I made it early to the District Office on Madison intent on spending the day canvassing.
This was the last day before the election. With only a day to go, the work typically consists of 'lit drops' -- i.e. going from door to door just leaving reminders, usually in the form of 'door-hangers' about the election.
We went again to Brown County. The Obama Campaign in Ohio was making a big push to get as many votes as possible in the traditionally Republican areas outside of Cincinnati. Everybody was sent out.
I got an extra hour of coveted sleep thanks to the end of daylight savings time. The Calendar says 'November 4' but it's been more springlike than anything else.
I decided to stay local today, signing up for one of the neighborhood canvasses via BarackObama.com.
The Canvass was being run out of a field office in Cincinnati's 'Uptown' in a building that had just been opened a day or two earlier. When I got there, one of the Campaign Workers, Scott, was trying to get a few winks of much needed sleep on the porch of the place.
Long day. We had a group of people from Lexington Kentucky plus a local who was canvassing for the first time. It was an energetic bunch.
We were sent out to Brown County, to a township about 50 miles outside of Cincinnati. I met later with an official from one of the union locals and he stressed how important it was to have people out there canvassing for Obama. "Usually," he said, 'it's only the GOP."
I've been banging on doors for Obama for the past three days. People ask me how I think he's doing.
I have only one response:
This is all about a bargain you make. It's entirely personal between you and the candidate and has nothing to do with polls, or what's happening in other states. If you do your part, the candidate wins. If you don't do your part, the candidate loses.
Today was our 2nd day in Ohio and the best so far. We slept off the travel fatigue of our first day and were raring to go.
We got to the Walnut Hill Office at around 9:30am. There already was a group of people waiting there for canvasing.
They needed help in Claremont County which some distance from Cincinnati. I drove with one of the other volunteers -- a college student from Louisville going to college in Cincinnati.
We took the bus to Cincinnati. The first thing that greeted us on our arrival was a line of people waiting in front of one of the county buildings for early voting. Volunteers from the local Democratic campaigns were handing out literature. When they heard we were from Chicago, they thanked us for coming.
It just doesn't occur to these [GOP] party leaders that the Republican governing philosophy doesn't work. The party had it all just a few years ago, did exactly what it wanted to do, ran over Democrats as if they were speed-bumps, and saw all of their ideas fail miserably. As the nation moved away from the GOP as a result, these activists concluded they'd learned a valuable lesson -- the Republican Party wasn't nearly conservative enough.
For weeks, the pundits have noted that the financial crisis has seriously undermined the McCain campaign. That's true, but it overlooks why -- McCain has handled the crisis really badly. It's not enough to simply note that a focus on the economy is necessarily good news for Obama; McCain had a chance to deal with this crisis effectively and he blew it.
It's an interactive map of the U.S. using geo-positioning to map out all the robo-call smears that the McCain campaign is currently inflicting on the country.
For weeks, the pundits have noted that the financial crisis has seriously undermined the McCain campaign. That's true, but it overlooks why -- McCain has handled the crisis really badly. It's not enough to simply note that a focus on the economy is necessarily good news for Obama; McCain had a chance to deal with this crisis effectively and he blew it.
