This Saturday is the day to get active! The Cabarrus County Democratic Party is kicking off the election season with a big organizational meeting for all experienced and new volunteers. If you want to be involved with the election campaign in any way, I highly recommend showing up. I will see you there.
Cabarrus County Democratic Party (CCDP) Election 08 Countdown Meeting
For everyone that wants to get involved in our 2008 election campaign. We need your help!
Please join us for a working lunch at Troutman's BBQ. Lunch will be $6.00/person. Saturday, July 19th Troutman's BBQ, Hwy 601, Concord (directions) 11:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m.
Now's the time folks. We need all of us working together!
After an excruciation year and a half, tonight, what most people already knew a few months ago, was finalized: Barack Obama is the Democratic nominee for the Presidency and will be the next President of the United States.
I'm proud of having contributed a tiny little bit to the victory, together with a very big group of volunteers in Cabarrus County.
We now set our sights on November and start working hard for victory. If you haven't helped out yet, now is the time to start! Please join the official Cabarrus For Obama group online.
While the Primary race between Clinton and Obama has gotten pretty vicious lately, I was always convinced it's nothing compared to the stuff Republicans would be spewing around the general election. Turns out I didn't have to wait that long, thanks to the NC GOP and their head witch, Linda Daves. Even John McCain and the Republican National Congress declared today how deplorable the latest stunt of the NC repugs is. From The Dome:
A new TV ad from the N.C. Republican Party tries to link two Democratic candidates for governor to Barack Obama's controversial former minister. "For 20 years, Barack Obama sat in his pew, listening to his pastor," the ad says, segueing into video of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, David Ingram reports. The ad continues, "Now, Bev Perdue and Richard Moore endorse Barack Obama. They should know better. He's just too extreme for North Carolina." The ad is titled "Extreme." Republican chairwoman Linda Daves of Charlotte appears briefly at the end.
I know this ad is just trying to use the old politics of fear, but the scariest moment in the ad is without a doubt the few seconds at the end where Linda Daves, Chair of the NCGOP, shows up. The Rev. Wright definitely has nothing on her. She could really use a make over.
The ad is of course extremely far fetched, calling out someone because a friend of a friend said something we think is wrong. For all my "moderate" Republican friends in the County i have the following question: Just because you went to a bunch of meetings of the Republican men's Club in the last few years, where Coy Privette and Ric Starnes where always prominently present and without a doubt said a bunch of crazy stuff, does that mean you agree with them and hence mean you're crazy too? Did you leave the Republican men's club? And did you never go back again?
The NCGOP ad is not only disgustingly playing into racial fears, it's also a very slimy way of trying to get some money for more dirty shenanigans that are no doubt heading our way. The ad starts and ends with a plea for donations. This ad is no more than a desperate attempt to get more money for the cash strapped NC Republicans and they're willing to pull the race card to do it.
In a sign that the Republican Presidential nominee and the national republican party have at least a quarter of a brain, they both publicly distanced themselves from the ad and asked the NCGOP not to run it anymore.
McCain, the presumptive GOP nominee for president, sent N.C. GOP Chairwoman Linda Daves an e-mail today about what he called an "offensive advertisement."
"The television advertisement you are planning to air degrades our civics and distracts us from the very real differences we have with the Democrats. In the strongest terms, I implore you to not run this advertisement."
"The RNC has been in contact with the NC GOP and communicated that we do not believe the ad is appropriate or helpful and have asked that they refrain from running it.”
The NCGOP is refusing to stop airing the ad.
"This is not about the RNC," Daves said, reports David Ingram. "It is about North Carolina, our values and two Democrat(sic) candidates who are out of synch with the values of North Carolina."
Values indeed. Jesse Helms is alive and well in North Carolina.
Today our local Board Of Elections opens its doors for the early "one-stop" voting process. You can vote early every weekday until May 2nd from 8.30 am - 5 pm at the Board of Elections offices on 53 Corban Ave SE in Downtown Concord. There is also one Saturday you can vote early, May 3rd, from 8.30 am - 1 pm. This also the last day to vote early.
During early voting you can also register to vote and vote at the same time, in case you missed the voter registration deadline, this is your one chance to still vote! Same day voter registration is NOT possible on election day, May 6th. Same day voter registration is meant for new voters, they won't allow you to change your party affiliation at this time. If you're 17 but turn 18 before the November election, you can register and vote in the primary during early voting even though you're only 17 at this time! Check out the Cabarrus County Board of Elections website to find out all about same day registration. You can also look at the Democratic sample ballots on the same website.
Since several folks have asked me who i would vote for in the Democratic Primary, I will put up several posts in the following days explaining who I would vote for and why. I'm pretty sure you know by now who i would vote for in the big Presidential nominee race :-)
When it comes to voter registrations there's a very remarkable trend lately.
In the state of North Carolina more than 120,000 new voters have registered since the end of 2007. Roughly half of the new voters have registered as Democrats, a little more than a third are unaffiliated and about 13 percent are Republicans, according to figures from the State Board of Elections. Overall, the number of voters increased by about 2 percent to 5.7 million, Rob Christensen reports in the News&Observer.
"It started back in late December," said Johnnie McLean, the deputy state elections director. "It's obviously due to the presidential primaries."
For the week of March 23rd - March 29th, there were 12,000+ new voters registered in NC. Of those, 7,500 registered as Democrats, 4,500 registered as Unaffiliated, 173 registered as Republicans.
In Cabarrus County the trend is remarkable as well. According to numbers from the Cabarrus County Board of Elections, local Democrats have closed the gap in registrations with the Republican Party by more than 1,100 voters so far. These numbers do not yet include Friday April 11th which was the last day to register. Democrats brought in another big number of registrations that day.
In August of 2007 there were 33,456 Democrats vs. 40,837 Republicans in Cabarrus County, a difference of 7,381. As of April 10th, there are 34,950 Democrats vs. 41,752 Republicans in our County, a difference of 6,260.
I've personally helped register hundreds of new voters in several Cabarrus County High Schools these days and the pattern was always the same: 20% Republican, 35% Democrat, 45% Unaffiliated. Several kids told me it's definitely not "cool" anymore to register Republican, even though I was completely non-partisan and never told them what Party I belonged to.
Of course it's important to remember that we're still 6 months away from the general election and I fully expect this trend to continue until then.
I'd love to see all of you at the second meeting of "Cabarrus for Obama" this Tuesday March 18th at 7 pm at the Sweet Pea Cafe in downtown Concord. At our first meeting 65 people showed up. Join us! For more information and to RSVP follow this link.
Democrat Bill Foster, endorsed by Barack Obama, has snatched former House Speaker Dennis Hastert's congressional seat in a closely watched special election in Illinois that gave the longtime Republican district to the Democrats. Foster has won 52 percent of the vote compared to 48 percent for Republican Jim Oberweis. That result was amazing given the 14th District's clear Republican lean. President Bush won the district, which spans into the far western suburbs of Chicago, with 55 percent in 2004 and 54 percent in 2000. Hastert won reelection easily for more than two decades. Bill Foster was endorsed by Barack Obama, and ran on a similar platform of "change". Obama made a TV ad praising Foster. Meanwhile, McCain campaigned for the Republican candidate Jim Oberweis, and fundraised for his campaign.
Watch the Obama ad for Bill Foster:
Foster's win should demonstrate to the Democratic leadership that Obama can help elect more Democrats to Congress, even in formerly "safe" Republican sites.
The defeat is a major setback for the NRCC and House Republicans. The NRCC spent nearly $1.3 million defending the seat, a significant percentage of the $6.4 million the committee showed on hand at the end of January. That is a major investment of limited resources, only to come up empty.
House Republicans, already dispirited by the loss of their majority in the 2006 election and more than two dozen retirements within their ranks since then, will likely take this defeat hard. Watch to see how many of them will retire over the coming weeks as vulnerable members take the Illinois special election as a sign of things to come in the fall.
I returned on Tuesday from Ohio, where I volunteered for Sen. Obama's campaign in the frozen city of Cleveland. Hundreds of volunteers from all over the country descended upon the state to help out the Obama campaign. What follows is the story of my journey in a winter wonderland.
Getting to Cleveland was no small feat. As the person who I stayed with told me, "February is the worst month to come to Ohio". I wish they had told me sooner. I had planned on getting to Cleveland in one day. Including all the necessary stops, the trip should take about 10 hours under normal weather circumstances. The problem is that the weather was anything but normal, although it might have been normal under Ohio standards.
It was getting dark when I crossed the Ohio river and pretty soon after that it started snowing. With a high of 25 degrees the snow wasn't going to disappear anytime soon. I was tired and didn't feel like driving in the dark and snow anymore, so I stopped in Cambridge, OH and checked into a hotel.
The next morning i was looking forward to a mere 2 hour drive to my final destination. When I opened up the curtains of my room i found out that everything was covered in a thick blanket of snow and it was snowing even heavier than the night before. I could see the highway in the distance though and traffic seemed to be moving right along, so I decided to hit the road.
For the first 10 miles or so everything was fine, the road was clear, but after a short while it seemed like the snowplows had stopped working. Everything was white and you could not see the road anymore. It snowed even harder now and visibility was reduced. The only thing I could see were the tire tracks made by a truck that was in front of Me.
For the next 3 and a half hours I followed those tracks in what I would describe as "white knuckle driving". At several points my car started beeping and a light started flashing on the dashboard of My Prius, indicating that my tires were slipping. Until I got to Ohio I didn't even know my car had this feature. Hey, at least i learned something.
I got to Cleveland eventually, a day later than planned and a nervous wreck after that drive. The next day the canvassing started.
Saturday morning I reported to the local Obama Headquarters in Lakewood, a suburb on the west side of Cleveland.
As usual (we did the same thing in South Carolina and Illinois) we were asked to visit targeted voters in targeted neighborhoods with personalized door hangers which indicated where people had to go vote. Because the campaign asked me not to, I can't tell you what neighborhoods and what voters get targeted exactly.
My door to door canvassing brought me to streets on the edge of lake Eerie and allowed me to snap some pictures of this massive, partially frozen, lake with the Cleveland skyline as a backdrop. The temperatures were still freezing. The advantage to this is that canvassing went pretty fast, people tend to not keep their front door open for very long when its 25 degrees outside.
On Sunday and Monday the weather got a lot a warmer, with temperatures reaching 50. The snow melted and roads were clear.
I had originally planned to stay in Ohio until after primary day, but the weather reports indicated that the weather was about to make a turn for the worse so i decided to leave while I still could. On Tuesday morning I headed home. This time I made the trip in one long drive.
On Tuesday afternoon Cleveland got covered in freezing rain. Pretty soon after that it started snowing. It has been snowing ever since and temperatures have yet to get above freezing again. I had escaped just in time.
Even though the results in Ohio weren't what i had hoped for, we didn't do too bad in the City of Cleveland. Obama won 69% of the vote there.
By the way, I didn't just work in Cleveland, I also managed to squeeze in a visit to this little hangout:
Luckily, the next step for me in this drawn out race will be right in my own backyard. If you want to get involved with the Obama campaign right here in Cabarrus County, please join the "Cabarrus for Obama" group on the official Obama website. May 6th is primary day!
I've just arrived in Ohio where I'm hoping to help the Hillary Clinton campaign out of business. I'll be helping Barack Obama with the door-to-door canvassing operation until next Tuesday. Good thing I'm not alone...thousands of out-of-state volunteers have traveled to Ohio to help out the locals. The locals know a lot better how to deal with the snow and temperatures in the 20's though.
I'm taking lots of pictures, but I forgot a cable I need to upload them, so I'll be posting those next week after I get home.
Meanwhile on the home front I'm very pleased with the fact that no Cabarrus County Republican will be running unopposed this election! You can check who all the candidates are by following this link.
As you know, and you might be sick of hearing me talk about it by now, I'm an Obama fan. However, I'm not one of those people who support Obama because they think Hillary is just a "B***". I respect her, but I think Obama is by far the better candidate.
That being said I wanted to share some humor out of the Clinton campaign with you all. The problem is that none of this was meant to be funny. First of, a supporters' YouTube video that's meant to counter the many stirring Obama videos that have reached millions of young people by now. Judge for yourself, but I think it inspires me almost as much as a rusty doorknob does. It has a very high "Up with People" level.
Then we also learned that Bill Clinton argues that Hillary has done excellent in the primaries, considering that she is "operating on a shoestring". She raised $140 million.
I hereby volunteer to drive Bill Clinton around in some areas in Rock Hill, SC, where I was campaigning for Obama during the SC primary. I visited people there that lived in totally dilapidated houses with "port-a-potties" by the side of the road because they didn't have any sewer access. I'll let them explain to Mr. Clinton what a shoestring budget really is.
Calling $140 million for a political campaign a shoestring budget is the kind of Washington-speak we have tolerated too long. It's time for a change of the guard.
A very quick and short "Monday blues" feature this week. With all this primary stuff going on I haven't had much time to look for funny videos, but I didn't want to withhold the one I did find. Note: If you get my posts through certain RSS readers or in your e-mail you might have to go to the website to watch video's.
You might have seen the following music video about Barack Obama. It was made by Will.I.Am from the Black Eyed peas and you'll see several musicians and celebrities participate in it. The reason you might have seen it is that it apparently gets about 1 million views a day on YouTube. You can watch a high quality version of the video by following this link.
The McCain "straight talk" campaign has it's own version of this, but it's just a tad bit less inspiring. Makes you think about the November contest :-)
This past weekend I flew to Chicago to help a Belgian TV News crew make a report on the Barack Obama campaign. As you might know, Chicago is Obama's hometown and it's here that his political campaign started. We visited the National Obama Volunteer headquarters and went to the communities where Obama was a community organizer some 25 years ago.
When I landed, the contrast between Charlotte and Chicago couldn't have been any bigger. In Charlotte it had been a balmy 60 degrees, in Chicago it was 30 and there was at least 10 inches of snow on the ground. The skyscrapers were hidden in a dense, low hanging cloud cover and it gave the whole city a weird kind of atmosphere. After checking in to our downtown hotel we only had to walk a few blocks to reach the National Obama Volunteer Headquarters on W. Adams Street. From the sidewalk it looked like any normal entrance to a huge office building and there was not one sign mentioning Obama. After making sure we were at the right address we took the elevator to the 10th floor. As soon as the doors opened there was a sight to behold. The whole 10th floor of this building was filled with hundreds and hundreds of volunteers, almost as far as the eye could see. There were volunteers sitting behind rows of computers and the rest of them were just sitting on ever chair and in every corner they could find making phone calls all over the country, From California to Tennessee. I picked up a list of voters and a calling script as well and made some calls into New Mexico.
The whole operation seemed very professionally organized while at the same time having a fun and personal vibe. There was a childcare corner where little kids were making the well known Obama symbol with finger paints and on the other side of the building was a store selling all the popular Obama merchandise, there was also a buffet style kitchen where everyone could pick up a slice of pizza (there were about a dozen different kinds) and a drink. Speeches of Obama and the latest election news were projected on big screens.
People kept pouring in and out by droves, picked up a list of voters at the big front desk and started making calls. It was easy to make friends, especially after I mentioned that i was a volunteer with the campaign in SC. It quickly became clear that the campaign isn't spending much time and energy on Chicago and the state of Illinois, Obama out-polls Hillary by a 2 to 1 margin here, but is using the big pool of volunteers here to make a difference elsewhere in the country.
I was very impressed with the enormity of the operation, these headquarters are open 24 hours, but after a few hours we had to leave the HQ and head for bed, tomorrow was going to be a long and busy day.
The next morning we followed Obama's path he described in his book "Dreams from My father", in which he talks about his work in the late 80's on the south side of Chicago as a community organizer. If you haven't read the book yet, I highly recommend it, even if you're not a big Obama fan. It's a very human story about the struggles of a multiracial person trying to figure out where he belongs.
We had set up a meeting with the Reverend Dr. Alvin Love of Lilydale First Baptist Church. Dr. Love was one the people who hired Barack Obama in 1985 to start working for a new community organization called "Developing Communities Project" or DCP for short. The DCP still exists today and Dr. Love is now the President of the organization. You can find a lot more about Obama's time there in the "Dreams from My father" book and there are also some interesting online articles about it. Reverend Love turned out to be a very inspiring man. The TV crew had me interview him on camera and I came away with a much better sense of what makes Barack Obama tick and where he gets his drive. I asked Dr. Love, who still talks to Obama regularly, if the thought that politics had changed Obama at all. His answer was refreshing:
"I don't think politics have changed him, he's only gotten better at what he used to do here and he does it on a much larger scale."
I also asked him if the US are "ready for a black president" and once again the answer was refreshing.
"Let me answer that in 2 parts. I think that the challenges and problems we face in this country by far transcend any question about race and gender and my second answer would be, ready or not, Here he comes!".
My final question was if Dr. love thought that Barack's work here 25 years ago had made a difference.
"Oh there's no doubt, our crime rate is down and back then I didn't even know the name of the pastor of the church 2 blocks down from here. Now we all know each other, talk and meet all the time and fight together for our neighborhood."
It was nice to have confirmed that Obama really is the candidate who brings people together to face the challenges of the future. After the interview we stayed for the very lively church service, with a lot of gospel signing and great music.
We closed off the day and our stay in Chicago by walking around in "Altgeld Gardens", the first public housing project in the United States, built in 1945. It was especially this area where Obama focused his effort in the 80's. There were Obama signs everywhere, because the folks that live here know what a difference Barack Obama can make. I'm hoping the rest of the US catches on as well.
If you want to see the Belgian TV news report, you can do so by following this link. Mind you, most of the report is in dutch, so you won't understand a lot of it, but you can at least enjoy the images. You will see the whole news broadcast, but if you fast forward to the 18 minutes and 30 second mark you'll see my report.
The victory on Saturday in South Carolina wasn't a surprise to all the volunteers who had been working for the Obama campaign there, but the extent of the victory was.
For the past few weeks I was one of thousands of volunteers working all over the state of South Carolina to make sure we got the result we saw on Saturday evening. I'll try to give you a little peek behind the scenes of the campaign from my personal view. There wasn't any new groundbreaking strategy used as far as I could see; the same old tactics to win political campaigns was put in motion: build an army of volunteers, identify your supporters early and then do everything you possibly can to get those supporters to the polls.
When I first got involved with the local Rock Hill headquarters, several weeks ago, the emphasis seemed to be on identifying who would vote for Obama and convincing folks who were still undecided to join our side. This was done through phone canvassing and door-to-door canvassing. The headquarters were always filled with people making phone calls, sometimes it was hard to find a little corner to sit in and make your calls. We noted who was already convinced to vote for Barack and the folks who were still doubting got literature in the mail and sometimes a house visit in an effort to help them "see the light".
The week before the primary the tactics shifted to finding volunteers within the group of people who said they would vote for Obama. These volunteers would help on primary day, by phone canvassing and making door to door visits. This time I decided to walk around neighborhoods and participate in the door to door canvassing. I usually drove to the HQ in Rock Hill where I picked up my "walking lists" and then drove even further south to places like Lancaster and Chester to knock on some doors.
What struck me as I was driving all over the northern part of SC was the hundreds of Hillary signs you saw everywhere along the road. You hardly saw any Obama signs. You see, the Obama campaign didn't invest a lot of money in signs, for a good reason. Maybe somebody should have told the Clinton campaign that yard signs don't vote and that it's better to invest money in organizing your supporters and volunteers. On the other hand, maybe Hillary's campaign just couldn't find all those volunteers?
Another thing that struck me was the poor state a lot of the areas that I drove through were in. While I'm sure that the folks who live in Charleston and Hilton Head island are not doing too shabby, it's obvious that the rest of the state is really hurting. Why a lot of them keep voting republican is beyond me. The only reason I can come up with is that probably some preacher told them they would go to hell if they voted Democratic.
The folks I talked to on their door steps were all very nice and I found about a dozen volunteers for election day.
The day before election day most of the people who the campaign had identified as strong Obama supporters got a big personalized door hanger placed on their front door explaining where they had to go vote and how the electronic voting process was going to look. Thousands and thousands of those got distributed all over the state and I hung up a few hundred myself.
On January 26th, the day of the primary, we had the most volunteers working, in an effort to make sure all of our supporters went to vote. The staging area for the campaign in Rock Hill was moved that day from the headquarters we had on Ebenezer Road to the Freedom Center in downtown Rock Hill to be able to accommodate the hundreds of volunteers working that day. I was the precinct captain for Precinct 8 in Rock Hill. That day about 60 volunteers were working in Rock Hill alone, going door to door and visiting everyone on their list of Obama Supporters. Many more volunteers were making phone calls out of the Freedom Center as well. The plan was to visit all of our supporters once before noon, once more in the afternoon if they hadn't voted yet and also call them to remind them to vote. So if you waited a long time to get your butt to the polling station you might have been "harassed" 3 times that day. I walked door to door with a young team member from Pennsylvania from 9 am to 6 pm. What was really satisfying to see was that the work we were doing had an immediate effect. At one point while walking along a long straight street we looked behind us and saw 3 cars pull out of different driveways at the same time, all of them on their way to vote. In my precinct we also had the problem that the polling place was different from the one people were used to. We met a lot of people who said they went to vote that morning at their usual polling place,but found it locked and empty and they had returned home without voting. We were there to tell them where the new polling place was and a lot of people immediately went out again to vote as soon as they found out. If there hadn't been any volunteers visiting those folks that day, they would not have voted. The 8th precinct is a very diverse area. We walked through neighborhoods that look very much like the one I live in but we also walked on dirt roads to visit people living in totally run down houses with no sewer facilities. They all had a port-a-potty standing in their front yard. This is also America.
My energy was drained by about 6 pm and I drove down to the Headquarters on Ebenezer road that I had worked out of the past few weeks. I found a small group of people watching TV, anxious to get some results. Most folks had driven down to Columbia to join the celebrations there. We ordered pizza for everyone and counted down to 7 pm. When at 7 pm CNN projected Obama as the winner the roof almost came off the building. All the hard work had been more than worth it.
I'm impressed by the very diverse crowd that volunteered for Obama, from all walks of life and from all over the Country, with folks coming from Texas, Kentucky, New Hampshire and all over the place, next to a lot of native South Carolinians. I also met several people who had never voted before and a lot of folks who never voted in a primary before. The headquarters was run by folks who were all less than 30 years old. The energy and excitement was always around. It's the same energy, inspiration and drive that will help us win the presidential election. It's the kind of coalition of new voters, young voters and experienced voters that will win the presidential election. The only candidate that brings all of this together is Barack Obama.
In case you're still wondering why I support Barack Obama, I can just use the words Senator Kennedy used today: "Barack inspires me, it's that simple." And in the words of President John F.Kennedy: "The world is changing. The old ways will not do... It is time for a new generation of leadership."
On a sidenote: You'll remember from my previous post that the Belgian media has been interested in my work for the Obama campaign. You can now see an interview online that a reporter from Public TV in Belgium had with me and my lovely wife by clicking on the following URL: http://www.deredactie.be/cm/de.redactie/mediatheek/1.241790 You'll hear a lot of dutch, but big parts of the interview are also in english, so go ahead and have a peek. I'll be going to Chicago this weekend with a crew from a commercial TV station in Belgium. We will walk around in the neighborhoods where Obama used to work as a community organizer and also visit the national Obama Headquarters. I'll keep you posted as to how that trip goes.
As you know by now, I've been spending some of my time as a volunteer for the Barack Obama campaign in South Carolina. I thought you might be interested in knowing what I'm doing there.
The Obama campaign has several field offices scattered all over South Carolina. The main Headquarters are of course in Columbia, but I go down to the Rock Hill field office, since that's the closest. It takes me about an hour and 15 minutes to get there. I mainly go down there on the weekends, but I've also managed to squeeze in a few evenings now and then. The office is always buzzing with activity and the parking lot is filled with cars that have license plates from across the country. A lot of students that are studying in the Charlotte area come to volunteer there.
What I've been doing is making a lot of phone calls. They have a big phone banking operation running and most of the time all phone lines are in use. Volunteers also bring their cell phones and make calls on those.
I've made about 1,000 "voter ID" calls now and the target group I've been working on is African-Americans, who make up about half of the registered Democrats in SC. What I ask them is if they have made up their mind yet on who they're going to vote for. If they say they will vote for Obama we will make sure they actually go out and vote on election day (January 26th). If they say they are still undecided they will get some literature in the mail and they might even get a house visit to try and persuade them. If they will vote for someone other than Obama we tell them to go vote in February. Just kidding! We actually just wish those folks a good day and we won't bother them again.
Most of the time people don't answer the phone or they'll let their answering machine pick up. Such is the curse of caller ID. In about 20% of the time I will actually get to talk someone. In about half of those cases they say they are going to vote for Obama. In most other cases they say they are still undecided. The only other candidate that has been mentioned a few times, but not a lot, is Hillary Clinton.
Some of the reasons people give to vote for Hillary are interesting, like these examples: "I really don't like Hillary, but I like the guy she sleeps with" and "I love Obama, but I'm afraid that if I vote for him he will get shot and I don't want to do that to the guy".
I'm fully expecting to be making other calls starting this weekend, more than likely "get out the vote calls" and trying to find volunteers to help out on election day. I will also be working all day on primary day, January 26th, and I'll let you know how that goes. We will need lots of volunteers on election day, which is next week Saturday, so if you want to see Obama win, don't hesitate and drive down to SC that day! If you really want to make a change you can just drive down with me or contact me and I will get you in touch with a field organizer.
You can click on all pictures to see a bigger version.
One other thing I've been doing regarding the Obama campaign is give interviews to a bunch Of media outlets in Belgium. As you might know I spent the first 29 years of my life in that country and I guess the Belgian media likes to report on a Belgian connection when talking about the presidential primaries in the US.
So far I've given interviews to the national press agency Belga, Radio Flanders International and a national newspaper called "De Morgen". You can see some of the result of all that online:
Mind you, all of it is in dutch, so you probably won't understand it but you might at least get a laugh out of it.
The most exciting stuff for me is yet to come though. This weekend a TV news crew from the Belgian Public Television will be coming to my house for an interview and they'll follow me around as I go to SC to volunteer for the Obama campaign there.
The weekend before "Super Tuesday", which is February 5th, a TV news crew from the biggest commercial TV station in Belgium is flying me to Chicago to go visit the National Obama Headquarters and the suburbs of South Chicago where Barack Obama used to be a social worker and community organizer. I'll try to give you guys a little update from Chicago when I get there.
So that's what's been going on with me. What's been going on with you?
You might be visiting this blog because you have read an article about me and My support for Barack Obama in the South Carolina primary. If you feel like you want to get involved as well, please send me an e-mail.
You're more than welcome to join me and some friends as we head down to Rock Hill, SC to help out in the local Obama Headquarters. I plan on riding down there every weekend. There are also opportunities for you to help out on weekdays. As you know, the North Carolina primary isn't until May, by then the Democratic nominee will have long been decided on. So if you really want to make a difference you need to join me and thousands of other volunteers in South Carolina.
From LKSOC (the Larry Kissell School of Original Campaigning) comes the following event, which Under The Dome already calls "the most creative political event of the year". The Democratic Congressional candidate will host free lead screening of toys from noon to 3 p.m. this Friday in downtown Concord.
"Not only as a candidate for Congress, but as a parent and school teacher, I'm concerned about dangerous imports and the safety of our children," says Kissell, "I don't believe you have to wait for an election to begin working on behalf of families in the 8th District." A NC certified lead risk assessor using X-ray fluorescence, the most reliable technology available, will be on hand to examine items.
Millions of toys and children's items, many imported from China, have been recalled recently for containing lead. Lead paint is toxic and may cause brain damage, organ failure and even death in children.
While many popular toys like some lines of the Thomas the Tank Engine have already been removed from shelves, the list of toxic toys continues to grow and parents may be unaware that Holiday items purchased for gifts or already in their home may hold a deadly threat to developing children. The public is invited to join Kissell this Friday, December 21 from noon to 3 p.m. in Downtown Concord for the free toy lead screening service.
The event location is 9 Union Street, Concord, near the intersection of Union and Cabarrus Avenue. I hope to see you there!
Today I spent my afternoon together with 30,000 other people in a football stadium in Columbia, SC. It felt like being part of history. 48 days before the Democratic primary in South Carolina, Oprah Winfrey joined Barack Obama on stage and made a passionate and convincing plea to explain why Obama is the candidate for President of the USA. It was the biggest political rally for any non-incumbent candidate in the past few decades. The NY Times calls it a "staggering sight" and could come up with only one bigger number: JFK drew about 35,000 for a Labor Day rally in 1960.
After Arrested Development got the crowd to their feet by singing their hits, we allbroke a world record. When entering the stadium, everyone had received a little flier that had a phone script on one side and the name and phone number of 4 SC Democrats on the other side. After a signal from the stage everyone was asked to call all 4 people on their list and ask them to vote for Barack Obama. In doing so the crowd set a world record for "biggest phone bank". A representative of the Guinness World Record organization actually got on stage and handed over a world record certificate.
Then it was time to listen to the 2 people everyone had come for.
Oprah entered the stage under a thunderous applause and gave a 15 minute introduction to Obama.
Winfrey praised Obama for his wisdom and concern for ordinary people. Invoking American civil rights leader Martin Luther King, she said:
"We don't have to just dream the dream anymore. We get to vote that dream into reality."
She addressed some of the reasons the opposition always mentions when they say you shouldn't vote for Obama. "There are those who say it's not his time, that he should wait his turn. Think about where you'd be in your life if you'd waited when people told you to," she said. Winfrey urged voters to consider Obama's life experience instead of focusing on the amount of time he has spent "in the hallways of government." "I'm sick of politics as usual," Winfrey said. "We need Barack Obama."
After Oprah announced that it was "Obama Time", Barack Obama got on stage and gave a 45 minute long speech. He received a minute long standing ovation when he said that "Next year the name George W. Bush will not be on the ballot." He said voters will need to cast ballots in favor of a candidate, not against an incumbent who is leaving office.
Obama had several remarks that where obviously addressed at his main opponent, Hillary Clinton, but never mentioned her name. He said if he's the party nominee, an opponent won't be able to say he supported going to war in Iraq, supported a resolution which might lead to war with Iran or doesn't want to talk to leaders we don't like, all things Clinton did and said.
"I'm tired of Democrats thinking the only way to look tough on national security is to act like George Bush," he said. "We need a bold Democratic Party that's going to stand for something, not just posture and pose."
"It's not good enough to tell the people what you think they want to hear, instead of what they need to hear. That just won't do. Not this time," he said. "We can't spend all our time triangulating and poll-testing our positions because we're worried about what Mitt or Rudy or Fred or the other Republican nominees are going to say about us."
He said he was "riled up" that some believe that as a black man, it would be hard for him to win the race.
"I remember some folks saying, 'Oh no, a black man can't win," Obama said. "I remember that. When folks tell me I can't do something, that's when I want to do it."
He closed off with the, by now familiar, "fired up, ready to go" chant. It was impressive to hear 30,000 voices yell it out.
Today's rally coincides with a new McClatchy-MSNBC poll that puts Mr. Obama and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, his chief rival, in a statistical tie in South Carolina. meanwhile, the republican candidate that seems to be surging ahead in the polls, Mike Huckabee, also had a "rally" in Columbia this weekend and had 400 people show up.
Obama can win this and after today 30,000 more people will make sure he will.
You can view the complete speech of both Oprah and Obama on video on Obama's website.
I'll be traveling to Columbia, SC this weekend to spend some time with my in-laws but mostly to spend more time with My favorite presidential candidate, Barack Obama.
It looks like I won't be alone... The Obama campaign had planned a rally with Barack and Oprah Winfrey this Sunday in the Colonial Center in Columbia, which seats about 18,000, but on Tuesday Obama's state director Stacey Brayboy announced that "overwhelming excitement" had caused a run on free tickets. The rally will therefore be moved to the 80,000 seat college football stadium. Even though the campaign doesn't expect to completely fill the stadium, it is clear that several tens of thousands will be attending.
Tickets to attend the rally are no longer required, but the Obama campaign requests that you RSVP on their site if you plan on attending. Doors open at 12.30 pm.
It could be the largest political gathering in South Carolina since 1976, when Jimmy Carter captured the Democratic nomination and spoke to tens of thousands from the Statehouse steps, said Alex Sanders, who introduced Carter at the time.
If there still is such a thing as people power, I do believe we have found our presidential candidate.
I'm trying to reach the campaign to see if I could do some live blogging from the event, but they are understandably overwhelmed by the success of this thing, so I can't promise yet that I'll be able to report live from Williams-Brice Stadium. If not, look for my report Sunday evening.
Yesterday, my favorite presidential candidate visited the campus of NCCU in Durham, NC. The Obama campaign arranged press credentials for me so I could do a live blogging session on BlueNC. Barack Obama spoke to an energized crowd of 4000 in the O'Kelly Riddick Stadium in the middle of the NCCU campus. The stage was decorated with a big banner that said "CHANGE we can believe in".
As usual, the crowd went nuts when Barack walked on stage. He started by saying that not only the number of folks that his rallies attract is inspiring but also the make up of the crowd. Just like at another Obama rally I had attended the crowd was very diverse, all ages and races.
He then went on as follows:
The main reason you're here is that you're sick and tired of George W Bush. We're tired of an administration that treats our constitution as a nuisance. Tired of tax cuts for the rich and bad economic policies. Tired of different standards of justice, e.g. Jena 6 against Blackwater or Scooter Libby. Tired of a lack of progress on health care and education and energy policies. And most of all tired of a war that costs us thousands of lives and a trillion dollars.
But changing parties in the White House isn't enough, we need big and fundamental change. We need major change in health care and energy policies, but we can only do that with a fundamental change in the way politics are done.
Obama then talked about his cousin Dick Cheney, saying he's "been hiding this for a long time, everyone has a crazy uncle in the attic and a black sheep in the family". He said he "doesn't want to go on that family hunting trip anytime soon".
Obama spoke about the "culture" in Washington DC, saying he wants to "clean the place out" and make fundamental change in Washington. He doesn't think anyone in Washington is really listening. He's running because he wants the people's voice to be heard in Washington.
Folks in Washington think I'm naive when I'm "talking about hope again". Folks say I haven't been in Washington long enough, but being in Washington for too long might boil all the hope out of Me. Some of the people with a very long resume are Cheney and Bush, as they've proven, a long resume doesn't guarantee good policies.
Obama says he has experience in standing up against special interests and has experience standing up even when its not popular. He references to an anti-war speech he gave when he was running for Senate, when Bush's popularity was 65%. He said that is something you need to expect from the next president, someone who is willing to stand up, that doesn't flip-flop.
Obama then promised health care for everyone by the end of his first term. He wants to invest in early childhood education and takes aim at No child left behind, that "leaves the money behind". He wants to work with our teachers instead of against them. He will get banks out of student loans and make college affordable for everyone.
Obama believes there is no contradiction between our security and our moral standing n the world. He says he'll restore habeas corpus and close down Guantanamo Bay because "that's not who we are". "we're going to lead the world by deed and by example."
The first thing I will do after getting sworn in is calling together the joint chiefs of staff to end this war.
Barack then went on to blame Hillary Clinton for voting for the Iran/revolutionary guard resolution and says we shouldn't be beating the war drums twice. Clinton is telling him he's naive for wanting to talk to "our enemies". But Obama believes we should never fear to negotiate but shouldn't negotiate out of fear.
Finally Barack Obama feels confident that he can lead this country in a new direction.
I won't be a perfect president, but I'll always be honest and upfront. It's going to be tough, hard and difficult to repair the damage of the last years. I want to open up the doors of government to the people. Government by the people and for the people, especially for young people.
Obama then closed off with the familiar "fired up, ready to go" chant and a sentence he ends a lot of rallies with:
Let's go change the world
Here's some pictures I took. You can click on any of them to see a much bigger version.
Some pictures of the big crowd:
Pictures taken during Obama's speech:
After the speech the "press corps" got some private time with the candidate, but I didn't interview him. We all gave that honor to a much younger colleague who also had press credentials :-)
There are people in every time and every land who want to stop history in its tracks. They fear the future, mistrust the present, and invoke the security of the comfortable past which, in fact, never existed.
This Saturday is the day to get active!
