to make a difference so I probably won't bother to vote." I don't quite know whether to characterize this type of voter as apathetic, but it's an oddly solipsistic and simultaneously powerless world such folks live in, where on the one hand if they're called in as the one and only deciding vote they're perfectly willing to decide for all  of us, but can't be bothered if they're just going to get swallowed up in a tide of other people voting.

Occasionally I see this as a side effect of the "politicians they're all alike" theme, which I think is propagated by the right wing in this country in part because it removes the middle from the conversation and leaves the committed bases of each party to duke it out. The more people who are turned off by the form of discourse, the fewer people get to make the actual decisions -- votes -- about who runs this country. In other words, our friend the voter who won't be moved because "they're all alike" enables oligarchy, by definition, over democracy.

Does the "I won't vote unless the polls are close" voter fall into the same category? It's hard to say. Mediaocracy, as it were, plays a role here -- who would know not to vote, if the media weren't controlling the story line? This is dangerous in both close and non-close contests. Obama is polling as high as 12% above McCain in recent days, which is really astounding given how close this state has been for a generation now in Presidential races (even in 1984, the race that broke my heart here, Mondale came within a couple of points of making Pennsylvania his second state in the electoral column.) But, the idiotic Bradley effect notwithstanding, it only takes a few percentage points of stay at homes to make th election closer -- and potentially stealable. We can't afford a close contest, in any state and certainly not in the electoral college after the last two elections. It's another reason I'm committed to staying here until the job is completely done -- November 5th.

So I say all this as an example of why Get-Out-The-Vote is the critical phase of the election. The argument's been made, the voters have chosen up sides within a margin of error. But getting them to the polls, making sure their votes count, and having democracy actually function has to happen. It's closing time.

Palin Demonstration in Pittsburgh 10 October

80 degrees here in Philadelphia today. It's Columbus Day. Nary a leaf has turned.

I would be remiss not to post up some video of our brethren in Pittsburgh who had first crack at the Wasilla Wonder on Friday - two videos posted today - the first one is higher quality but the second shows the purple team a little more clearly:

What's kind of hilarious, is today Palin was at a rally and she heard some noisy demonstrators at the back, and gave a snarky ad lib non sequiter (no, I am not pulling a Maureen Dowd) about hoping they at least respected the veterans and troops who fought for their right to protest. Only problem, they weren't protesters -- they were supporters who couldn't hear her and were shouting "louder! louder!" Oh this says so many things. They don't listen for content, do they? Just for the noise level, if that.

I don't mean to make this an all-Palin all the time blog, since I was among the minority of democrats (so it would seem) who wanted to just ignore her as a distraction. But she's proved to be such a mismanaged derailed locomotive (a maverick can also be pretty dangerous if you happen to get in the way of its hoofs, not to mix too many metaphors here) that she keeps cropping up everywhere. We haven't seen Senator McCain recently in these parts, anyway. In any event, I'm hoping this ends up being the last Palin-themed post...wouldn't that be lovely?

Sometimes you et the Polar bar, sometimes the Polar bar ets you.

Obama Rally, Vernon Park, Germantown, 11 October

Here's Uncle Wayne's photo album from the Obama rally yesterday morning. This was walking distance from the house, and the line started on Germantown Avenue and snaked around for a while. They were fortunate to get in; 5000 people were left outside by the time the speeches started (pictured in the album).

Wayne and Andy and Jan's comments (second hand)...Obama was in a very good mood. He talked a lot about specifics, and seemed to be looking towards governing without being overconfident.   

They also liked this bit, as relayed by the paper:

Obama read the same speech each time, but he ad-libbed a bit and seemed increasingly buoyant as the day progressed. Telling his favorite new story about buying pie from a Republican-leaning Ohio diner owner, he joked with a woman who called out from the Germantown crowd.

"You will make me some pie?" he asked. "What kind of pie do you make? Sweet potato pie?"

As the crowd roared, he poured it on. "We're going to have to have a sweet potato pie contest," he said. "I'll be the judge, because I want my sweet potato pie."

Here's the story of Obama's day from the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Some pictures:

The line outside the park:

The people who got left outside! They at least could get a distant glance of the goings on:

Obama speaking, a long shot of the crowd:

A close up of sorts of Obama at the lectern:

Canvassing in Philadelphia, 11 October

So, Saturday morning I drove a canvassing team in Philadelphia, and we knocked on doors in one of the more hard-hit areas of town. From the conversations with residents there -- a mix of mostly Puerto Rican, but also some Dominican, African-American, and Anglo voters -- it seemed a lot of them were forced to move due to economic circumstances recently, some because of subprime foreclosures. Almost everybody had more than one job, if they had one at all.
(Picture to left, my canvassing partner, Sharon, and me.)

A few random observations:

• One mother with her 8 or 9- year old son on their steps called me over as I was gathering up the canvassing team to return. She asked me what Obama was going to do for the neighborhood. In the course of our conversation, her son asked me, "Why does Obama want me to go to school full year?" They were basically seeing very local issues, perhaps even conflating what a President could do with what a Mayor could. It was a very interesting conversation, and I talked a bit about what Obama did with his own community when he was a local organizer. The mother hadn't heard that bit about Obama's biography. I asked the little boy what he didn't like about full-year school (not what we'd call a national issue) and he said he didn't get to play as much. I said that when I was his age, I'd forget half the stuff I had learned over the summer, so I thought it was maybe a good idea to go to school full year. The mother said to him, "You see? That's just what I told you!" I don't know that the conversation will turn any votes, but I felt that the whole day was worth just this one moment.
  
• I ran into two Republicans, or rather, talked at length to one and to the neighbor of another. The first one was on my list with three other residents, who were all registered democrats, none of whom were home. I asked him if he was supporting Obama, and he pulled out a Hillary sign from the primaries and showed it to me: 'That's MY Candidate!' I went through the perhaps predictable conversation with him about if he liked Hillary, he should stand with Barack. He wouldn't get around to whatever issues he was most interested in, but was adamant that he was a proud ticket splitter. He wasn't at all positive about McCain; one senses there was a little family dynamic going on about him having his own drummer for the politics of the household. (I suggested he could become a Democrat, and then when he wanted to split a ticket he could just do it the opposite direction. Not sure if this is a good idea or not.) In the end, he said he'd look into this "rumor" (as he called it) that Hillary had endorsed Obama. I'm not sure if this is a lesson that Clinton should've been more aggressive about her endorsement earlier and more often, or whether the battles of the primary are very difficult to unwind.
  
  The other Republican in evidence was a McCain-Palin sign in the window of a house with several Puerto Rican flags and an "Estamos Unidos - McCain" sign as well. The politics of the island are a little complex, the local parties down there don't have direct correspondences to Republican and Democratic parties, although my recollection is that PR used to trend more Republican a generation ago. In any event, the family's neighbor, who was a Democrat and on my list, told me this particular voter in the house with the McCain sign was a very observant Catholic and couldn't vote for Obama because of the abortion issue. They had argued about that before, he was in agreement with Obama about almost everything else, but the issue trumped all for him.
  
  In any event, don't judge a neighborhood homogenously - as there are blue voters in the reddest of areas, so are there red voters in the bluest.
  
• Always carry extra campaign literature. We ran into one lady who was GREAT, she works for WIC and was a very enthusiastic supporter, but had difficulty getting literature from the Obama campaign. Our flyer focussed on contrasting the two candidates' health care plans, and she was really happy to get a stack to give to her friends and colleagues. Obviously it's a big and related issue when you're in the nutrition sector. Another example of how a hot day of canvassing can swing some unexpected rewards.