Daily Archives: 11/03/2008

(Community Matters) Stephanie Rudy and I already knocked out our precinct. We’re distributing door hangers today to remind Obama supporters to vote tomorrow.

We worked a predominantly low income neighborhood – lots of Hispanic families. Not a single McCain sign, lots of Obama signs. Walking by a kinda rough dude, he noticed my Obama t-shirt and started chanting Obama, Obama, Obama. Folks are very friendly when they see who we’re working for.

Taking a wee break, then another precinct.

(Community Matters) After canvassing yesterday, Kirk, Janice, Jim, Stephanie & I took a drive to Kirk & Amy’s house in Whitehall. It’s on White Lake and looks across at Lake Michigan. I know where I plan to spend a month this summer. On the hunt for a house now.

from their deck overlooking White Lake

overlooking Lake Michigan

friend Doug’s cabin, across the street and on Lake Michigan
doesn’t this look like Truro, Cape Cod?

(Community Matters) Super story on our friend and Obama National Finance Committee colleague, Alexa Wesner, in today’s Fort Worth Star-Telegram

(Community Matters) The barista in our hotel’s Starbucks this morning, “Don’t worry he’s going to win. My girlfriend is in Indiana and they worked until 3am last night. It’s all about the ground game, and McCain doesn’t have one.” He was responding to my Obama tshirt.

BOR stories about the Austin McCain office open only a couple of hours yesterday and staffed by only two volunteers. Sean Quinn stories about McCain offices around the country only open between 9 and 5, and even when he arrives, very little activity. After several states, he quit believing the excuses that he’d just missed the volunteers or that they’d all just left for the field.

All this in large part why I’m predicting such a surge during tomorrow’s vote. I expect the Obama surge on election day to be larger than in early voting – election day is when we’ll see the youth vote peak.

The ground game by Sean Quinn:

The busiest McCain office we saw was in Arlington, at the national HQ, but tight security prevented us from getting any pictures. Ironically, that was our first full office, in our 11th battleground state.

Offices in Troy, Ohio were closed on Saturday October 11. With perfect coincidental timing, two elderly women dropped by to volunteer but found the office shut. At Republican state headquarters in Columbus later the same day, one lonely dialer sat in a sea of unoccupied chairs. In Des Moines on September 25, another empty office. In Santa Fe on September 17, one dialer made calls while six chatted amongst themselves about how they didn’t like Obama. In Raleigh this past Saturday, ten days before the election with early voting already open, two women dialed and a male staffer watched the Georgia-LSU game. In Durango, Colorado on September 20, the Republican office was locked and closed. Indiana didn’t have McCain Victory offices when we were there in early October.

When the offices are open, they have reduced hours. We can confidently plan to get evening good-light photographs of a town after we visit the local McCain office, because we know it will be closing by 5 pm, as the office in Wilmington, North Carolina was this past Sunday. The plan is, get to inevitably closed/closing McCain office, get an hour of photos near sunset, then visit the bustling local Obama office.

In Cortez, CO, we had Republican volunteers pose for action-shot photos. The same in Española, New Mexico. Posed. For some time at the outset, we were willing to give Republicans the benefit of the doubt. They convinced us they were really working, and that we had just had unfortunate timing. It wasn’t until the pattern of “just missed it” started to sound like a drumbeat in our ears that we began to grow skeptical. We never “just missed” any of the Obama volunteer work, because it goes on nonstop, every day, in every office, in every corner of America.

We found scattered nuggets of activity. Colorado Springs, Colorado held eight dialers and two front office volunteers. Albemarle County, Virginia had a busy office of 15 volunteers, and we reported that. Last night in Tampa, nine phonebankers were busy dialing at the Republican Party of Florida Hillsborough County HQ when we arrived at 8:00 pm. Seven dialers sat in McCain’s Hickory, North Carolina office this past Saturday afternoon.

Those offices seemed busy to us, naturally, because they were explosively full relative to other offices we’ve stopped in on. But even the Colorado Springs office was dwarfed by the Obama Colorado Springs operation.

These ground campaigns do not bear any relationship to one another. One side has something in the neighborhood of five million volunteers all assigned to very clear and specific pieces of the operation, and the other seems to have something like a thousand volunteers scattered throughout the country. Jon Tester’s 2006 Senate race in Montana had more volunteers — by a mile — than John McCain’s 2006 presidential campaign.

(Community Matters) Repeating my final prediction: a landslide electoral victory of 400-138. Obama wins the popular vote by 10 points.

I’ve been collecting chum for my youngest god children, niece and nephew. This is a historic time in our nation’s history and the history of our world.

The election when Blacks feel that the real American dream – the one where anything is possible for our children – is available to everyone. When White, Brown, Yellow, Black, LGBT and all Americans realize we’re closer to one nation under God than ever before. When citizens of other countries realize Americans have made a 180 turn against Bush/Cheney, and when they see Americans elect the person judged the most competent to lead, without regard to race or gender.

Admittedly, it’ll take time for McCain/Palin, Ron Paul, Ralph Nader and other supporters to heal. Remarkably, I expect they will be more pleasantly surprised by an Obama presidency than liberal supporters.

Governing from the middle rather than the fringe. The politics of inclusion rather than 50% +1. Can’t wait.

(Community Matters) from a middle-aged, white, conservative banker

So you can imagine my surprise when my wife suggested we spend a Saturday morning canvassing for Obama. I have never canvassed for any candidate. But I did, of course, what most middle-aged married men do: what I was told.

Instead of walking the tree-lined streets near our home, my wife and I were instructed to canvass a housing project. A middle-aged white couple with clipboards could not look more out of place in this predominantly black neighborhood.

We knocked on doors and voices from behind carefully locked doors shouted, “Who is it?” “We’re from the Obama campaign,” we’d answer. And just like that doors opened and folks with wide smiles came out on the porch to talk.

(Community Matters) I’m spending the days before the election with extraordinarily enthusiastic people in Western Michigan. These folks have been living a recession, some say living in a depression. But, by the strength of character and optimism I’m finding, you wouldn’t know it. They were with us at the campaign headquarters until after 10 on Friday (I bet some much later), canvassed from 9am to after 6pm on Saturday and were back canvassing and phone banking yesterday. They made homemade cookies, cupcakes and sandwiches to feed us (the volunteers) and are housing many of those here from out of state.

(Community Matters) Late night word from the Texas Obama campaign, even more Texans headed to New Mexico. Juan, staff & volunteers (including now fulltime volunteer Barbara Engel) decided they’d get one more bus of volunteers to Las Cruces, so final bus Houston-SAT-New Mexico.

Gotta love the sustained outpouring of volunteer efforts even in the final 48 hours. Don’t know what I’m doing up. We’re going to be dropping door hangers all day, then rides and more GOTV tomorrow.

(Community Matters)

Final projections from 3BlueDudes:

Electoral College: Obama 367 – McCain 171 (using the 3bd Presidential Projector, tossups go to poll avg leader)

US Popular Vote: Obama 51.1 – McCain 42.1 (using 3BD October Number National Poll Munch)

US Senate: Democrats 56 GOP 42 IND 2 (using the 3BD Senate Tracker)

US House: Democrats pick up between 21-30 seats per 3BD reader poll

3BlueDudes

Latest from PPP:

Their teaser: Lots of people are leaving comments asking for predictions on this state or that state and I really don’t want to get too specific while the polls are running, but here’s the bottom line:

When we started running these polls Friday morning I was virtually certain Barack Obama would be elected President.

I still am.

UPDATE

Virginia is up

VA: PPP Obama 52 McCain 46 Undecided/other 2 Obama +6

Now Pennsylvania

PA: PPP Obama 53 McCain 45 Undecided/other 2 Obama +8

And now Ohio

OH: PPP Obama 50 McCain 48 Undecided/other 2 Obama +2

BlueDudes

The final USA Today/Gallup poll before Tuesday’s election has Barack Obama expanding his lead in the poll to his largest margin, 53% to 42%. The polling was conducted on Friday and Saturday.3

BlueDudes

Nate Silver: “Of all the polls out late tonight — and I do hope to have some sort of midnight update to the polling thread — the one that ought to give Democrats the most reassurance is the new poll out from NBC and the Wall Street Journal, which gives Barack Obama a 51-43 lead. What’s to like about this particular survey?

Firstly, all of the interviewing was conducted today (Sunday) and yesterday, so it’s about the freshest set of data that we have.

Secondly — and this is an underrated factor — the NBC/WSJ poll always behaves intuitively. It goes up when the other polls go up, and goes down when the other polls go down.”

538

(Community Matters) check this out:  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/us_elections_2008/7704636.stm

(Community Matters) Jessica D’Arcy and her 2 month old daughter, Lia, are canvassing in New Mexico.

Lia D’Arcy, perhaps our very youngest Obama volunteer

(Community Matters) Geronimo Rodriguez from Colorado:

Texans Gilbert Ocanas, Nicole Holt, and I are in northwest Denver which has a very mixed neighborhood of Hispanics, Orthodox Jewish community members and the working poor.

Walking the neighborhoods has been inspiring……

In southwest Denver, a predominately Latino neighborhood, Angelica De La Rosa came to the door and told me “my whole reason for living was to vote for obama”. She had already voted and wanted to shake my hand for walking her neighborhood on behalf of Sen. Obama. I shook her hand to thank her for voting.

Gilbert Ocanas met up with an older Hispanic genteman who looked at him and said “I am voting for obama and the world is going to change”. Obama equals hope equals vote equals change….

Nicole Holt was asked by a senior citizen if she would make sure someone took her to the polls on Tuesday. Nicole is making sure she gets a ride to the poll.
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