Submitted to a Candid World
Archive for November 2, 2008
Field Report: Canvassing Florida for Obama
My little sister Allie, a student & new voter (congrats Allie!) in north-ish Florida, spent earlier today canvassing her town for Obama, with reports of great (and surprising) success. Without getting too geographically specific, Allie’s area is a swing county of a swing state: more rural than urban, with a fair share of senior citizens, it’s arguably part of what Palin loves to derisively call the “real” America. In short, it’s a county that she and that other guy must win.
Thing is, they aren’t.
Per Allie, Obama’s get-out-the-vote effort is strong and getting good responses from voters. It’s easy to get lost in the smears – everytime I see the name “Wright” pop up, I’m convinced Obama’s just lost the election – but the fact is, they aren’t working. On her rounds, conservative Christian voters self-identified as Obama supporters (saying they trust his “conscience), grabbed stickers, and told her they’d already voted. Moms splitting time between child and job said that, thanks to extended voting hours and Florida’s new “take-a-number” deli-style system (“now serving #583,464…”), they’d do their best, but cross their fingers for Obama regardless. Seniors had “Republicans for Obama” lawn signs. Even the one guy who said he’d vote for Nader had an Obama sign in his yard.
We just might win this. Two days.
Will We Go Negative?
With McCain breaking yet another promise to run a clean campaign (but remember, it’s somehow Obama’s fault!), I have to wonder: are we going to keep to the high road, or take a final potshot at McCain’s dishonest, amoral campaign? I say, it’s time to fire with all guns: put the affair on the table, drag out Hagee, the Alaskan Independence Party, the witch doctor – we can’t lose this one just because they’re willing to destroy the country to win it.
New GOP “Reverend Wright” Ad Was “Unauthorized”
Right. We all believe that. A new ad going up in Pennsylvania, entitled “Judgment,” asks viewers to infer something about Obama’s character from his relationship with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. You’ll recall that John McCain told his party that Wright was “off limits” for negative ads. You’ll also recall that McCain, prior to April of this year, told America that negative campaigning was off limits. What promises has McCain kept thus far? John – if it’s unauthorized, make your party pull it down. Otherwise, admit you lied. Good news: Wright was played out a while ago.
The Ground Game: Believe It. Obama is Winning.
We live in New York … not exactly a swing state. We have seen only a few ads, and we certainly don’t get mailers or phone calls. We traveled to Minnesota (just before the Republican National Convention), and we were in Nevada in late September, during the bailout craziness. In those states, we saw lots of ads, not just from Obama and McCain, but from T. Boone Pickens, the clean-coal lobby, the natural gas industry … the saturation of issue ads made me long for dumb beer commercials. On the one hand it is nice not to be bugged, but on the other hand it is maddening, not having a sense of the situation in contested areas.
So on Saturday, we decided to find out. We signed up to drive 140 miles to Allentown, Pennsylvania to join other Obama volunteers in canvassing efforts.
I think people forget how rural the Northeast is. City centers like New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Newark belie how much of the region is wooded, criss-crossed with two-lane county and state roads. The area, like much of the Midwest, is trying to manage suburban development and population growth in heretofore small towns. It is interesting to see a Camry driving alongside a pickup with a recently shot deer in the truck bed, with both vehicles heading to the local Lowes or Sam’s Club.
We entered Pennsylvania through one of these areas. Milford is a small town, surrounded by newly constructed strip malls and big-box stores. It is also, from what we saw, a conservative center. McCain-Palin signs outnumbered Obama signs by about 4:1, and there was a large McCain-Palin field office, replete with six-foot plywood elephants. We felt quite self-conscious in, yes, our Prius, wearing our Obama ’08 tees. (Our son, Didion, was in his Obama onesie.) But lo and behold if across the street there wasn’t an equally large Obama-Biden field office!
We had seen reports that Obama was drilling into areas of swing states where Democrats historically had no presence, and those reports are absolutely correct. Obama has approximately 80 field offices in Pennsylvania, compared to 36 for McCain, and these offices are staffed with a driven, disciplined group of volunteers and bolstered by an undeniably magnetic draw.
Adventure in Allentown below the jump.
McCain’s Last Best Chance: Concede
Throughout this election, Senator McCain has made “liberal” use of publicity stunts to secure himself the media coverage he’s otherwise sorely lacked. Hell – even his own running mate won’t mention him. To make up for this deficit, he mastered the art of the one-day headline grab: from picking a rabble-rousing “hockey mom” over a competent public servant, to suspending his campaign, to comparing a Senator to Paris Hilton. Sure, the fallout on Day Two always came back to bite him, but with so little time left in the election, why not try it again? What better way to close out the season than with one last grandiose, empty play at political grandstanding?
But what’s left to do? McCain’s tried nearly every divisive culture-war narrative in the book, reached practically back to kindergarten to find every controversial hand Barack Obama has ever shook… and he’s already filled his VP slot. Short of promising to appoint Joe the Plumber to head the Fed, there’s not much else to do.
Except, concede. Or… pretend to.
Wait wait! See, there’s method to this madness. Bear with me. A skillfully delivered concession speech on Monday morning (“My friends, ever since I was a POW I’ve been working for Joe Sixpacks like Joe the Plumber, but today…”) would snag all the headlines Tuesday morning, making sure that voters see it before going to the polls, would begin the work of repairing his shattered bipartisan image, and it would vindicate him as the ultimate maverick. Most importantly, it couldn’t hurt his chances on Election Day any more than his other gimmicks already have, and it just might de-mobilize enough of the Democratic electorate, while snagging some pity votes, that he could still pull through and win this.
And, let’s face it – what does he have to lose? He’s made us laugh. More frequently, he’s made us cry. But an eleventh-hour concession could be just the shot in the arm the McCain campaign needs to struggle back to the top. And it’s just in line with the kinds of media circuses McCain seems to love lately.
Has McCain not played his part well? Then all clap: the piece is finished, and the actor leaves the stage. ((A line attributed to Augustus. Forgot where I read it.))
