Tag: McCain

Politics Online Conference: The Political Speakers – A Summary

PoliticsOnline2009logo For the past two days I've been at this Politics Online Conference here in DC.

McCaskill a It's been around for a few years now, but this one was huge and rich.  Among those who spoke:  Politicians: Senator Claire McCaskill (MO), Reps. Steve Israel (NY), Cathy Morris Rogers (WA)and Tim Ryan (OH), Secretaries of State Jennifer Brunner (OH) and Debra Bowen (CA).  Their panels were about the uses of mostly social media to maintain consistent and two-way contact with their constituents.  It's fascinating to realize that when a congressman shows up at an event, constituents "know what books I've been reading from me Facebook page" and stop by to discuss them.  Ryan had an interesting take on it:  "FDR had the radio, JFK had the television, and Obama has — you."  The confluence between the politician and the tool and the times seems to be of utmost importance.

 According to all the speakers, these kinds of interaction have radically altered their relationships with voters, and, according to McCaskill, with staff.  The communications staff has no control or prior knowledge of her tweets. As she put it, holding up her blackberry "I'm on my own with this thing."  Sometimes, apparently, they aren't thrilled with the result.

Rospars Palmer cropped The other great political panel was, to paraphrase Spencer Tracy in Pat and Mike, "small but choice."  Obama Director of Online Media Joe Rospars (on the right) nd McCain eCampaign Director Michael Palmer (on the left) discussed, and disagreed, with a focus on their work online.  There was lots of great information, both anecdotal and strategic, but sadly, the overriding element turned out to be the bitterness Palmer still feels about their defeat.  It's tough to let go after working that hard, but, as many observed, this seemed beyond that.  Even so, it was revealing to hear Rospars, as he often does, attribute their online success as much to "respect for people and treating them like adults" as to any technological parlor tricks.  It's actually consistent with the Obama folks when they're on panels or appearing in public events; they never talks about "I" did this or that.  They are all very careful to attribute their success to their team.  When complimented for that, the response is usually "but it's true!" 

To come:  A riveting youth vote panel and one on mobile campaigning, and a look at some of the cool but more esoteric events.

OH and if you're wondering why this post is so late, it's because there was no usable wireless at the Reagan Center and the damn Mac Air has no Ethernet plug!  How frustrating do you think that was?

Obama, McCain and the Power of Words

Obama speech cloud
 I'm working on a big new post on a weird topic but in the meantime, the always original David Wescott has done, (at the suggestion of his wife), a very interesting word cloud comparison.  Basically, he created clouds for the election night speeches of President-elect Obama and Senator McCain.  Both the differences and the similarities are striking.  Take a look.

FREE-FLOATING ANXIETY 96 HOURS BEFORE THE VOTE

Washington_post_cover
I am so nervous I can barely breathe.  We’re going canvassing again Sunday and I will try to do more phone calls before then and after but seeing these polls closing – listening to Chuck Todd on MSNBC talk about states that are "tightening" – it’s really scary.  I’ve felt all along that everyone is putting this election away way too soon.  As I sat with friends and listened to Joe Trippi this week, all three of us were troubled by the seeming assumption that the race is "in the bag."  It’s so easy to get complacent and stay home, make fewer calls, do a bit less, if you think things are going your way anyway.

In addition, we don’t know what the "young people" and first-time voters will do.   Will they show up? Can they translate quotes like this one from college student Lauren Masterson, on the NewsHour:

"We see ourselves in him, I think. Even though he is of another generation, people are excited about him because he
seems to understand young people.

into turning out and waiting in line and casting that vote?  Here’s a nice consideration of younger voters and their commitment.

I suppose if I just watched TNT and the endless, comforting Law and Order broadcasts instead of MSNBC, Your Place for Politics,  I’d feel better but after all the years I spent covering campaigns, I can’t imagine avoiding information when it’s available.  And it’s really the first presidential election where I’ve had no editorial responsibility (except my blog) so I have all these habits and nowhere to put them.  I have to sit and listen and worry and watch and bounce from website to website, and to the links provided by friends on Twitter.  Can’t stop.  It’s not that I think I’ll miss the Important Moment, it’s that I keep hoping to hear some good news.  We all know that races tighten at the end but many states are moving into the margin of error and that’s really scary. 

At least I have to go offline for Shabbat, which is going to make me nuts but may be healthy.  Keep an eye on things for me, will you?

 

EMERGENCY! REPUBLICAN VOTER TAMPERING: COULD BARACK OBAMA SEE MCCAIN and PALIN STEAL THE ELECTION ? OH – AND A CHANCE FOR LAWYERS TO DO SOMETHING REALLY GOOD

Rolling_stone_cover_2Could a vast network of voter challenges (here’s help), especially toward young, newly registered and African-American voters (purges of voter rolls, craven voter challenges and other tough-to-prove but disruptive tactics) reduce votes for Barack Obama and endanger a fair election?  Despite their efforts to tar Obama-related registration efforts, it appears that the truly dangerous activities — and those most likely to tip this election away from what appears to be the public will — are emerging from Republican operations.  For example, on Super Tuesday in Las Vegas, "nearly 20% of the county’s voters were absent from the rolls."  As one voting rights expert declared:

I don’t think the Democrats get it," says John Boyd, a voting-rights
attorney in Albuquerque who has taken on the Republican Party for
impeding access to the ballot. "All these new rules and games are
turning voting into an obstacle course that could flip the vote to
the GOP in half a dozen states.

There are several "games" and they’re tough to control because they come from so many different points of origin.  Robert Kennedy Jr. and Greg Palast, in the most recent issue of Rolling Stone,  describe in horrifying detail (and no this is not hyperbole… it really is horrifying), how these vulnerabilities could play out.   You can check on violations in your state here.   Their account of the basics from across the U.S.:

  1. Obstructing voter registration drives:  stringent and unreasonable state laws have intimidated many registration efforts, including those of the non-partisan League of Women Voters.  Oh – and in Florida they’ve ignored the law that food stamp recipients be offered registration opportunities when they apply for benefits.  Those registrations, 120,000 during Clinton, are just 10,000 today.
  2. "Perfect matches"  Suppose I signed my voter registration form "Cynthia K. Samuels" and my driver’s license "Cynthia Samuels."  That’s not a perfect match and in some states I could be disqualified.
  3. Purging legitimate voters from the rolls: "All told, states reported scrubbing at least 10 million voters
    from their rolls on questionable grounds between 2004 and 2006.
    Colorado holds the record: Donetta Davidson, the Republican
    secretary of state, and her GOP successor oversaw the elimination
    of nearly one of every six of their state’s voters.    "  The toughest thing about this one is that you don’t find out you’ve been purged until you get to the polling place, and then it’s tough to get help.  It is wise for voters to check their status with their local election officials in advance of election day,
  4. Requiring "unnecessary" voter IDs:  Young and minority voters (more often Obama voters), according to Kennedy and Palast, often do not have either driver’s licenses or state-issued IDs.  Without them, their legitimacy is often questioned.
  5. "Spoiled" ballots:  Blank spaces, tears that make the ballot tough for voting machines to count, or weird little extra marks can disqualify a voter.  Since minority and less-affluent neighborhoods get the crumbiest, oldest voting machines, they are disproportionately affected by this factor.
  6. Problems with provisional ballots:  If our voter gets to the polls, and is challenged, federal law requires that, rather than being turned away, the challenged voter be given a "provisional" ballot – one that is supposed to be counted once the voter has been determined to be legitimate.  HOWEVER there’s no way to track them – or to be sure they ever entered the vote count. In 2004, according to Rolling Stone, a third of all provisional ballots – maybe as many as a million – were thrown out.

In addition to the Rolling Stone piece, take a look at Salon’s review of hot spots.  For example:

Voter suppression can be difficult to prove. Suppression tactics —
anything from purging voter rolls under suspicious circumstances to
using various justifications to question the eligibility of potential
voters — are often the product of legal gray areas being exploited at
the hands of local partisan officials. To date, no one has presented
evidence of any nationally organized effort by the Republican Party to
suppress Democratic votes. But there is little doubt that at local and
regional levels — in some potentially critical states on the electoral
map — there has been dubious activity that could result in the
disenfranchisement of voters who would likely punch the ballot for
Barack Obama.

This has happened before – and in many ways the Federal law passed in response to the 2000 election debacle makes it easier.  Despite the new commitment in both the young and minority communities, local officials can challenge and prevent election day votes that may never be recovered.  The young, the black and the poor are most likely to be affected – and that, of course, means, largely, potential Democratic voters, usually challenged in ways very difficult to recover.  There is, however, a group called Election Protection providing resources all over the country.  Not much we civilians can do – but if you are an attorney or law student or paralegal, please sign up to help .  Your help on election day could count at least as much as — and in battleground states maybe more than — your vote.
 

FOR THE RECORD: POWELL ENDORSES OBAMA, PALIN YUKS IT UP, THAT RED-BAITING CONGRESSLADY FROM MINNESOTA

Between cooking for holidays, playing hooky at a pumpkin farm with friends and their kids, and work, I’m late writing about this, but it’s such an event that it felt unseemly not to acknowledge it.  Colin Powell is highly regarded, and if you wonder why just listen to the interview with him on the sidewalk outside Meet the Press.  Thoughtful, civil and committed, he related a broad and sometimes moving inventory of the reasons behind his decision.   In addition to this sidewalk news conference, here’s a bit of the statement on Meet the Press itself.  (skip it if you saw it – 3 graphs down) 

"In the case of Mr. McCain, I found that he was a little unsure as to deal with the economic problems that we were having and almost every day there was a different approach to the problem. And that concerned me, sensing that he didn’t have a complete grasp of the economic problems that we had. And I was also concerned at the selection of Governor Palin. She’s a very distinguished woman, and she’s to be admired; but at the same time, now that we have had a chance to watch her for some seven weeks, I don’t believe she’s ready to be president of the United States, which is the job of the vice president. And so that raised some question in my mind as to the judgment that Senator McCain made.

On the Obama side, I watched Mr. Obama and I watched him during this seven-week period. And he displayed a steadiness, an intellectual curiosity, a depth of knowledge and an approach to looking at problems like this and picking a vice president that, I think, is ready to be president on day one. And also, in not just jumping in and changing every day, but showing intellectual vigor. I think that he has a, a definitive way of doing business that would serve us well. I also believe that on the Republican side over the last seven weeks, the approach of the Republican Party and Mr. McCain has become narrower and narrower. Mr. Obama, at the same time, has given us a more inclusive, broader reach into the needs and aspirations of our people. He’s crossing lines–ethnic lines, racial lines, generational lines. He’s thinking about all villages have values, all towns have values, not just small towns have values.

And I’ve also been disappointed, frankly, by some of the approaches that Senator McCain has taken recently, or his campaign ads, on issues that are not really central to the problems that the American people are worried about. This Bill Ayers situation that’s been going on for weeks became something of a central point of the campaign. But Mr. McCain says that he’s a washed-out terrorist. Well, then, why do we keep talking about him? And why do we have these robocalls going on around the country trying to suggest that, because of this very, very limited relationship that Senator Obama has had with Mr. Ayers, somehow, Mr. Obama is tainted. What they’re trying to connect him to is some kind of terrorist feelings. And I think that’s inappropriate."

 

It’s great that he’s saying it, but it’s also a bit pathetic that it takes a former general and secretary of state to open his mouth and say "cut it out."   I saw that one blogger – and I’m so sorry that I don’t recall who, ran a bit of the Army McCarthy hearings along with this:

Hard to believe that people in America still sound like that, isn’t it?  Back to the Fifties.
It’s this kind of talk that led Secretary Powell to speak as he did today; it’s this kind of talk that has been part of this campaign  for some time.

And Sarah on SNL?  She was funny and a good sport; it humanized and demystified her as a threat.  Good for her, I guess, but she is a threat and she is scary and she says hateful, vicious and provocative things and none of that was apparent in this image-cleansing performance.  It troubles me because the threat of her is in her firm position in the far-right, the scary, nutty, closed-ranks "base" that gets people to yell "Kill him" and "off with his head" and "terrorist" like a citizen in 1984.  She lies, she uses half-truths to build anger and hatred and code words that give people embarrassed to vote against a black man an excuse to do so.  To turn her into a "way hotter in person" cheerleader with a sense of humor is a dangerous, dangerous thing to do.  Rehab by comedy.

My biggest fear right now though, as someone who fears deeply for a McCain-led nation, is what Obama calls "remember New Hampshire."  People for whom voting is a tough logistical effort, or who are waiting in lines that are too long, or who are kind of committed but might decide things are ok without them — that these people won’t vote – will let things falter on overconfidence.   I hope that we all remember that as cute as Sarah Palin might have been, the issues that drove Secretary Powell to do what he did are the issues that will determine the rest of our lives, and those of our children — and those of our country and the world that is watching so intensely to see what we will do.

KEEPING OUR EYES ON THE PRIZE: HEALTH CARE, EDUCATION AND ECONOMIC SECURITY: THIS IS A LIFE OR DEATH ELECTION

Poll_nyt_3
It’s fun to write about politics; this blog has always been about many things but has pretty much been all politics all the time for the past three months.  Even so, once in a while all that handicapping and general outrage and idealism and hope crashes smack into the basic realities of what’s at stake here. 

For example, just this month:

  • I had a medical test which costs money, (and which not all insurance companies cover,) that found and dealt with something that was not important today but, if not detected, could someday have been way more important than I even want to think about.
  • A friend I really admire was diagnosed with Lupus – costly and complicated to treat.
  • Another friend’s child was born a month premature, miles away from home during a vacation.  After some very scary post-delivery bleeding, she and her baby are fine now.  Their health insurance guaranteed easy access to capable, coordinated care.
  • A story appeared, in various forms in several papers, reporting "Many Cancer Patients Forgo Health Care Due to Soaring Cost of Medication" and including these other facts:

"25 percent of families with a cancer patient spent their lifetime savings for the treatment.  The same survey said 10% of these families had to forego some basic needs like food, heat and housing" and

"20% of Americans have big problems paying their medical bills."

  • Another, in newspapers and Scientific American, reported that "the United States has slipped from 24th to 29th in infant mortality rates in developed countries," meaning that 28 "first world" countries are doing better than we are in keeping newborn infants alive.

This is the reality in our country today.  And that’s just one issue in just one month. The same is true for education, climate change and our basic civil rights.  And that doesn’t count Iraq, Guantanamo, candidates who want to ban books, threatened legal access to contraception and other women’s rights issues, the growing income gap and the current terrifying economic crises.

I know you know this.  As my rabbi likes to say, "I’m talking to myself here" but as we monitor polls and the endless talk show and newscast chatter, we need to remember.  As I was awakened by a very lovely nurse offering me cranberry juice, with a view of colorful fall leaves on the trees outside the window of a clean, well-lit recovery room, the first thing that came into my mind was how lucky I was to be there.  This election is about winners and losers and parties in control, yes.  But even more, this time, it’s life and death.

Oh, and if you want to get upset about the campaign itself anyway, try this.

                  

BARACK OBAMA, JOHN MCCAIN AND “THE HEALTH OF THE MOTHER”

I’m so used to horrible attitudes toward abortion that I didn’t adequately react to John McCain’s debate response last night.  Did you see it?  Mocking the idea of "health of the mother" in hand gestures and a voice of dismissal.  I don’t think I need to say anything except to thank, for probably the only time in my life, Fox News, for the best edit on YouTube.  It speaks for itself.

WOULD YOU HIRE JOHN MCCAIN OR SARAH PALIN? SERIOUSLY

Sacramento_party
This image was just removed from the Sacramento County Republican Party website, according to its Google source. And it’s very disturbing, but  I’m tired.  I admit it.  All these days of Jewish holiday cooking and praying * (not necessarily in that order) have left me frazzled.  So maybe I’m just cranky.  But when I saw this on a search for something else all the anxiety and sadness overcame me. There is hate out there – and the Republicans seem to be finding it useful.

No, the McCain supporters aren’t all like this; capable of dreaming up and posting such a terrible thing.  But they’ve been ginning their crowds into a frenzy and so this "free speech" issue is becoming a life-threatening undertaking.  Generating that kind of distaste so familiar to so many young people will make a big difference.  How that difference plays out will depend on the stars.

I want to write so much more but it has to be tomorrow.  This is a very nervous election; I and many friends get more nervous the larger the margin is.  There’s lots to talk about, although where the debate ranks, not much more than has been said after  But if I don’t go to sleep you won’t want to read what I write; neither of us will understand what the hell I’m trying to say.  More tomorrow.  For now you may want to take a look at the live blog transcript on Writes Like She Talks or the one on BlogHer.

*a post on the same subject from last year.

 

SCARY TIMES: DO WE FACE A NEW GREAT DEPRESSION (AND DOES SARAH PALIN STILL MATTER?)

Depression1Every decision my parents ever made was influenced by the Depression.  What we ate, what we wore, where we shopped, when and how we took vacations, what we "needed" vs what we "wanted" and, in their own lives, what careers they followed and where we all lived.  They had been teenagers in the Depression, and although both went to college (on scholarships and several jobs at once) neither studied what they’d wanted to.  I’ve talked about all this before – my mother refusing even to talk about her life then, my dad so concerned when any of us made a job change or took any professional risk.

I felt it too.  I still read menus from the price to the item, skipping the ones that are too expensive.  Ditto with price tags on clothes.  I’ve always clipped coupons and bought things on sale, shopped at big box stores and always, always read the unit prices of things. And, as an American Studies major I took several courses dealing with the Depression.  I needed to know more about it not only as a student but as a daughter.

I know that this is not the Great Depression.  I know that there are more protections in place, even if too many of them have been removed in the past eight years.  But the economic chaos of the past week has been scary on more than one level.  Of course I worry about us, getting near retirement age.  But my bigger worry is the impact such a colossal change will have on the lives of the younger people we love.  Our sons, first of all, at the beginning of their careers.  And all the families in this community who mean so much to us – just starting families and facing years of tuitions and outgrown winter coats and activity fees.  I also think about just-retired or nearly retired "elders" so well represented by Ronni Bennett’s blog, and all the people living from paycheck to paycheck — who will be endangered by cuts in hours and devastated by the loss of their jobs. 

Usacoughlinf
And this is where Sarah Palin comes in.  And John McCain.  Because every day the level of negative language rises, the indulgent response to enraged constituents yelling things that should not be spoken in an American election or any other time: threats and  bigoted characterizations and more.  This kind of language is far more dangerous in a bad economy.  Hitler was successful partially because the German economy had so badly frightened people, men like "Father Coughlin" (that’s his picture) preached racism and anti-Semitism on the radio during the Depression with substantial response.  There other, less prominent hate-mongers too – and they had a real following.  People needed someone to be angry at and were vulnerable to that sort of demagogery.  It’s a very scary shadow over the economic crisis, the campaign, and the souls of the American people.   NOW, go read Josh Marshall on why the ghost of Father Coughlin haunts him, too.  And read this very thoughtful post about a tough electoral decision.

The consider what sort of leader allows such things – and doesn’t stand up and tell his/her supporters to cut it out?  What does that say about their leadership once they’re in office?