Hack

The Party of No

2010-03-30T13:35:00.000-07:00

The unity of the Republican Party showed frayed edges when David Frum, former Bush speechwriter, dissented from the party's roadblocking of the healthcare bill. As benefits start to kick in and the bill becomes as much a part of the political backdrop of the country as Social Security or Medicare, will there be a slow peeling off of members of the Republican party?

In order to win elections, how many smart conservatives are going to look at campaigning on repealing low cost healthcare and balk? How many of them will defect? Will they run as Democrats? Will the defection come en masse, or will the purging continue until after the next national election?

With Tea Partiers splitting tickets, healthcare passing, and denial continuing to be the only viable position to remain in the Republican fold, is a long term Democratic controlled Congress before us?

Huh. Ideological purity is a tough row to hoe when it's kind of unpopular.

Supreme Court and the Arc of Justice

2010-01-21T13:39:00.000-08:00

The Supreme Court's decision today that there is no difference between free speech by an individual and corporate expenditures to effect political campaigns fails to take in to account either the ideals driving the corporation or the impact the application of this decision will have on the public interest. Free speech laws are often seen by the left as though they exist in a vacuum, but we make exceptions for things like hate speech. That said, I don't think arguing that spending money is not speech is the core fo the problem here.

The core, instead is whether or not corporations have the same rights as individuals, indeed whether or not corporations are people.

What a gross thought. Unfortunately, the court system has been moving this direction for a number of years, and this decision is essentially the ultimate ratification of that view.

Given that corporate expenditures are now the 800 lb gorilla in all campaigns, one extrapolates a few outcomes:

a) In order to get elected, candidates will be more beholden then ever to whomever underwrites their campaign. We will literally have the R. Kelly campaign for Senate, brought to you by Nabisco and 'Golden Shower' hygenic products.

b) Corporate contributions will far exceed the money that individual citizens can pony up in all but the most extreme circumstances. This will lead to many outcomes, but I'm particularly interested in one or two:

1. Only the most populist democrats will be able to really benefit from citizen contributions, meaning that the democratic party will be even further divided between corprate placators and Grayson like barn-burners. Passing bills with a unified party will be even harder, and

2. Citizens will choose to funnel their contributions in the most direct way possible, meaning unions and other entities other then the DNC could become a more powerful draw for small-donor contributions.

c) The biggest losers here will be tax-funded public institutions. The biggest recievers of corporate support will be candidates with a strong anti-corporate tax stance, meaning that the largest cut of the modern federal budget system begins shrinking with the next election cycle. Schools, transportation infrastructure, libraries, you name it, if it's funded by the public dollar it's days are numbered.

In short, this decision will pave the way for a society that caters to it's mightiest inhabitants, a Chicago School of Economics free-for-all the likes of which Milton Friedman could never have come up with in his wildest dreams. Money is now the biggest arbitor of political power, and the decending spiral of the interaction of the two without any kind of mitigating moral structure restraining the double helix means that the public is now essentially a bystander to the rise of the mega corporation. If you catch yourself thinking that this is where we've been all along, this is far, far more straightforward. The last vestiges of protection are essentially gone.

There are some fixes through legislation that could concievably get around this ruling, but bare minimum everything that's bad about our electoral system just got a whole lot worse. Hard to really see the long band of MLK's arc of Justice going the way he envisioned it right now....

Disgruntlement

2009-12-04T21:00:00.000-08:00

I find myself in the new and unsettling position of apologizer. With his usual soaring rhetoric, our president (nee' the candidate) is now using his political capital to sell a war. Without getting in to the merits of it, here to fore, I've been against war. I'm still against war. For any reason, really.

And the energy bill is totally dead weight in the senate right now, vanquished by the healthcare bill. Which in and of itself is currently being beaten in to unrecognizeability by the echo chamber and special interests. And financial reform is basically a joke, which is unfortunate if you want to finance an economy with the industry it's failing to regulate.

On the up side, we're still mostly fighting over things that are bettter then they were eight years ago. But that's pretty weak sauce when most of us went in to this year hoping for Camelot.

So. Camelot it ain't. And it's only likely to get worse before any of this gets better. But.

The economy is showing some signs of life. He did still put $80 billion towards clean energy in his first three months in office, more then anybody ever. He did slow down one war with intention to withdrawl (though like any addict is starting on the next bender before the last one is even properly concluded). He's pushed health care further then anyone ever.

So it's ugly. But pragmacy is both boring and ugly. So maybe there's hope for the future. It won't be Camelot. Chicago, maybe. Corrupt as hell, dirty and sort of unpleasant some of the time, but a good heart, hard working, and at the end of it all still one of the best cities in the world.

I'd take that. But getting there? Nobody likes to watch sausage-grinding.

And I still don't like war.

GW and pitching a shit fit about the future

2009-06-27T12:07:00.000-07:00

So, after tons of effort (going from 190 yes votes in the house to 219 in the space of a week), my organization just had a heavy hand in helping to pass the American Clean Energy and Security Act through the House. The bill is a nationwide attempt to pass a workable cap and trade program, and is the first of it's kind to ever make it out of committee in the House, let alone actually pass.

The bill is troubled. It contains a number of major concessions that may or may not wind up gutting the legislation over time, including but not limited to:
1. Most of the pollution credits are given away initially. This means that the cost of carbon will be very low initially, essentially blunting the intended purpose of the cap and trade program to add extrinsic cost to carbon emissions and thusly incentivize clean energy sources.
2. the Renewable Energy Standard requires that we get 20% of our energy from renewable sources, like wind, solar or geothermal power, by 2020. However, up to 5% of that can come from energy effeciency measures, and governors can petition to get up to 8% from effeciency measures. This is good, but in fact, the stimulus bill just passed will actually do more, and sooner; so this is sort of an afterthought.
3. It stops the EPA from regulating Carbon Emissions from currently existing power plants, a power they got about four months ago.
4. There are all sorts of lame ass rebates for producers of dirty energy, including a provision that madates that rebates to the coal companies be spent up to a certain astronomical amount on 'clean coal' research, a technology that is a fiction and is used by the industry to perpetuate their argument against clean energy investment and innovation.

All of the above are bad things. There a couple things to note about it, however:
1. It does not include money for nuclear power. Given that nukes still create nuclear waste, and our best plan for nuclear waste storage continues to be to ship it on Amtrak to a site that is so far unapproved but sits on a fault line (not to mention the indian burial ground which it displaces, which in and of itself sounds like the plot to a bad movie and implies that we'll wind up with nuclear powered ghosts haunting the joint), this is for the best.
2. It does actually create a national RES, which we didn't have before and is an enforceable standard that for sure will drive the creation of more clean energy.
3. It does include effeciency standards for all new governmental buildings, which is great.
4. It does actually create a cap and trade program, which is the first step towards actually dealing with this problem.

All of the above needs strengthening. But helping to pass this bill reminded me why I settled on the politics of incrementalism to begin with. By continuing to stretch the horizons of those who oppose, continually chipping down the boundaries, we're able to move forward, to continue to gain ground. To those who say that we need more, we need everything, and now, I agree. But up until you get the rest of America to agree with you and can rise up in armed insurrection, your argument will mean that we have to continue waiting. And we can't do that.

That being said, you always have to have a bottom line. This bill couldn't have gotten much more compromised before we would have stopped supporting it. And it will take a lot of work over the next decade to make sure that we strenghthen this thing, and make sure it's actually enforced once the pendulum swings back and people like us are swept from the seats of power.

That being said, this was a statement of intent by the President and the Speaker of the House, who rammed this thing through Congress (I thought inviting swing votes from Congress over to the White House for a Luau, including a 'dunk Rahm Emmanuel' booth, was a stroke of genius). These guys actually care about this, and though passing this thing was hard as hell and they had to give up some ground, they got it done. The opportunity will likely never be better, and they had the balls to take it.

Now let's hope that Harry Reid can take a cue from the Lady of San Francisco. I hope he's half the man she is.

Tampa wants to give you succor

2009-01-30T06:49:00.001-08:00

I'm sleeping on a naked matress in a blank room in a house in Tampa, under a wool sheet. It's cold and I'm fully clothed. The sheet is sweaty, somehow. The house is surrounded by a chainlink fence with weeds growing so completely through it that the fence bristles; creeper vines hang down from the trees overhead almost touching the fence, giving the impression that the house is being reclaimed.

Mostly the house only contains records, keyboards, and amps. There is a wraparound couch in the living room, a turntable, and a glass endtable appropriate only for cutting lines on. The fridge contains only beer, and there is only one towel in the bathroom in a four bedroom house. The shower has never been used. None of the mattresses have sheets, although there is a couple year out of date Mac Book in one of the rooms, incongrous in it's clean shiny lines.

At 2:30 in the morning, a caterwauling sets up outside, 'Dee! Deeee!', a woman either jilted or angered somehow, suddenly a wierd part of my pleasent dream about my wife. It comes closer, increasing in volume, but muffled by walls and the enclosed front porch. Now it's pounding on the walls, jolting me awake disoriented. It is at the window, blows to the window even louder echoing in the empty room, calling for Dee desperately and all of the attendent fun of domestic disputes is with it in my mind. This woman is bereaved, desperate sounding. Is she covered in blood? Is someone coming after her?

Burrowing and ignoring it might work, but then I'm just going to feel bad about it later. So I get up and go to the garage door. A few helloes and I'm waiting for the worst, some lover's quarrel that is going to consume my night, a slasher movie right at the beginning. In my life story, I'm the protagonist, but in any story involving an ax, I'm going to be the nice guy who goes down right at the beginning. This lady will make it through, although her number of limbs will be in question.

But no, looming out of the nighttime mist, it is only the band Hellscape, here to spend the night after their show, and unable to get in touch with any of the people who live here, all of whom have left the house to me.

Steed, the pleasant, shaved head with the blond ponytail, rotting black clothing and the iphone who lives here has told these poor, beraggled folks that they can stay here. There is a lot of black denim, and patches. The lady's name begins with 'Ch', and her dress is very short and she has a short haircut and a lot of tatooes, but I don't catch a lot more. I point out the couches, and they unload more beer in to the fridge as I retreat.

The blanket they are sharing covers up the tatooes, and their faces are waxy and childlike in sleep as I leave at daybreak.

Paradise Lost or a new beginning

2009-01-29T09:14:00.000-08:00

OK. So, BHO goes down to the Hill and personally lobbies representatives of the other party to pass the stimulus bill. He doesn't call names or threaten anyone politically, or invoke the anger of the people, or in any other way hurl invectives. He actually removes some pieces of the bill that the representatives find offensive, although does not give substantially.

When the vote comes, not a single one of the those representatives vote for BHO's bill. In fact, they come out in force on the television to shittalk the thing.

BHO, instead of launching a full-scale blame game, has them over for drinks that evening instead.

He's said from the beginning that he was going to change the tone in DC. His opponents have paid lip service to such a thing, but clearly have no intention of following through. But BHO is clearly in this for the long game. While not turning the other cheek, he's doing his best to include the other team.

This isn't a partisan thing. BHO is pure-bread politics; by remaining cool, friendly, and focused, (and winning at the same time), he's building his street cred with the people. By driving his agenda as quickly as possible, trying to bring others along and being incredibly (why not just say it) nice to them, he's not only accomplishing policy goals but laying groundwork for long-term grasp of power.

He's making them look like irritable children.

The more interesting part is whether or not this style will play in the Senate. While BHO has the party muscle to drive his bills through in the House, he lacks the necessary votes in the branch from whence he came. How will he finesse his way to victory there?

And, will the opposition party start picking up his vibes and following him or will they continue their petulance? What will that mean about policy designed to help this country from it's doldrums in the short term? What will it mean for the 2010 elections? What will it say about we, the American people, if we embrace the opposition's 'taxes, taxes, taxes' credo?

The best possible outcome, to my mind, here is that BHO drives the opposition party to some new understanding of partisan politics and drives elections that are debates over policy prescriptions, arguments about implementation of new ideas, that grapple with the problems of today.

The schadenfreude of watching the opposition double-down right now, even as they continue eating themselves from within in their own leadership contest, does nothing to ease my concerns on what the implications are for the next two years. If this kind of rancor from their corner continues, what is bad now in our society will only become worse.

An actual opportunity for change

2008-11-21T22:22:00.000-08:00

The election by House Dems of Henry Waxman to succeed John Dingell as the chairman of the Energy and Commerce committee is a big deal. Dingell is literally married to GM (his wife was one of their lead lobbyists for years, and still senior executive for them). He has, since 1955 when he first took over the seat, derailed good environmental regulation of all sorts.

Dingell's been one of the leading voices against clean car legislation, which would mandate a cut in tail pipe emissions, and time and again stood up against the tyranny of higher fuel effeciency standards. His argument each time has been that the development of the technology necessary to implement such changes would amount to an unbearable burden by the auto industry.

As a contextual note, the Model T Ford got better gas mileage then the average American car on the road gets today. And somehow, without the burden of having to clean up, the auto industry is repeatedly before Congress now, hat in hand.

By contrast, Rep. Waxman is a champion for the environment, and has shown himself to be willing to speak truth to power. He was the primary author of the Safe Climate Act, to date the only major bill that has actually proposed to mandate the cuts in greenhouse gas emissions scientists the world over have said are necessary to stave off the worst effects of climate change, 25% by 2020 and 80% by 2050.

This change happened with the tacit support of the Obama administration (his transition team just appointed Waxman's former senior legislative aide as the congressional liason for his administration), as well as with that of Pelosi.

This is the real deal. This could and should be the start of sweeping change to energy legislation, creating a million jobs nationwide with an Apollo Project style commitment to clean energy sources. This could be new innovation, smarter use of existing technology. A rebuilding of American dominance of the energy market. An actual American commitment to being good at something again that's actually good for the world. An America that actually makes something.

This opens the door. I am enjoying looking through.

Cool

2008-11-05T14:49:00.000-08:00

The Senator for Illinois took the helm with the same calm, cool, collected demeanor with which he does most things. His speech was measured, and laid out the challenges ahead while paying heed to those who helped him along the way.

Surrounded by organizers, volunteers, and canvassers, we all watched him and cheered as though we were right there with him. People danced in the streets outside, and the downtown mall was impassable.

This is the supreme validation of grassroots organizing, of the kind of shoe-leather politics I have committed myself too. The margin of victory in VA was less then the number of people we registered to vote in that state; it is enough to give me faith, to let me hold out hope that in the face of injustice and iniquity, there is recourse for the people.

We can remake the future, together.

It was the first national mood I've seen since 9/11, and the launchpad feeling of it for the new president feels similar as well. Perhaps those who did not vote for the candidate are not excited, but the feeling of renewal and unity is unmistakable. As we all danced in the streets last night, we can all know. This is our time, our moment. Maybe we can't solve all the problems, but for now I won't feel like it's a wast of time trying.

Moutaintops

2008-10-30T17:21:00.000-07:00

Winding my way down the switchbacks at night with a cigarette clenched in my teeth and the wind whipping through the windows of the rental car, there is no light, just the swerving sphere of my headlights. I'm listening to the white noise between radio stations that is all you can get this far up, and I'm thinking about how strange it is that HST didn't love teenagers.

I've just dropped off two young men, 15 and 18, in the hightops above Boulder. On the way up, the more local one was recounting how the people up here are real hilljacks, people who live in communities off the grid. About how they're going to get chased by dogs, fall off cliffs, get shot at by privacy minded locals. At some point I get a bit concerned and ask if they're sure they want to go up here, if maybe I should just come back up here myself to get out the vote later.

"Hell no! We're fucking Men! We got this!" Then they roil out of the car with their clipboards, laughing at my request for their cellphone numbers.

"No reception up here, dude. We'll see you later tonight!"

These gentlemen do not overthink, nor have they had the juice squeezed out of them yet. They're psyched about $10/hr and psyched about the candidate and amped about their own swinging dicks.

These are the american dreamers that I always feel like Hunter was horrified for, for whom the half-truths and platitudes are designed by candidates. Their credulity is intact.

And perhaps that's right. Maybe this time we're not being lied to. Or maybe this is one more reason to stay on these swaybacked bastards as they come in to office, to make sure that my boys can look a call to action in the eyes and come out swinging and not doubt.

When I pick them up, they have been chased by dogs. And they laugh while they tell the story.

Westward, Ho!

2008-10-22T06:22:00.000-07:00

Having done a ton of work to set up our offices in Northern OH, I've now been drafted to head west to CO to finish out the election here. We've sunk a lot of resources in to delivering the western states, with a premium on CO and a couple others. So instead of overseeing a group of offices, now I'm running the Boulder office.

I have 14 salaried staff who canvass daily and then do volunteer organizing in the mornings, and should be able to hire 24 canvassers as well.

Our day starts at 8am and goes to about 1am, during which time we ID and work to persuade between 300-600 voters.

Boulder is a lovely little hamlet in which to ride out all this malarky.

The Audacity of Hope

2008-10-14T06:02:00.001-07:00

Many highlights about canvassing in Toledo yesterday, but one in particular to share:

When an 80-year-old swing voter is questioned as to his inclinations in the presidential race, he responds:

"Mmmm....Mc....mmm....the colored fella."

The vivisection of modern American thought, door by door, continues to yield rare fruit.

Where in the world is hack?

2008-10-11T10:06:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday, leaving the last of the voter reg project in Philadelphia, I drove to our training in VA. En Route, I got a call asking me to 'take a break and stay flexible'. I stopped with a friend in DC at 8:30pm. Watched the debate, drank beer, got a call telling me I was going to Denver, then a 2nd call telling me I was going to Columbus. Bought a ticket, slept a few hours, flew to Columbus for the training on Wednesday.

Helped run a big training, got all the people out and almost all of them housed and on to flights, cars, trains, etc.

Found out yesterday midday where I was placed.

Now I'm in Cleveland, overseeing GOTV in Mansfield, Youngstown, Athens, Canton, and Toledo.

Vann: what is GOTV?

me: Get out the vote.

Vann: ah.

me: Only the assholes of the earth for this guy.

Vann: what will you be doing at GOTV?

Sent at 11:54 AM on Saturday

me: I'm driving around to canvass offices making sure that we're recruiting enough people, training them appropriately, and paying them correctly. I'll also probably canvass some, train some people, etc.

Only good times ahead. Getting on Greyhound to Toledo tonight.

End of Days

2008-10-06T18:43:00.000-07:00

Today is the last day of voter registration. The office here in Philadelphia is open until midnight. Our last crew just came in. We registered a little more then 53,000 voters here over the past four months.

List of tasks today for closing my 7 remaining offices:
-finish payroll and find somewhere to send it so canvassers can get it.
-copy all the last voter registration forms and ship them to our central office
-take all the rest of the forms to the registrar
-drive to Philadelphia
-return the rental cars
-return the rental computers
-take off by whatever means for trainings on GOTV in VA and OH.

I'll carpool tomorrow with a couple of the my Philly directors. Overall we registered 330,000 african american voters in 12 states in four months. Time to go back to Richmond, disburse the people, and drag everyone out.

handicapping

2008-10-02T17:22:00.000-07:00

http://www.philly.com/philly/hp/news_update/20081002_Vote-scam_fliers_target_black_neighborhoods.html

Boy, voter intimidation. Nothin' really takes the breath away quite like it. Few things are quite as naked and ugly as an attempt to stop poor people from bettering their situation.

This is the most naked form of politics as a venue to keep control. It's not about ideals. It's not about the public good. It's a knockdown, drag out fight for power.

Certainly makes one feel a little polly-anna-ish for not fighting dirty.

The home stretch

2008-09-30T20:48:00.000-07:00

William Safire points out that many of the phrases associated with politics come originally from horse racing, the sport of kings. I assume that the analogy is drawn largely from the sense of anticipation that builds up....This is not the home stretch of the campaign, but rather of voter registration. After Oct. 6th, voter registration ceases (though there is early voting and some same day registration in a number of states, including now OH).

There are six days remaining. Now is when things get more gritty. The offices begin to pare down staff, unregistered folks get harder to find, the whole thing feels less fun than desperate.

Philadelphia in and of itself has many different voter reg groups in it, (six that I know of, not including the candidates themselves). The number of voter registration forms recieved by the registrar has now exceeded the possible number of registrants in the city limits. Needless to say, some of these groups are better about avoiding voter fraud then others. But this is the grist for the lawsuits that lead to restrictive and racist voter ID laws.

I can do the best I can with my people, but I have zero control over other groups. It's maddening to hear the registrars talk about it.

Five more days though. Then on to getting all these folks out to the polls. I've been doing this for about five months. Voter Reg, honey, it's not you.

It's me.

Laisse Faire Cuba

2008-09-25T13:40:00.000-07:00

So....we're in to the free market, unless we deregulate it a little too much, and everyone lies a little too much, and a few people get used to making a hell of a lot of money. Then it's a big problem. Because now we can't issue loans, etc.

So now we're rapidly socializing the largest capitains of capitalism. On the one hand, I don't really want to know what happens if we don't do the bailout. That being said, while we're helping out Golman Sachs, and making sure that Warren Buffett made a good bet, I'm in Beaver, PA, where 30% of the storefronts are empty. Where the city budget is so close to the bone that the car I've left for 7.5 hours now in two hour parking on the main street still doesn't have a ticket.

Guess if the percentage of the population here that is african american is over or under the state average. Now guess what their collective stock portfolio is worth, and what this bailout will mean to them. Guess which services will be cut to pay for it. It's not going to be the Pentagon.

In other news, I slept in a closet last night, under the stairs. I hate this plan.

Visit Sunny York, PA!

2008-09-21T16:28:00.000-07:00

This town is totally pleasant. Row houses everywhere, socioeconomic difference exemplified by the relative newness of the layers of paint on the bricks and the trimmings. Two big perpendicular streets and attendent skinnier streets.

We stayed last night on the outskirts of town with two great old-school peace types. The fella works for the Harley Davidson factory (union-shop boss, too). She's a full-time volunteer for various political causes, including but not limited to: anti-death penalty (see: troyanthonydavis.org), immigration law and recommendation, peace activism, anti-racism.

She also thought it was good to drink American wine, and had worm composting in her kitchen. She was fine with coming home at eleven at night to find an extra person in her kitchen, and let me spend the night in her basement (2nd basement in two days).

We are registering african american voters on this drive, and one of the better stories was from one of our canvassers (a guy who, according to my director, at the tender age of twenty has his fourth kid on the way by the third mom). He said that when he went in to his former school, it was cool how the teachers looked at him with respect for the first time for the work he was doing.

Little moments...

Whatever works

2008-09-19T20:04:00.000-07:00

People are on the ground. Reading, PA is sleepy. Card is maxed, I have $55 to my name, a rental car, and an eighth of a tank of gas, and more offices to go to before Tuesday when I get paid. The pizza joint we're operating out of here has pizza for $1.75 a slice, though. Certainly not on a par with the $2 egg sandwich, but still cool. Think I can stay with the couple that's housing one of my directors tonight, which is cool, but might sleep in my car. Less cool. I have high hopes, though.

Mixed bag on the first night of reporting. Some folks are out of the gates and adapting quickly. Good plan in place for a couple offices to register over 1K voters next week, get up to sending out 40-50 people a day. Planning weekend canvasses at cab stops, movie theaters, rehab clinics, diners, bodegas, grocery stores, the drunk tank, etc.

More rural places need to switch to door to door, which some of them have figured out immediately and are on. Some are basically nowhere, gotta help them figure out whatever works. People are also duplicative in their tasks, gotta get people to focus, and divide the labor so we can get more done.

Tomorrow is focusing people on best practices, figuring out division of labor and doing payroll for the first time for the offices. Plus a conference call with bosses to figure out if we're in the right places.

Back on the smoking wagon. Back on irritating coffee shop owners by outstaying my welcome. What's the proper proportion for coffee bought and hours spent to stay on their good side? Seems to vary, perhaps by the number of conference calls I'm on and pacing, and how close the bathroom is to the front counter. Gotta partition out the money for coffee, food, and gas. Solid supply of pens, but would like to buy some pencils and a sharpener so I can erase offending idiocies I write down, lest I return to them. Good to have something to look forward to for the future.

Hi, wife :).

...the other shoe.

2008-09-18T17:31:00.001-07:00

I'm in Philadelphia in an office alone at 8:30, and I'll be here on the phone for another 2-3 hours.

I got the call on Sunday night, bought a plane ticket, made arrangements for the cat, then woke up at 3:30 Am to fly here. I came to the office, ate a $2 egg sandwich from a Philly street vendor, then prepped for about 8 hours. I had a drink with a compatriot who is doing something similar, slept some hours, then ran a training for a day and a half for new folks.

I found housing for all 17 of us on short notice in a hostel on the outskirts of Philly. Encouragingly, no-one wined about the 25 minute walk through a state park at 11 at night to get there.

At the end of the day yesterday, after 9 hours of training, I rented seven cars and sent them all off with directions to cities they've never been to before, with free housing for everyone except one rigged up. I got him a hotel room.

This morning everyone extended their cellphone plans to unlimited, printed off hundreds of flyers and started hustling. I think I probably maxed out my credit card placing newspaper ads, that will begin running tomorrow or Saturday. People met with registrars and got forms, and started seeking out sites to canvass at. They found public places, or stores to do interviews in, and libraries to convene at after canvassing.

So, as of tomorrow, we'll hire our first people in to six new voter reg offices all over Pennsylvania, that someone decided now was the time to pony up $300,000 for. That brings my total offices across the state to nine. We'll register another 24,000 people over the next 18 days.

Tomorrow morning I drive out to some lucky office to do some flyering and find some more sites.

At the end of the 18 days we'll shut all the shit down and ship everyone off. I'll put out any residual fires. Then off to some other training on getting out the vote. I hope I can get all the rental cars back.

a certain level of anticipation

2008-09-12T13:18:00.000-07:00

As of Monday of next week, we will have registered more then 50,000 black voters in our offices in Pennsylvania.

I asked an older woman if she was registered while I was canvassing earlier this summer. Her comments put it succinctly, I think: "Honey, you know it. Oh, and I cannot wait..."

Polling...

2008-09-07T20:42:00.000-07:00

...is like porn, really. There's never enough. If you're stupid enough to get in to it, you always want more.

Especially in this election, though, it means less then nothing. Polls are made of likely voters. The candidate's base, the real base, is youth and black voters, many of whom are being registered for the first time. And who don't get counted in polls.

On the other hand, they're also the people whose registrations are those most likely to be challenged, and the people who are most likely to be disenfranchised.

So polling is essentially saying: "Here's what would be happening if the party, which is spending ungodly amounts of money on voter registration in states all over the country, didn't actually turn any of those people out. The race is basically tied. Let's talk about it in every possible media outlet, ad nauseum, for the next 57 days."

None of which will stop me from looking at it every time I open my computer.

Sandwiches...

2008-09-07T20:27:00.001-07:00

...are an important part of my life.

This afternoon at home I'm sans wife. She's in Miami, setting up more voter reg offices. Meanwhile, this week, I'm opening my fourth office in PA. I've moved a swell fellow who works with me here in MN in to my living room to help with the rent.

She'll have dinner with my cousin, who also lives in Miami. In retaliation, this morning I made omelettes. I carmelized red onions (which she is allergic to), apple slices (thin) and minced garlic, and made toast with good blueberry jam. I didn't offer her any. But I thought about her a lot.

More waiting tomorrow to see if my new budget is approved so I can go back out on the road. Been at home for two weeks; before that I'd not been home for more then a weekend in about 3 months. As my wife and others I know join the election fray for the first time and start the 24/7 time commitment, in the meantime, I'm here at home. Eating sandwiches, riding my bike, seeing my friends, reading books. I'll be back out there soon enough, as soon as there's money freed up, but in the meantime...

I think this is why people re-enlist.

Acceptance and the Rubes

2008-08-29T15:53:00.000-07:00

The candidate's acceptance speech was soaring, and the VP's was sufficiently Rocky like to really hit home with the credulous bambi who lives inside me. At heart, working on campaigns like these comes home when big soaring speeches happen; you put in the hours, live unpleasantly, because in your heart there is still an innocent that believes there is something bigger worth working for. Despite the compromises, there's the hope that something true can come out of it all.

Conventions and the like, and even most political speeches, are where the politicians themselves, the pointy end of the spear, put on the lipstick and kiss the pig. They try and speak to the optimist that still lives inside a lot of us. We'll go back to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic tomorrow.

Digression in the Naked City

2008-08-28T15:26:00.000-07:00

Switching busses through the Port Authority, and various other stations within NYC. My first time in the place as an adult.

More people of all nationalities, then I've ever seen anywhere else. More shops, selling more things of indiscriminate shape and size. More of everything.

This place looks fun.

Disasters...

2008-08-25T15:12:00.000-07:00

Over the past three weeks:

In FL, we discovered that a director had failed to turn in voter reg forms for months and had been lying to me about it. Thought for a little while I was going to lose my job over it, but did manage to get all the forms in to the office. The fine for doing so, which I originally thought was $50/form, is actually capped at $1000. Not good, but not the end.

While I was in Boston training idealistic youths, I got a call from my Philadelphia director that we were on the verge of being evicted. I had short-sightedly placed our office in a building downtown full of lawyers, software designers, real estate agents, and assorted yuppies. For good measure, I placed them across the hall from the property manager.

They turned out to be less then excited that we had 60 uneducated, loud, crass black people working for us registering voters, and coming back to the office space every day. The call I got had been the culmination in a slow-building game of intimidation and white guilt.

So I hopped a couple of buses. Karp picked me up and took me in. We watched Olympics together, like a couple of nancies, and then it was off to bed for the big day tomorrow. Upon my arrival, I immediately worked out a plan to have our people coalesce in the nearby fancy food court. Then, I spent some time looking for new office space.

The conversations went something like "Hi, I'm looking for a space to run a voter registration drive out of. My budget's pretty limited, and I'm looking for a one month lease..." Click. The following morning, hat in hand and in my groveling clothes, I went and threw myself on the mercy of the property manager, who was dandied right up in a tattersall suit, powderblue shirt with white collar, and pink tie. He walked me around the place, detailing the horrors of our staff, then told me my money still spent if I could keep the people out of the place, and just had our directors there making voter confirmation calls.

I had a sandwich, scouted out the park in front of City Hall, turned our operation in to an entirely outdoor enterprise, had a sandwich, then hopped the bus back to Boston.

Training...

2008-08-23T13:32:00.000-07:00

After a sojourn in Seattle, (where my friends agreed that if they saw a black person they would hold them down until I got there to register them), it was off to Boston, to train a new crop of young directors. They are nervous, excitable, drunk, liberal in the limp wrist, let's all hold hands and march together way, and overall a pleasant bunch.

The training began with two days of basic skills, during which time I spend some time breaking people of the habit of treating this like college (i.e. show up hungover, don't do the thing very well, think that no-one's going to call you out on it).

It's funny. I did the same thing when I was in my first training. The first time someone sat me down and told me "Imagine telling the person you're raising money from at the door that their check, which you've just told them is going to pass good legislation, is being used for a training that you're planning to show up to hungover and wing it. It's probably not going to go that well" it hit me pretty hard.

That being said, I was just off of a week in Seattle where I was drunk enough to call off for a day. But a little hypocracy is par for the course when mixed in with the dogma.

Anyway, the training was cool, in that folks learned the skills to recruit train and manage people, as well as some of the organizing principles behind the skills. The trainees varied in enthusiasm level, but for the most part, a certain gravitas had decended by the end, and folks were ready to go out on their own.

And go out on their own they will. The majority of the upper managment layer is taking a leave of absence to go and work on electoral politics as opposed to issue based stuff. Trial by fire for the new folks. The last time we did this was in '04, when an entire staff of newbies run by one experienced staff person nationally broke all the records. Probably something to keeping things really simple.

Vegas: America's last honest city

2008-08-05T00:12:00.000-07:00

I spent last week in Las Vegas, and the weekend vacationing with M. First Vegas, then other notes.

There are good people here. Most of them want to leave. Organizing here is unpleasant. Each person who walks through the door is beaten at the end of a long string of bad luck; no-one cares here about any greater good around the campaign. Even our director here is a pretty serious partisan hack; it’s all she can do to pay lipservice to the need to have a more representative democracy, because to her it’s all about the candidate.

Coalition partners here don’t even make a symbolic show of respect; they are emblematic of the city itself, zoned in hard on their own grift with no room for others. We are told to stay away from any sites that they might be at or be shown ‘shock and awe’ organizing.

I offered a longterm job to the one good person I worked with here, in Austin. She was excited about the opportunity to leave, and excepted on the spot.

Vegas has been caricatured and written about ad nauseum, it seems there is little left to say. So, ideas on the intrinsic nature of Vegas then.

The city itself is perpetually in the process of being built. There is no coherency or theme to what one is presented with, but the idolatry itself is uniform. Everything within viewing distance, wherever you go, is a come on. The city wants your money or your sex. All venues are laid out as vulnerable, ripe for the taking.

The casinos advertise themselves as the loosest slots, or the most fun; indeed, from the promotion it is hard to see how anyone makes any money from Vegas whatsoever. All and sundry advertise the best of whatever they have to offer: the comedian that I have never heard of is the best of the year, the show is the best this season, etc. There are few laws stopping the adverts from lauding themselves in words that might come as a surprise should they ever be read by their purported sources; the LA Times may not have known that they’re calling ‘Bite’ the best show of the year, but there it is up in lights for all to see.

Women are on display and for sale in this city. It is a male fantasy, meant to appeal to the base brain with little interference from the cortex.

None of which avers to Vegas’s largest inherent truth: it is a gigantic disappointment. Nothing is or can be as good as it is advertised. The slots are not ‘loose’, the women aren’t as lithe as promised, nor are they even interested in puerilie desires. The casino interiors are nothing as compared to the exteriors, all cheap veneer, tired barkers, garish stained ultrasuede. The accomodations are cramped, and everything costs an arm and a leg.

The main stage show really isn’t very good at all.

The whole city seems to be set up to engage living breathing adults of all ages to behave as though they are the children the night before Christmas, keyed up on advertising, sugar, and booze to believe that tomorrow, through the offices of some unknown and unseen benefactor, all of their wishes are going to be met. They are surrendering their vulnerability, allowing themselves to believe in the possibility of the good, despite their best instincts.

Everywhere you go you see the adults losing whatever cohesion they possess, but without the familial bonding to hold it all together. Spouses turn on each other, people yell at their kids, the aura of both disappointment in particular, and in general disabusement with the whole thing are on clear display. This is why the whole shebang has to be relentlessly sold. The purveyors of Vegas must continually overcome that disappointment and disabusement, to draw the people back in to the process of being relieved of their ready cash and their vulnerability.

To hear the people around you in the midst of being fleeced, you’d believe that everyone is having the best time of their life. Those in mid process are selling the thing to themselves, coming down from the sugar rush as they watch the fake money spill through their fingers but believing still that all they need is one last catch. They make jokes with each other that are desperate and unfunny as they throw away whatever they’ve brought with them. The hardest are those beyond humor, who no longer believe, but cannot conceive of another way. They are peopled throughout each of the lower level casinos, the human detritus.

And now imagine a whole city of people who have come here with dreams to have the vulnerability beaten out of them. Who no longer trust themselves to tell a good thing from a bad thing, let alone trust anyone else. They people the city and their hard carapace decends over everything. They are indifferent to a fault, desperate to the hilt, and each and the other grinding away at whatever the last angle is they can come up with.

Outside of the Strip, the city looks like a rundown suburb of one of the less affluent California cities, a San Jose, or a Sacramento. Few buildings are higher then a single story, the paint chips off their walls in the 105 degree heat. There is a general feeling of shabbiness, and disrepair. Everywhere are strip malls, and even here a more dressed down version of the dream is being sold, “Our slots are loosest, 264 ways to take advantage of us!” screams the casino across the way from the office.

City planning appears to be based mostly around sprawl and resource allocation for the well off; lawns are status symbols here.

The winners are brazen, the moreso because every way they turn there is clear evidence for what loss looks like, a crazy clown mirror image of themselves at the other end of the wrong roll of the dice. They strut and spend opulently, continuing to sell the process to the rubes because they have to believe in it too, believe that they are somehow chosen by Lady Luck, Chance, God, to be the winners they are, to believe that they are somehow better and different from those on the outside of the wrong bet.

Virginia is overrun

2008-07-25T08:54:00.000-07:00

7.25.08

In another airport, swinging the same bag, sporting a beard I’m too lazy to shave off despite the summer heat. My haircut, dating to the fourth of July by a friend with kitchen shears is growing out. I’m the very model of modern campaign efficiency and frugality; personal hygiene has yet to slip as much as in 2004, but the endgame hasn’t begun yet. I’m just involved earlier on this time.

As in 2004, the game is crowded, but this time the players coordinate a little better. Unfortunatley, as none of us can coordinate directly with the candidate or his surrogates, he is now deploying an army of inspired volunteers to the very same places we endevour to work on his behalf.

While we attempt a coherent organized voter registration drive on his behalf, his army of volunteers, with no limits, no pay, and little direction, crowd us out by dint of sheer numbers. They are wolf-like, traveling in packs, and as they are short-term they do little in they way of longterm thinking, let alone even planning to sustain their work over a period of time. Their organizational plan appears to be based around saturation; without pay, standards, or much oversight, they swarm us on the ground, appearing to be indifferent to common cause.

While I welcome the zeal the candidate appears to inspire in the younger moneyed class, the volunteers themselves are irritating. Driven on as much by the promise of an actual job with the campaign as much as ideology, they are the future’s political hacks, but without the skill base. Irritating and full of pompous self-assurance, conversation or parley is derailed by their self-reverential martyrdom.

Perhaps these are the sort of people who have always made history. And perhaps they irritate as much because of their amateurism as be because regarding them may be just a tad too uncomfortable. Are they what I am become? Or what I came from?

I comfort myself that issue-based organizing is non-partisan, that we professionalize activism, that we use a business model that allows longer term success because impose goals, track everything, follow up on performance, enforce standards. Because we drive everyone all the harder. And our stance on volunteerism has always flowed from that model; volunteers are expected to hold themselves to the same level we are.

Perhaps this is why we aren’t very good at cultivating volunteers. And perhaps the candidate’s organizers have finally cracked a code, allowing volunteers to set their own level of involvement, driving them on with rhetoric and idealism while letting them find their own workpace and rewarding only the most ambitious.

But then again, perhaps the monster bankroll, and the clear horizon of the campaign are factors as well. After all, the candidates professional campaign, the beast that has now joined with Dean’s 50 state strategy is anything but lax. They are goal oriented, idealistic, but prepared to carry the fight where it matters, holding themselves to account and executing the tightest of messaging control.

Free work is free work. Even if it gets in the way of those professionals unwilling to fully commit to one side or another.

Must re-up on underwear

2008-06-28T10:58:00.000-07:00

6.28.08

I’m sitting in a training on voter registration, listening to an overview on how to stop voter fraud that I wrote. It’s funny. The hotel we’re in is quite nice, perhaps an indication of where the economy has been that I was able to get us a viable deal in a place that has four pillows per double bed and a view of the river.

We’re bringing on three more RD’s and thusly I no longer have 10 offices that I’m responsible for. Thank God. 10 offices turns out to be just about my organizing event horizon now. Any more and I worry that I’ll implode.

I’ve been traveling a lot. The three day site visit I packed for has turned in to a two week trip including a training; I’m living my life out of an overnight bag stuffed with newly bought hanes t-shirts and underwear.

There’s such a different feeling around this election. While our work is ostensibly non-partisan, there’s an obvious upside for a black candidate who turns out black voters at a 85-90% rate.

Obama himself has noted that people see in him whatever transference of hope they need; and I find myself doing something very similar. It’s little to do with his oratorical skill, though of course I’m as easily swept up by that as anyone.

Rather I find myself pinning my hopes and dreams on his organizational structure; they are lean, efficient and pragmatic, a national moneyed organization finally based on similar principles to the kind of organizing I’ve been doing. The constituencies this campaign will depend the most on will be youth and black voters, an electorate that is by far the most simpatico on the issues I deem important.

I finally, for the first time in my life, feel like I’m working on something electoral that actually represents me. I’m inspired by the candidates clear intelligence and clarity of thought, his even keel, his ideology. Yet his pragmatism, his willingness to compromise for the greater long-term good, his nuanced thought on any given subject are draws, even moreso.

I miss my wife, but once again I find myself at a cusp. I am about to begin a new job, I will move again within the next couple of months, and a new era will finally begin in our country within the next several months. I’ve spent my adult life fighting off attacks by the Bush Administration against the environment and civil rights. Within the last year we’ve begun the process of pushing forward on progressive legislation as opposed to defensive.