Today is Barack Obama’s 47th birthday. Happy Birthday, Barack!! Four years ago at this time I finished up a two-month stint on the Gulf Coast of Florida organizing voting registration teams in Pinellas, Manatee, and Sarasota counties and headed north to take over the job of organizing Delaware and Montgomery counties in suburban Philadelphia. On my way I stopped in to visit my brother in Washington DC. I was brimming with confidence about John Kerry’s chances. My experience in Florida had shown me that all the momentum was with Kerry and that people were desperately ready for a change. My brother had a warning. In the immediate aftermath of the Democratic National Convention, a new organization had launched a scorched earth campaign aimed directly at Kerry’s military service. They were called the Swift Boat Veteran’s for Truth. I had been driving through the Carolinas when they first made themselves known. My brother was telling me that they would cause a lot of damage. I was too confident from my time in Florida to take him seriously.
It wasn’t just the Swift-Boaters that derailed Kerry’s momentum. Immediately after I left the Sunshine State it was hit by three successive hurricanes. The entire month of August was lost to my organizers, who couldn’t go door to door or stand outside the Home Depot registering voters. Jeb and George Bush were able to swoop in with promises of federal dollars for reconstruction, and the tide slowly changed in Florida.
If I remember correctly, August 5th was the high-water mark for Kerry in the polls. Then he began a slow slide that eventually brought him into a virtual tie. One major difference this time around is that the Democratic National Convention is scheduled a full month later. Another difference is that we will have the distraction of the Olympics during the remainder of August. But the negative attacks have already started and they seem to have eroded Obama’s lead in the national polls. Fortunately, the state-by-state polls still look excellent, but there is cause for concern.
I think the lesson we need to learn from 2004 is that August, despite its slowness for news, can be the decisive month. We need to get to work while everyone else is resting up for the post-Labor Day push.
GET OFF MY LAWN!!
