We came a long way in New Hampshire last January. Now it's time to go back and finish the job! Obama Organizing Fellows hit the ground in Manchester this coming Saturday, June 14th. Here's Barack's inspiring message to all of us who are once again taking up this fight."We have to win. We have to win because if we screw this up, all those people I met who need help, they're not gonna get help. And those of you who are concerned about global warming, I don't care what John McCain says, he is not going to push that agenda hard. All of those concerned about Darfur, I guarantee you they're not going to spend any political capital on that. Those of you who are concerned about education, there will be a bunch of lip service and then more of the same. Those of you concerned about making sure there's a sense of fairness in our economy, it will be less fair."Now everybody's counting on you - not just me. And I know that's a heavy weight, but also what a magnificent position to find yourself in, where the whole country is counting on you to change it for the better. Those moments don't come around very often, and here you are, five months away from having transformed the country and made history and changed the world. So we gotta seize it. So rest up a little bit, but come back ready to go ... AND fired up. All right, I gotta go, cheers guys, I love you, let's go win the election."
Seems like these primary contests are all about performance vs. expectations. Last night we resoundingly crushed the expectations - in both the popular vote and the delegate count. Specifically, the combined numbers from IN & NC show Barack racked up a margin of 210,000 popular votes, and he won 91 delegates to Hillary's 79 (with a handful of delegate slots yet to be allocated).
We have an insurmountable lead in pledged delegates and in the popular vote - even if the bogus results from Florida and Michigan are counted. And we're about to take the lead in superdelegates as well. The remaining contests will simply confirm the inevitable. It's time to unite the Democratic Party and focus on crushing John McCain in November.
Now here's one expectation we didn't beat. The Zogby poll (www.zogby.com) called both contests exactly - forecasting a 14-point win in North Carolina and a statistical dead heat in Indiana. Not bad!Fired up to win the nomination - and win again in November!Jamie
In 1961, a young African-American man, after hearing President John F.Kennedy's challenge to "ask not what your country can do for you, but whatyou can do for your country," gave up his student deferment, left college inVirginia and voluntarily joined the Marines. In 1963, this man, havingcompleted his two years of service in the Marines, volunteered again tobecome a Navy corpsman. (They provide medical assistance to the Marines aswell as to Navy personnel.)The man did so well in corpsman school that he was the valedictorian andbecame a cardiopulmonary technician. Not surprisingly, he was assigned tothe Navy's premier medical facility, Bethesda Naval Hospital, as a member ofthe commander in chief's medical team, and helped care for President LyndonB. Johnson after his 1966 surgery. For his service on the team, which heleft in 1967, the White House awarded him three letters of commendation.While this young man was serving six years on active duty, Vice PresidentDick Cheney, who was the same age, received five deferments, four for beingan undergraduate and graduate student and one for being a prospectivefather. Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, both five years younger,used their student deferments to stay in college until 1968. Both then usedfamily connections to avoid active duty.Who is the real patriot? The young man who interrupted his studies to servehis country for six years? Or our political leaders who beat the system? Arethe patriots the people who actually sacrifice something - or those whomerely talk about it?After leaving the service of his country, the young African-Americanfinished his final year of college, entered the seminary, was ordained as aminister, and eventually became pastor of a large church in one of America'sbiggest cities. This man is Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the retiring pastor ofTrinity United Church of Christ, who has been in the news for comments hemade over the last three decades.Since these comments became public we have heard criticisms, condemnations,denouncements and rejections of his comments and him. We've seen ontelevision, in a seemingly endless loop, sound bites of a select few of Rev.Wright's many sermons. Some of Wright's comments may be inappropriate, butbefore calling him "unpatriotic," let us remember that this is a man whogave up six of the most productive years of his life to serve his country.-- by Lawrence Korb and Ian MossWatch Bill Moyers' interview with Jeremiah Wright athttp://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04252008/watch.html
And Wright's speech to the NAACP at http://www.hiphopmusic.com/2008/04/rev_wright_naacp_speech_video.html Interesting note #1: Bill Moyers and Jeremiah Wright first met in 1966 whenMoyers was covering the White House, and Wright was on Lyndon Johnson'smedical team.Interesting note #2: Rev. Wright was invited to the White House by Bill andHillary Clinton for spiritual counseling in the wake of the Monica Lewinskyaffair.
This is the sequel to Hope & Change in Philadelphia. Sunday morning I headed north to Scranton. I joined a canvassing team going door-to-door in a big apartment complex - home to a multicultural mix of recently-arrived immigrants from Russia and India, as well as African-American, Latino and white residents. Many were not yet U.S. citizens, but among those who were, we found very strong support for Barack. A lot of residents didn't know where to vote. Fortunately we were able to give them that very important info - and Obama buttons to wear on their way to the polls!Sunday night Barack spoke at a huge rally along with Caroline Kennedy and Sen. Bob Casey. Barack spent Sunday night in Scranton, then Monday morning he showed up unannounced for breakfast at Glider's Diner. Two high school seniors who got wind of the visit cut classes to go to Glider's and meet Barack. They confessed their shameless act of truancy to Barack, so he wrote each of them an excuse to give to their principal. Too bad it didn't work. The students were suspended anyway, so they decided to volunteer all day Tuesday at the Scranton for Obama office. National media picked up the story and gave it wide exposure. You MUST read the full story, which appeared in the Washington Post.Not to be outdone, a Glider's customer walked off with Barack's breakfast plate containing his half-eaten waffle and sausage - and put it up for sale on eBay. High bid was $20,000. Don't believe me? Read the full story here.People were talking about a story concerning Hillary Clinton's grandmother Hannah Jones Rodham, who owned a lot of rental property in Scranton and wasn't shy about evicting poor tenants who got behind on their rent. Read the full story here - you won't regret it.Monday morning before canvassing, we put up some Obama signs. Not just yard signs, but the big 4x6-foot and 4x8-foot signs that I had brought from Vermont. We zip-tied signs to chain-link fences on highway overpasses, and attached them to rows of stakes pounded into the ground. A Quizno's sub shop even "adopted" one of our signs.Little did we know how short a life our signs would have. As soon as darkness fell, the goons attacked. By midnight all our big signs had vanished. To make matters worse, the Obama signs on highway overpasses had been replaced by 8-foot Hillary signs.I wish I could say cool heads prevailed, but they did not. Local volunteers were thirsty for revenge. By Tuesday morning, there were no large signs for either candidate remaining on any of the highways leading into or out of Scranton. We spent Tuesday going door-to-door again to remind our supporters to go to the polls. I made food runs to deliver fresh fruit and cold drinks to a group of Scranton poll workers who were stuck at their polling station from 6 am to 9 pm without a break. I also stopped by the polls in nearby Dunmore, where Lackawanna County Commissioner Corey O'Brien, a major Obama supporter, was out front greeting voters. Corey has attracted a lot of attention from the national media, including this story in the Washington Post. In addition, Corey was instrumental in persuading Barack to visit Dunmore on April 1st. Scranton was an awesome place to volunteer. The staffers were young and full of energy. The local volunteers were enthusiastic and filled with a passion for going above and beyond the call of duty. I'll be busy looking for an excuse to go back - maybe for the general election!Also read my previous post: Hope & Change in Philadelphia
Last weekend (April 18-20) six carloads of Vermonters hit the ground in eastern Pennsylvania. We canvassed in Scranton, Wilkes-Barre, Allentown, Doylestown, Abington and Philadelphia. Were you in Pennsylvania too? If so I'd love to hear from you!Friday afternoon my group arrived in Philly just in time to go to the Center City Obama office, get rally tickets and walk to the rally. Already a vast river of humanity was flowing to the rally site adjacent to Independence Hall (below). By nightfall there were 35,000 people - an all-time record crowd here to see Barack!While we waited for Barack to show up, the sound system belted out hope-mongering songs like Brooks & Dunn's Only In America and Earth, Wind & Fire's Shining Star. (For a complete playlist email blackice09@gmail.com.) After the third time through the playlist, will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas got up on stage and led us in a rousing rendition of the Yes We Can song (below).
When Barack finally walked on stage, the cheering was so deafening I had to put my fingers in my ears for 2-3 minutes before the noise subsided. Barack gave an impassioned speech (photo below), interrupted by countless bursts of applause - watch the entire speech here - then stepped off the podium to shake hands at the front of the crowd. People started reaching over each other trying to shake Barack's hand, and suddenly we were being pushed forward with an irresistible force. Thankfully no one was crushed or trampled. When Barack moved past us the pushing let up.
Saturday morning I went out to Northeast Philly (photo below) with another volunteer who had just flown in from Santa Barbara, CA. We set out on foot to canvass a nearby neighborhood. What an experience! Surprise #1: A lot of voters were still undecided. Surprise #2: Many of them were eager to ask us questions - and they listened thoughtfully to our answers. This is how canvassing is supposed to work. (Unlike here in New England, where most voters had already made up their minds and didn't care to listen.)
My favorite voter contact was a young stay-at-home mom with 2 young kids. When we first knocked on her door, she leaned out of an upstairs window, said she was about to jump in the shower, and asked us to please come back later because she wanted to talk to us. We did, and this time she came to the door with her hair wrapped in a towel. She said she was worried about the future - thanks to the rising cost of gasoline and other essentials, her husband's income was no longer enough to pay their bills. I explained Barack's plans to help middle-income taxpayers with tax breaks financed by repealing tax credits for oil companies and enacting a windfall profits tax. I also said Barack would work to make college more affordable by making the federal student loan program truly nonprofit and offering a free college education to partcipants in a national service program. By the time we left, she was 100% for Barack and ready to convert her husband too!Saturday evening we were joined at dinner by US Congressman Patrick Murphy, who represents the area northeast of Philly. Only thirty-nine years old, Patrick is the only Iraq war veteran in Congress, and he was the very first member of Congress from outside Illinois to endorse Barack. (Many more have followed his lead!) Like Barack, Patrick is an inspirational leader who is committed to ending the Iraq war and moving our country in a new direction. And that means electing more people like Patrick Murphy to Congress in November.Read the sequel: Sign wars, a waffle and a slumlord in Scranton.
As an eyewitness to Scranton's legendary St. Patrick's Day Parade on Saturday, March 15th,I can assure you: Northeastern Pennsylvania Rocks for Barack!I had heard that Scranton's was no ordinary parade. Originally a coal-mining town settled by Irish immigrants, Scranton now plays host to the fourth-largest St. Patrick's Day parade in the entire US - more than 100,000 people in attendance!On the good side: In Lackawanna County, Democrats outnumber Republicans 4-to-1. But Scranton also holds a more dubious distinction: It was the girlhood home of our Democratic primary opponent - she who must not be named - and support for her still runs strong there.When I learned that You-Know-Who was planning to march in this year's parade with a bevy of press and politicians, I sprung into action. I contacted volunteer stalwarts Tom Brown and Rick Sharp and we hatched a plan. First, Rick rented a one-way U-Haul trailer. Then he and Tom stuffed it with all the 4'x8' Obama signs they had rescued from Chittenden and Washington Counties, plus boxes and boxes of literature and office supplies from our former Burlington office. Then we hitched it up to the back of my Subaru and I headed south to PA.I rumbled into Scranton at 2 AM Saturday, caught a few hours' sleep at the home of a very generous volunteer, and pulled up in front of the Scranton Obama office at 8 AM. Our office was in a prime commercial location - right on the parade route - but it had just opened the day before. There were no phones, no furniture, no office supplies - just a swarm of volunteers. They rushed out to greet me, and within 5 minutes the U-Haul was emptied out. While volunteers set to work duct-taping our big Vermont signs to read "Vote April 22" (instead of March 4), I dropped off the empty trailer at U-Haul. I returned to the office to find Max Kennedy (son of Robert F.) speaking to a packed house. We then dispersed all over the parade route to ply the growing crowd of spectators with green O'bama signs, stickers, balloons and voter registration forms. Left: Obama signs dominate downtown Scranton.By 11:45am, we had deployed Obama signs at every major intersection along the parade route, and we were attracting major media attention. Then the parade started! Max Kennedy darted back and forth from one side of the street to the other like a hummingbird racing from flower to flower. He worked the crowd like nothing I've ever seen, shaking hands and exchanging smiles at a speed of hundreds of voters per minute. We were working the crowd ourselves, plastering thousands of spectators with green O'bama lapel stickers, when a flatbed trailer crammed with press photographers rolled by, and we knew, "Our moment is now!" We hoisted our 4'x8' sign high over our heads. Instantly, two HRC goons raced over and blocked our sign with their 4x8-footer. We quickly moved right. So did they. We moved left. They moved left too. We darted back and forth, jockeying for position, as the parade slowly moved on.The parade route was horseshoe-shaped. By racing down a side street, I realized, we could redeploy our big signs for a second engagement. This time we set up in an unassailable position, and it wasn't long before the flatbed of photographers rumbled by again. We were holding our big signs over our heads, when I looked down and saw You-Know-Who greeting voters 10 feet in front of me! Then she looked up. With the sudden realization that she was being photographed shaking hands under two giant Obama signs, she did a quick about-face and retreated to the other side of the street. It was the Ides of March and the victory was ours. Defeated on her own home turf!I've never seen so many green T-shirts in my life. My favorite green shirts read, "I Dig Scranton" (a coal-mining reference) and "Irish whiskey makes me frisky" (a drinking reference). The young women wearing the latter shirts accosted me and demanded to have green O'bama stickers applied to every protrusion in their anatomy. Should I have refused? Such are the moral and ethical dilemmas you face when you volunteer for the most inspiring Presidential candidate in recent memory.Join the fun and volunteer in Pennsylvania before it's too late. Email the campaign at PA@barackobama.com or me at blackice09@gmail.com. Obama '08 - Yes We Can!We were also on the local TV news! Go to www.wnep.com - click on "Newswatch 16 Sunday am" - and fast-forward to about 3 minutes into the newscast to watch Max Kennedy's speech and see the big blue Obama sign leaning against the front of my Subaru. (If you look closely you'll see me open the driver's side door and climb out.)Below: Victorian facades line Lackawanna Avenue along the parade route.Below: Supporters plastered themselves with green O'BAMA stickers.Below: End of a long day: Volunteers outside the Scranton office.
Grassroots-organized Honk & Waves are springing up all over Vermont - Burlington, Bennington, Brattleboro, Springfield, St. Albans, Montpelier and White River Junction to name just a few. At our White River honk & wave on Friday, I was expecting maybe 3 or 4 volunteers, and 9 showed up! We had two giant 4 foot by 6 foot signs and lots of smaller ones. We got so many honks we lost count. Several people stopped and rolled down their windows. "This will be the second time in my life I've voted for a Democrat," said a man with graying hair. "I'm making phone calls to Ohio!" yelled a woman as she drove by. A couple who live just up the street pulled over and asked for a yard sign. This is grassroots politics at its best.Need to borrow signs for your local Honk & Wave? Shoot me an email: jamie@nordicskater.com
Let's March 4th Together!
This just in from the Washington Post: Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, a former Clinton administration official and only the second African-American governor in modern history, is planning to endorse Sen. Barack Obama in the Democratic presidential campaign, aides to both lawmakers said late today.
Former President Clinton, who appointed Patrick as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, had pressured him to support Hillary. But Patrick, who like Obama attended Harvard Law School, decided to support Obama instead. His backing represents a substantial coup for Obama: Patrick was elected with help from a sizable grassroots organization in Massachusetts, across the border from the first-in-the-nation primary state of New Hampshire.
Yesterday at lunchtime we set up our Obama information table in downtown Hanover. As always, the outpouring of support for Barack was exciting and inspiring. But the people who came by our table yesterday weren't just the typical mix of students and local residents. We met Floridians, Californians, German tourists - and a TV crew from Sarajevo in Bosnia.
The Bosnians and their American producer interviewed two of our group for a documentary about American student attitudes toward politics. We in turn learned that many Bosnian students are apathetic about politics because of entrenched goverment corruption. (Sound familiar?) Hopefully their documentary will catalyze a resurgence of student activism in Bosnia - just as Barack's campaign is sparking activism on American college campuses.
Another win for Team Obama! Saturday morning four of us put on our Obama T-shirts and lined up for the Warner Fall Foliage Festival 5-mile road race. There was only one other runner wearing a shirt advertising a candidate. So Barack scored 80% of the runner endorsements.Shamus, our #1 runner, finished in the top 10 overall, and won his age group again, just like last week. Brendan, Will and I distinguished ourselves by finishing. Congratulations to all !(Photo below - L to R: Jamie, Will, Brendan and Shamus.) After the finish we converged on the local bookstore, Main Street Bookends, for a chance to meet voters and sign up Obama supporters at the Fall Foliage Festival. A steady stream of festival-goers came by our table (photo below).In the coming weeks we'll be running for Barack in Concord, Manchester, Hanover, Contoocook and Henniker. Come run with us! For a complete schedule of Team Obama running events, visit our group page at http://my.BarackObama.com/page/group/RunningForBarack-NewHampshire
69% of Americans want Congress to cut the $190 billion that Bush is requesting for another year of war in Iraq and Afghanistan. A Washington Post - ABC News poll reports that 23% support a modest cut, 43% favor a sharp reduction, and 3% urge a total cutoff. Not surprisingly, large majorities of Democrats and independents favor a cut, but even Republicans are closely divided, with 46% wanting a cut in funding.
More good news: 70% of Americans support Congress in its battle with Bush over boosting funding for SCHIP, the State Children's Health Insurance Program. Yesterday in Hanover, groups of medical professionals wearing lab coats stood on downtown street corners waving signs supporting SCHIP.
And Bush's approval rating has once again dropped to its all-time low of 33%. Let's channel this discontent into support of the one voice speaking out for hope, action and change: Barack Obama.
Today at lunchtime Jen and I set up a table on the sidewalk in downtown Hanover. Our mission: To mark the 5th anniversary of Barack's historic speech opposing the Iraq war. We spent 2 hours handing out copies of Barack's speech to passers-by, and it was evident from the comments we received that we were having a big impact on undecided voters by calling attention to Barack's judgment, courage and leadership.
One voter told me that Barack's early opposition to the Iraq war had helped to convince him to support Barack for President. I offered him a copy of Barack's speech but he said no - he already had the speech saved on his computer!
October 2nd is almost over, but why stop now? We should be out on the streets every day handing out Obama buttons, stickers and copies of Barack's 2002 speech. Want to join me?
Team Obama made a strong showing in the inaugural Newbury Fall Fling 5K running race held this morning in Newbury, NH. Mark finished second overall, Shamus was third, and I was ninth. Not only that, but Shamus and Mark both won their age groups - congratulations! Our next events are the Applefest in Hollis next Saturday, and the Turkey Trot 10K in Hanover on November 18th. Whatever your speed, come run with us!To join our group, or to suggest another running event for Team Obama, go tohttp://my.barackobama.com/page/group/RunningforBarack-NewHampshire
HANOVER HOPE-MONGERS: Obama supporters wave to passing motorists in front ofthe Hanover Inn, just hours before yesterday's debate at Dartmouth College.FIRED UP: Obama supporters outnumber and outshout the other campaigns at the pre-debate rallyon the Dartmouth College Green. Yes it's true, the other campaigns DO suffer from an "enthusiasm gap".
The rally is underway and the crowd is growing! We're waving Obama signs, yelling and chanting on the Dartmouth College Green as the candidates prepare to debate. We're standing on busy street corners holding "Honk For Obama" signs. The PieMobile and the PigMobile from http://www.PrioritiesNH.org are circling the Green - check them out online or come see them in person! Stay tuned for the next "almost live" report from the debate and rally.
