A Great Night!

I've had an Obama sticker on my car for 2 years because I was convinced the first time that I heard him speak that he was someone truly extraordinary. The campaign he waged to win office was honorable and even-tempered despite the nastiness and outright lies thrown his way by his opponents. I believe and fervently hope that he will be able to fulfill his promise as president and that, as Colin Powell put it, he will be a transformational figure in American history. So yes, I'm excited and grateful that he will have that chance.

Regarding our ANC, I see new hope for that as well. What I believe are the final tallies are posted here and here. So it looks like it will be Padro, Chapple, Sule, and Brooks. Congratulations to all the winners.

This should break the logjam that has prevented ANC2C from becoming something much more than it is today. Theresa Sule brings a new approach and energy, and I'm delighted that she will now bring her talents to the ANC. I hope that Ms. Brooks will become a constructive player in the new commission. There's a lot that can be done there.

Canvassing for Obama in the Burbs

Yesterday evening I volunteered to canvas voters for the Democratic party out in Virginia--a new experience for me.

First, I gotta say that the Obama people definitely have their act together. The organization was nothing short of phenomenal; if Obama wins and they can run the country the way this campaign is being run, we'll be in good shape!

When I got to the DNC parking lot on S. Capitol, they had direction sheets ready to send volunteers to local offices in the outer ring of the VA burbs, normally Republican territory. I got Ashburn in Loudoun County--out beyond Dulles Airport. This is the land of McMansions (the kind with brick facades on the front and vinyl siding on the rest of the house) and long commutes.

The local Democratic office in a very anonymous-looking office park had the packets ready with the names and addresses of the households we were to visit. The detailed info on the sheets was amazing. The addresses had already been visited twice, and we were only going to the ones where there had been no one at home, or where there was support for Obama--the idea being to make sure those people get to the polls. They even had flashlights for the canvassers (it was already dark at 6 p.m.)!

I was paired with a very sharp young woman who works in Sen. Patty Murray's office, and we headed off to a subdivision about 4 miles away--one of those with curving streets and lots of cul-de-sacs. I gotta say walking around suburbia at night seems pretty creepy.

Happily, no one pulled a gun on us, and most people were surprisingly cordial. Someone came to every door we knocked on. At the first house we hit, they actually wanted to engage in conversation about the election, so we hung around for a good ten minutes. A number of the households were divided about the election, but there seemed to be pretty good support for Obama--including a number of yard signs at houses we didn't visit. We were also supposed to say stuff about Mark Warner and Judy Feder, but people really seemed focused only on the presidential race. Only one guy (at a house with a big American flag on the porch and a "no tresspassing" sign in the window) told us to beat it--wonder who he's voting for.

So I don't know if this helped the cause, but I'm glad I did it, because it feels good to have done something besides give money.

I think they're still taking volunteers, so if you're interested, you can call at 202-579-2584.

Where are They Keeping El Loco?

Is the presidential race now really between Obama and Palin? Am I wrong, or has McCain just sort of disappeared over the last week? And what happened to all the McCain TV attack ads in the DC market? Have they given up on Virginia like they did on Michigan?

I had a chance this morning to read all the newspapers placed before me (WaPo and NYT--I can name them), and was struck by the amount of chatter about Divine Sarah and the absence of much of anything about El Loco. The past week has shown conclusively that the Consumate Maverick can't exercise leadership over his own party any more than the unspeakable Dubya can. Even with both of their support and truckloads of lard, they still couldn't get even a bare majority of Republicans in the House to support the bailout bill. What does that say?

Meanwhile, Palin is all over the place. The weird inversion is that the McCain campaign has gone over big time for the very thing that they blasted Obama for: i.e., using celebrity to sell their candidate. Never mind that much of the publicity is in the form of well-deserved ridicule. Never mind that what Palin says is a bizarre mixture of lies and buzzword-laden gibberish. (Just read the transcript and see if you can find an actual thought there.) Never mind that she has not yet shown that she knows anything about anything. She gets the eyeballs on TV and that's all that matters at this point. Even supposedly veteran pundits like David Broder are talking about how "Palin did just fine" and terming the VP debate "uplifting". Huh???? Ironically, it seems that nearly everyone except TV satirists has abandoned all critical faculties in favor of an American Idol value system.

Palin acts as if she believes she is indeed running for president--which she may well be. Here she is running for commander-in-chief with a resume that consists basically of a six-year term as mayor of a town the size of La Plata, Maryland and being a rookie governor of a state with the population of Baltimore city (in its now-shrunken state). But more important, even in a format that allowed her to regurgitate prepared spoon-fed gobbets of text, she has been unable to articulate a single policy on anything. (Yeah, we know she just loves Israel.) But, as Paris Hilton would say, she's HOT.

I'm not sure if the American public is really buying it, however. With the polls showing solidifying support for Obama, the El Loco's only option is to go for Big Lies and character assassination. The Palin/McCain campaign has already shown that it has no problem with that, so get ready for things to get really ugly for the next month.

Oh, BTW, the Maverick family wants its name back. See here.