Author: Omir the Storyteller

This day is called the eve of the Election.
Those who outlive tomorr’w, and come safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is named,
And rouse them when Election Day is mentioned.

Those who shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast their neighbours,
And say ‘Tomorrow’s the Election.’
Then will they strip their sleeve and show their scars,
And say ‘I got these in two thousand eight.’
The old forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But they’ll remember, with advantages,
What feats they did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in their mouth as household words-
Be in their flowing cups freshly remembered.
This story shall the parent teach their child;
And no more shall Election Day go by,
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered —
We few, we happy few, we band of bloggers.

This is not just for the bloggers. This is for everyone across the country who has donated, canvassed, phonebanked, baked cookies, talked to their neighbors, put a bumper sticker on their car or otherwise spread the word about Barack Obama, change and hope.

And this is especially for those who have done so in the areas of the country where their opinions were not appreciated or, frankly wanted; and most especially for those who have stood up to hate, prejudice, ignorance and the potential of violence to find that one more voter who might tip the election.

This is for Steve Gilliard, Toot, Terence Tolbert, Studs Terkel, and everyone else who did not live to see tomorrow to fruition. They are in our hearts.

And finally, this is for America. We are finally on the verge of getting our country back.

Yes, you read me right. No, I am not out of my mind. In fact when I filled out my ballot and sent it in, I felt better about that decision than I have about pretty much any decision since I married my wife.

But it’s true. I didn’t vote for Barack Obama.

Well, who did I vote for?

You’ll have to come inside and hear the story to find out . . .
Meet Meredith*. She’s bright, funny, intelligent, irreverent, sometimes lazy, occasionally makes mistakes and has me wrapped around her finger.

I voted for Meredith  She is eleven years old, and my wife and I are her legal guardians.

Merry’s mother Brittney was a cousin of some people who used to live in our apartment complex. My son Jeff started dating her when she was 15.  As time went on, we started to learn a bit more about Britney. Her mother was murdered when Brittney was very young. She didn’t know her father. She passed from relative to relative, never staying with any one relative for any length of time. She never really had a sense of family or stable home. As I understand it, it’s not uncommon for girls in situations like that to have babies so they can have someone who will love them and they can feel a family bond with. I don’t know if that was in Brittney’s mind, but one day our son came to us with a couple of startling facts:

First, Brittney was pregnant.

Second, he wasn’t the father.

Third, there was “a good chance” the baby’s father was black.

Needless to say we hadn’t been expecting news like this, but we coped. We took Brittney in, gave her a place to stay, went to the hospital with her. The picture of Jeff holding this newborn girl in his arms is still on our wall. Brittney named the baby after her slain mother.

Merry spent the first eighteen moths of her life in our house. Even after Jeff and Brittney broke up, Brittney lived in our basement and raised Merry there. Merry called us “Grandpa” and “Grandma.” But eventually Brittney’s rootlessness caught up with her, and she moved on, but we still saw Merry almost every weekend for years. At the start it was just a visit for a few hours. Then she would stay the weekend. Then she stayed three days, four days at a time. And on a May day about six years ago, she came to visit and just stayed. We did’t mind at all. In fact we enjoyed having her, but we were concerned because she was there with no legal status. What if she needed medical care? What if our whitebread family decided to take her on vacation and had to try to explain the presence of this dark-skinned girl with a different last name?

One day Merry and I were walking home from the library, a distance of a little over a quarter mile. I had just gotten inside the house and we’d taken our shoes off when there was a knock on the door. I opened it and found myself face to face with one of Seattle’s finest. I don’t remember exactly what questions he asked, but the basis for his visit was that someone had seen us walking  and was “concerned” that I might . . . well let’s not put too fine a point on it, they were worried that I had kidnapped Merry. I don’t remember what I said to the officer, but it satisfied him and he went about his business. But I still worried what would have happened if he had decided I had something nefarious in mind.

In those days Brittney would come visit on the weekends. Sometimes she’d show up every weekend, sometimes she would skip a week, and as time went on her visits grew less and less regular. Finally my wife and I spoke to a lawyer friend who agreed to draw up non-parental custodial papers. We would be responsible for Merry and could legally put her on our insurance, but in no way did we want to take Merry away from Brittney, because in some way I think we realized she was about all Brittney had left. We were careful to say no, we were not adopting Merry, we loved having her in our home, but we needed to do this to provide legal protection for ourselves, for Merry, and for Brittney. Brittney would still be her mother and we would never block access to her, and if Brittney ever was in a situation where she could take Merry and care for her again, we would go back to being weekends-only grandparents.

Brittney signed the custodial papers. She visited twice after that, and from the day of that second visit to this we have not seen her again.

So Merry has grown up in our house, with our values. She thinks George Bush is “stupid,” which is a catch-all phrase for “I don’t like this.” She doesn’t like John McCain either. See, I told you she was smart! She is as much our daughter as our own daughter, who she knows as Auntie Lizzie. She still thinks of Jeff as “Daddy,” and in fact is a very lucky girl because through the non-custodial parent process we got to meet her biological father, who has turned into a family man with two other children. He lives about 50 miles away and comes to see Merry whenever he can. So she has two daddies!

Now, you may wonder why I dragged you through Merry’s history and what this has to do with the election.

Merry is the daughter of a teen mother with a troubled childhood of her own. Statistics say that children with a background like that often fall into similar circumstances. We did not want that to happen to Merry. She is very bright and very talented and a natural-born leader in school and on the playground. (We call her “Merry, Your Cruise Director,” a hat tip to Lauren Tewes’ character on the TV series The Love Boat because she’s always organizing some kind of activity among her peers.) It would be a complete shame to lose her to the streets when we had it in our power to do something about it.

Yes, I filled in the little oval next to Barack Obama’s name, but I was really voting for Merry. I was voting so she could look at the president of the United States, who also had a black father and a white mother, and could see a role model who could show her that, yes, she can be anything she wants to be if she works for it. So far she has luckily been spared the sting of racism in her personal life, and I want her to grow up in a country where that is the norm rather than something that has to be qualified by saying, “but maybe that’s because we live in Seattle and we don’t have much of that here.” I want her to grow up in a world where neither her origins, nor her gender, nor the color of her skin, nor anything else about her holds her back.

I’m casting my vote for Barack Obama, but I’m doing it for Merry, so she will grow up in a better world than I’ve had, even though in many ways my life has been pretty good.

And I’m voting for Max, Jeff’s oldest son. He’s seven years old and loves to come up with reasons why I can’t just turn into a zombie and eat his brains if I feel like it. (“It has to be night outside!” is his favorite so far.) Max is a great kid, but he has some anger management issues that he’s working through. I’m voting for Max so he can receive the help he needs when he needs it to grow out of the anger.

And I’m voting for Janice and Rita, my sons’ daughters, both four years old. Not only did I fill in the oval for Obama and Biden, I did the same for Christine Gregoire for Washington governor. I want my granddaughters — all three of them — to grow up with strong woman who can serve as role models for them. Women like Gregoire, or Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, our two senators, or Darcy Burner, who excelled at Microsoft before she decided to take on Dave Reichert. Or, of course, Michelle Obama, a successful woman in her own right.

And I’m voting for DJ, my youngest grandchild. He’s barely a year old and doesn’t do much of anything but eat, sleep, cry, walk a little and soil his diapers a lot, so we have no idea what his future is going to be like, but whatever it is, I want it to be the best possible.

And I’m voting for Sam, one of my co-workers, who just took the oath of American citizenship a few days ago. Unfortunately due to some bureaucratic snafu she was not able to register to vote, which she was very much looking forward to. So this vote is for Sam too, in the hope that people won’t look down on her or her daughters just because Sam was born thousands of miles away and doesn’t speak fluent, idiomatic English.

And I’m voting for Rita, my mother. She passed away just before New Years’ after being in a nursing home for over a year because of a stroke she was never going to recover from. We knew it, she knew it, the people at the nursing home knew it. This vote is in her memory so that people in her situation can get the health care they need and not have to put my sister through financial hell to figure out how to pay for the care. It could be me someday. It could be you.

And finally, I’ll admit to voting for myself. I got out of apathy and into the political process because I could see the damage Bush and his crime family were doing to the country. So I can’t wait for us to get started undoing the damage of the last eight years. But I’m also doing it because I have diabetes. I’ve had it for years, and while I haven’t suffered anything worse than a bit of diminished sensation in my feet so far, I know that in some ways I’m living on borrowed time. Even if we start on January 21st to open up lines of stem cell research and other therapies that are currently blocked by our Luddite administration, I have to hope sufficient progress will be made toward a cure before the diabetes irreversibly damages my body. I would like to be able to bore DJ’s grandkids with stories of what it was like in the old days. I don’t know if I’ll get the chance, but I know that under Republican rule the odds go down every day.

Yes, I cast my ballot to elect Barack Obama the next President of the United States. And yes, I voted for myself, but I also voted for those I know and those I love who can’t do it for themselves.

* All the names in this story have been changed to protect the privacy of those involved.

OK, I know, this is Monday’s news, but there’s a reason for the title.

We’ve been kind of busy with other subjects the past few days, so you might have missed the news that rock ‘n’ roll icon Bo Diddley died Monday, one day short of his 80th birthday.
Wikipedia:

Born in McComb, Mississippi as Ellas Otha Bates, he was adopted and raised by his mother’s cousin, Gussie McDaniel, whose surname he assumed, becoming Ellas McDaniel. The family moved to Chicago when he was seven. He took violin lessons as a youth, but was inspired to become a guitarist after seeing John Lee Hooker.

He worked as a carpenter and mechanic, but also began a musical career playing on street corners with friends, including Jerome Green (c. 1934-1973), as a band called the Hipsters (later the Langley Avenue Jive Cats). During the summer of 1943-44, he played for tips at the Maxwell Street market in a band with Earl Hooker.

In 1951, he landed a regular spot at the 708 Club on Chicago’s South Side, with a repertoire influenced by Louis Jordan, John Lee Hooker, and Muddy Waters. He adopted the stage name, Bo Diddley, which is probably a southern black slang phrase meaning “nothing at all”, as in “he ain’t bo diddley”. Another source says it was his nickname as a teenage Golden Gloves boxer. The nickname is also linked to the diddley bow, a two-stringed instrument that was used in the south by black musicians working in the fields.

In late 1954, he teamed up with harmonica player Billy Boy Arnold, drummer Clifton James and bass player Roosevelt Jackson, and recorded demos of “I’m A Man” and “Bo Diddley”. They re-recorded the songs at Chess Studios with a backing ensemble comprising Otis Spann (piano), Lester Davenport (harmonica), Frank Kirkland (drums) and Jerome Green (maracas). The record was released in March 1955, and the A-side, “Bo Diddley”, became a #1 R&B hit.

He was famous for writing songs with no chord changes, where the rhythm provided the drive and excitement. The rhythm, of course, was based on what is now known as “the Bo Diddley beat.” If you’ve never heard of it, here’s a rough example. Say the following quickly, but only the bolded and italicized parts:

One and two and three and four and one and two and three and four and

This is a variation on a Cuban clave, and it could be argued the the Bo Diddley beat is just a clave with a couple of accents (the italicized beats) thrown in. What Bo Diddley did was to take that Latin beat and incorporate it into rhythm & blues, from which it made its way into rock ‘n’ roll.

I grew up listening to Top 40 radio in the later part of the Sixties (except for times when I was turning my back on it to concentrate on classical — but that’s another story). I never heard of Bo Diddley before I went to college and started getting some exposure to R&B and early rock ‘n’ roll. I later learned how much of an influence he had on rock music; he was covered by bands from the Rolling Stones to the Doors to Tom Petty to Bruce Springsteen. If it wasn’t for Bo Diddley we would never have had songs from Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders (“The Game Of Love”), The Who (“Magic Bus”) and The Strangeloves (“I Want Candy”), among many others. Few rock acts have escaped his influence, directly or indirectly.

Lately I’ve been writing songs. Some are good, some are okay, some never get past the “why did I bother with that” stage. The best ones seem to come at me full on, like I just need to transcribe them from wherever they spring up from. The other day when I heard the news I sat down at my computer and started tapping out a Bo Diddley beat on the desk. Moments later this song came out. I posted it on LiveJournal and got some very positive comments about it (one commenter said it “made me dance and cry at the same time”). So, to offer a break from All What’s-Her-Name, All The Time coverage, I thought I’d share this with you.

This song is ©2008 under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA license. That basically means you can pass it around, sing it, play it (if you can figure out how), modify it or whatever you like, as long as:

1. You give me credit for it;
2. You distribute any changes under the same Creative Commons license; and
3. You don’t do anything commercial with it (like record it on a CD you’re selling). (If you want to do this, of course, let’s talk)

You can check the Creative Commons web page for more information. I could use this as a springboard to talk about copyright, the public domain and the common good; but forget that. Let’s have some rock ‘n’ roll.

This song doesn’t have a formal tune yet. I imagine it as being done to the tune of something like “Bo Diddley” (the R&B hit mentioned above), with traces of George Thorogood’s version of “Who Do You Love,” another Bo Diddley hit. Unfortunately I can’t get it to sound good on the banjo; but then the banjo is not really known for its use in R&B.

I heard the man on the radio say
Bo Diddley, Bo Diddley passed away
Bo Diddley, Bo Diddley died today

Bo Diddley went to the by-and-by
Looked St Peter right in the eye
Peter said “Bo Diddley, where you been?”
“Gone to hell and back again.”

“Bo Diddley, Bo Diddley, who’d you see?”
“I saw the Devil and the Devil saw me.”
“Bo Diddley, Bo Diddley, what did he say?”
“Devil said, welcome to the judgment day.”

“Bo Diddley, Bo Diddley, what’d you do?”
“I played the Devil a song or two.
Played it high, played it low,
Played it as loud as loud could go.
Played a song for the poor damned souls
And they got up and danced on the burning coals.

(instrumental bridge)

“Devil said, ‘Bo, you’re one cool cat
But you can’t stay in Hell if you play like that.”

Peter gave Bo Diddley a great big grin,
Opened the gate and said, “Come on in,
And let the heavenly dance begin.”

So if you go to Heaven you’re sure to meet
A man with golden slippers on his coal black feet
Playin a harp with a Bo Diddley beat.

I heard the man on the radio say
Bo Diddley, Bo Diddley passed away
Bo Diddley, Bo Diddley died today
He’s gone but his music is here to stay.

Little Brother
by Cory Doctorow
Tor Books, April 2008
ISBN: 0765319853

Imagine you’re a bright 17-year-old who’s bored by school and has an anti-authoritarian streak a mile wide.

Now imagine you get caught up in a DHS sweep following a terrorist attack on your hometown and the DHS decides to start treating you like a terrorist.

Now imagine that when they finally release you, you find that your hometown has turned into a police state. The DHS is treating everyone like a potential terrorist, but they continue to take a special interest in you.

What do you do?

Well, if you’re Marcus Yallow, the hacker hero of Cory Doctorow’s new young adult novel Little Brother, you fight back the only two ways you know how. Hard. And by hacking your way to freedom.

Marcus is a hacker. Not in the sense that the media uses the word — as someone who breaks into computer systems to commit crimes — but in the way hackers use the word:  Someone who comes up with clever and imaginative solutions to problems. His problem, at the beginning of the novel, is that he goes to a school where security cameras, locked-down computer systems and petty bureaucrats combine to give the school the atmosphere of a minimum security detention facility. Marcus is mostly bored with school, but finds intellectual challenge in activities like outwitting the gait-recognition software the cameras feed to and hacking his school-issued laptop to run forbidden software without the authorities’ knowledge or consent. He uses his skills at social and technological engineering to sneak out of school so he can hang out with friends from other schools around his neighborhood in San Francisco.

On one such excursion he and his friends get caught in the crush when someone blows up the Bay Area Bridge and collapses the BART tunnel underneath San Francisco Bay. One of his friends is wounded  in the aftermath, and in trying to get him medical help they run afoul of a group of Homeland Security operatives. Remember that anti-authoritarian streak? Marcus is singled for special attention because he doesn’t feel like the answers to the questions he’s being asked are anyone’s business but his. In return Homeland Security treats him like you’d expect, makes him sign some papers saying he’s been treated fairly (shades of an old Cheech and Chong skit), warns him not to tell anyone what happened, and impresses on him that they will be watching him, and if he steps out of line . . . well, you know, things could happen.

When they finally release Marcus his wounded friend is nowhere to be found. Marcus is humiliated and angry, and decides to fight back, find his friend and take his rights as an American citizen back —  and everyone else’s, if possible.

On its most basic level this is an enjoyable story about teenage rebellion put to constructive use, and a David-and-Goliath story of one kid’s fight against impossible odds. Being a geek and a hacker myself, everything Doctorow has Marcus doing at least sounds like it could easily be done with technology that exists today. For instance, at one point Marcus creates a tool to detect hidden cameras using a toilet paper roll, a nine-volt battery and a set of very bright LEDs. Using the description Doctorow gives and some cheap LEDs from Radio Shack, any kid reading this book could easily duplicate this detector.

Dig down under the surface, though — and it’s not all that far under the surface, when you get right down to it — and you find Doctorow is making another statement: Hey, kid. Yeah you, reading  the book. You could be doing these things too. Right here, right now, in the America you’re  living in today. Doctorow is a prolific writer on subjects like technology, copyright and privacy. He spent time as European director of the Electronic Frontiers Foundation. He knows his stuff. Some of what he proposes in Little Brother is possible today, like the camera detector; some is just waiting to happen, like the network of hacked Xboxes Marcus creates to  ensure a channel for private communication.

What Doctorow has done here is first, to spin a good yarn that isn’t all that much of a stretch to imagine in today’s America, and second, to give kids (and adults who have the good sense to read young adult fiction) some ideas of how to take their privacy and civil rights back. Getting them to question authority and do so in a way that won’t get them sent to Gitmo. Learning that being smart can be cool. You know. Dangerous stuff.

Do yourself a favor. Get this book and read it. If nothing else it’ll be a pleasant day or so of watching a high school kid outwit the Powers That Be. But think about some of the ideas Doctorow puts forward. Then, if there’s a young adult in your life (say, anywhere in middle or high school), give them a copy of Little Brother and sit back and watch. And be ready to answer questions like “Could this happen here?” and “Where can I learn to program a computer?”

Now, while I would encourage you to buy the dead-tree version of the book — and if you use the Powell’s box on the left side of your screen, Booman Tribune gets a piece of the action — you should know that Doctorow is a firm believer in the Creative Commons movement and has put Little Brother online as a free download. He encourages people to kick the tires, read it online, and if they like it, tell their friends and buy the book. He seems to be making money as a writer, so I’d say this approach is working for him. So I’m telling my friends <grin>. Go read the book. And then think about ways to hack the system.

The Hon. Barack Obama
c/o Obama for America
P.O. Box 8102
Chicago, IL 60680

Dear Senator Obama:

As you are no doubt aware, the Supreme Court today announced its decision in a controversial case, Crawford vs. Marion County, deciding 6-3 to let stand an Indiana law requiring voters to show official ID cards at the polls. I must admit that my first thought was that this is what happens when a radical Republican gets his hands on the White House and the ability to push his picks for the Supreme Court through. My second thought was that this is why we need to elect someone like you as President in November.

I would like to share my third thought with you.
I read recently that you were spearheading a voter registration drive across all 50 states in anticipation of the election this November. That’s a worthy activity, and one I think will benefit the nation as a whole. But unfortunately, in light of today’s Supreme Court decision, it doesn’t go far enough.

That’s why I would like to propose that in conjunction with your voter registration effort, you start a program to go along with it to make sure that everyone who wants to cast a vote in November’s election, and is required to show ID to do so, have an ID. I’m no expert in setting up these things, but here’s how I envision something like this would work:

1. You would set up a mechanism for implementing the plan. Whether this would be seen as a tax-exempt organization, or a foundation, I don’t know, but it would need a network of people willing to help with the work.
2. Announce that this organization is dedicated to the purpose of enabling anyone who wants to vote to do so. Most of the work of the foundation apart from registering voters would be to provide whatever assistance they need with getting an ID that would be recognized by their state of residence to qualify them to vote in the election. This would involve everything from help filling out the forms, to locating and securing the necessary paperwork (birth certificates, personal affidavits or other documentation) to establish identity and eligibility to vote, to paying the fee for the ID card for those who are having trouble paying the rent and putting food on the table, much less laying out $20 or $50 or more for an ID card.
3. Solicit and collect donations from your donor base. I can’t help but think that there are many generous, caring people out here who would be willing to donate to help register voters who otherwise would be disenfranchised by the Supreme Court ruling.

Senator, I know that you are a busy man and have many people vying for your attention, but I would like for you to consider this proposal, not just because it would create a great deal of goodwill for you and your campaign, but because it will bring many people to the voting booth who would otherwise be shut out of the process. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,

Omir the Storyteller
Shoreline, Washington

cc: Howard Dean, M.D.
Chairman, Democratic National Committee
430 S. Capitol St. SE
Washington, DC 20003

OK, so this morning I emerged from Omir’s Sooper Seekrit Bomb ‘n’ Fallout Shelter with three observations:

1. They don’t make cardboard refrigerator boxes as roomy as they did back when I was seven.
2. Army surplus peanut butter and saltines for breakfast? Especially World War II Army surplus? Don’t go there.

3. The sky has not yet fallen.

Yes, the sky here on Puget Sound, the place where Mark Twain spent his nicest winter ever one summer, is still up there where it belongs, and it’s still its customary lovely shade of mid-spring gray. I can tell summer is coming, because the rain is getting warmer.

Last night was not a good night. Our favorite candidate didn’t meet expectations. He did better than he was slated to six weeks ago, but he still lost by somewhere around 9 points, and his delegate lead (according to numbers MSNBC was crawling this morning) will be decreased by anywhere from 2 to 26 delegates, and his opponent will have the running room and the talking points she needs to raise some extra cash to fuel her vanity candidacy. In fact she apparently already raised $2.5 million last night.

But it’s not the end of the world.

For one thing, even if his opponent closes the gap by the maximum of 26 delegates (which I doubt) he will still be ahead by more than 100, with two contests that are anywhere from a toss-up to heavily favoring him coming up in two weeks. And that delegate pickup has already been reduced by 1 with the declaration of a new superdelegate, the governor of Oklahoma. He will make up most of that deficit in North Carolina and (hopefully) Indiana, and her chances of catching up will be that much slimmer.

For another, that $2.5 million doesn’t even cover her campaign’s current debt of $10 million. If all of it went to running the campaign rather than paying off creditors, that would be enough to run her campaign for two and a half days. That gets us to, um, let’s see, Friday afternoon. What after that? More indebtedness? I know, I know, she’ll be raising more as time goes on, but Obama is still out-raising her hand over fist and could probably finance his entire campaign through the end of the primaries on what he has in the bank right now, and still outspend her by a comfortable margin. Even if he never got another cent from his supporters.

And third, the enthusiasm and excitement he’s bringing to the campaign hasn’t changed. His message hasn’t changed. Neither has his opponent’s. It’s still politics from the ground up vs. the same old, same old.

So days like yesterday happen. No baseball team goes 162-0. There are good days and bad days. The sky hasn’t fallen

But I’m hanging on to that refrigerator box. Just in case.

As I write this, the announcement of results in Mississippi is less than 24 hours away. Barack Obama is expected to win, making his record 15-2 since Super Tuesday.

But once we get past Mississippi, Pennsylvania looms large on the horizon. It’s a tough state, and Obama’s opponent Hillary Clinton is favored to win that contest. Pundits have been saying that Obama needs to win one of the big states, to take something away from Hillary (Texas notwithstanding, I guess).

I have an idea how he can do it.
The genius of Obama’s campaign has so far been to contest every state, something Democrats have not done for far too long. The results are incontrovertible; more states than Clinton, more popular votes than Clinton, and a delegate lead that will be in all practical terms impossible to overcome.

And still the media soldiers on, pretending this race isn’t all over but the shouting.

It seems to me that if Obama can make significant headway in Pennsylvania, he can seriously dent Clinton’s possible delegate pickup, or even — dare we imagine it? — get more delegates than she does. Yeah, I know, it sounds impossible, and maybe it is, but here’s the best chance he has of doing so.

Obama currently has a pretty substantial war chest and more money is coming in all the time. I’m not saying he should spend all of it, but in my opinion he should . . . well, there are 69 counties in Pennsylvania, and I believe he should bring in organizers to every single one of them. Someone who lives in the area would be preferable, and undoubtedly you could find and train organizers in Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, and places like Erie and Scranton. Native Pennsylvanians would be second best; someone from State College going up to Smethport would probably be a bit more credible than a random outsider, but if necessary, I have little doubt that the campaign could find volunteers to come in, take training, and spread out around Pennsylvania, maybe getting a bit of a stipend or per diem for their trouble.

And what would these new organizers be doing?

Knocking on doors. Setting up house parties. Speaking to organizations. Coordinating volunteers. Standing out in the middle of the town square with a placard. Their job would be the same as any organizer’s anywhere — to spread the word about Barack Obama and his message of hope, and then get people out to the polls to vote for him.

Wouldn’t something like this be expensive? Maybe, but think of it this way. So far, as I said above, Obama has won with a strategy that puts fifty states in play. Now he needs to do the same thing, writ small, in Pennsylvania. For every 2% he can cut into Clinton’s lead in Pennsylvania, that’s 3 more delegates he gains at the National Convention. (That’s rough math and not to be taken completely literally; but the more support his organizers can generate, the better he does in the vote. How much better, you can ask Chuck Todd to figure out.)

In fact, if he could cut down Hillary’s lead in the rural areas of the state, and maintain his own support in the urban areas (which would of course have their own set of organizers) — I suppose it’s not impossible he could win outright. Likely? Who knows, but isn’t it worth a few measly million to find out?

Then if he can do the same thing in Kentucky, in Indiana, in other states where Clinton is slated to do well . . . well, every delegate he generates is one more toward the magic number of 2025.

Could Clinton do the same thing? I suppose so, but she doesn’t have the message and she can’t raise money the way Obama can. The things she has going for her right at the moment are inertia, a willingness to win at any cost, and the realization that if she loses Pennsylvania or comes out of Pennsylvania with only a two or three delegate pickup, it’s all over. That makes her dangerous — but I think Obama is up for the task.

So since Obama’s advisors don’t have any idea who I am and probably wouldn’t notice me if they did, here’s hoping they come up with this idea on their own. Make every single county in Pennsylvania competitive. Blacken the sky over Pennsylvania with organizers. Make it happen! Yes we can!!

As many of you know, I got interested in politics in large part because of George Bush’s ham-handed way of running the country. Ever since I flipped the switch I have been looking forward to the day when he would finally be out of office.

I’m still looking forward to it, but at the same time I’m concerned about the future.

Let me tell you why. I’m probably not telling you anything you don’t already know, but I’m going to tell you anyway, because sometimes the things you already know  need to be said out loud.
Like most of you, I’ve been watching the polls as George Bush united America . . . against him. I have been looking forward to the day when the American public, tired of perpetual war, corporate welfare and the relentless destruction of the Constitution, would finally vote his sorry butt out of office. The day when they would look back on the last eight years and vote to never let anything like that happen again for a long, long time.

Now here we are looking at the light at the end of the tunnel, and seeing that it may indeed be the headlights of an oncoming train. We Democrats were supposed to be united around the idea that we could govern the country in a way that would benefit the common man, restore our faith in government, and hopefully roll back some of the excesses and abuses that had been heaped upon us. Instead it looks like we might be headed toward a showdown where the immovable Clintonian object meets the irresistible Obaman force.

Hillary Clinton was supposed to be the Democratic presidential nominee. The narrative of her inevitability had been building for years. She — and most of us — didn’t figure on that narrative being shattered in the person of one Barack H. Obama, a junior senator from Illinois. He has grabbed national attention by attracting people to his cause like ants to honey. He has managed to not only stay close in the states Clinton won, he leads in states won and he leads in pledged delegates, and he leads in red states and blue. At this point he looks more inevitable than Clinton.

People seem to want change. Right now Hillary Clinton seems to be the candidate of “not much will change.” Oh, all other things being equal, I suspect she would be a good President, but she would be a President who has spent enough time in The System to be a creature of it. And people are rejecting The System this year, which is one of the reasons Obama is getting so much support. But there’s this about being a creature of The System: You live inside The System long enough, and you begin to learn how it works. Not only that, if you’re skillful enough and have enough of what it takes to do so, you can manipulate The System to get it to do what you want. And the Clinton Machine is good at manipulating The System.

So now we have the very real possibility that the Clinton Machine, by manipulating The System, will be able to use the levers of high-level political power to have Hillary Clinton nominated as the Democratic Presidential nominee. Never mind the pledged delegate counts. Never mind the number of states won or the margins they were won by. Never mind the red states that he could flip to blue just by being there and making the people in those states think they matter. Never mind that polls show Barack Obama solidly defeating John McCain in the general election, while Clinton barely squeezes by or, worse, loses. Never mind all the people Obama has drawn into volunteering and donating and working, where Clinton hasn’t been able to get the same amount of enthusiasm among new voters. Never mind that the Obama movement can draw along Democratic candidates downticket in numbers the Clinton Machine can only dream of. Never mind that Obama inspires Democrats, Independents and Republicans alike, while the Republicans at least (and some Independents, and yes, even some Democrats) have a visceral dislike of Clinton. Never mind the lesson we will be teaching these political newbies about how you work hard to achieve a desired political result and the rug gets pulled out from under you by People who Know Better. No, that’s just collateral damage to make things be the Way Things Are Supposed To Be.

I can’t speak for anyone else out there. At the moment I can hardly speak for myself. I can’t tell you why I feel so fired up about all this. Maybe it’s the Obama Kool-Aid. I don’t know for sure. All I can tell you is that if I feel that after pinning my hopes, spending my money and working my tail off for Barack Obama, if I feel that the nomination has been stolen, the fire will go out. For me it will be a vindication that no matter what you do, no matter how hard you work, you really can’t beat The System. I will most likely go back into the apathy I got shaken out of, and other than maybe local races where there’s still some chance that I can have an impact, I will most likely stay there.

This isn’t the way it was supposed to be.

This was supposed to be about uniting behind a candidate that could once and for all lead us out of the quicksand the nation has been sinking into the past 30 years. And I’m optimistic that it will still be that way. If Hillary Clinton wins more votes and more pledged delegates at the convention than Barack Obama, I will vote for her and be happy to do so. If I feel that the American people have been manipulated out of their choice by the forces of maintaining the Status Quo, I will still vote for Clinton, because the alternative is far worse. But I will do so without enthusiasm, and with the knowledge that the Clinton camp was right. I really don’t matter. None of us does. Or as they say, unless you’re the lead dog, the view never changes.

I hope that doesn’t happen. I like to think that something I do can make a difference. I’d hate to be disabused of that notion.

You never forget your first time. For me, my first time was this afternoon . . . first time taking part in the political process at a level beyond just mailing in my ballot a few times a year and making an occasional donation, that is.

Today I attended my first caucus. Follow along as I describe the process, from the first time I found out about the caucuses until I got to be . . . well, we’ll see what I got to be in a minute.
I almost missed the caucus this year. Up until about Tuesday, I didn’t realize Washington had a caucus. I had every intention of voting in the primary the state decided to hold on February 19th until I learned three important facts:

1. Washington State’s Democrats were scheduled to caucus on February 9th;
2. All of Washington’s delegates to the county, and eventually state and national conventions, would be chosen in the caucuses; and
3. None of the delegates would be chosen in the primary. (On the Democratic side, that is. The Republicans chose half of their delegates through the caucus system and half through the primary. Why? I don’t know.)

So I talked my daughter into driving me to the caucus location, which had the dual effect of bringing a second person to the caucus, and getting me there without having to walk some huge distance since I don’t own a car and the busses don’t run very close to the elementary school the caucus was being held at. I dug out my EFF baseball cap, put on my Benjamin Franklin T-shirt, and off we went.

At the door we were greeted by two older women wearing “Hillary ’08” stickers. They asked if I’d like a sticker. “Well yes,” I said as politely as I could, “but I’d much rather have an Obama one.” By the time we got to the caucus location (a half hour early, I might add) the Obama volunteer manning the information table at the entrance had run out of stickers. We picked up a flyer instead and made our way to the registration table. At the table I found the clipboard for our voting precinct, labeled “SHL 32-0357.” SHL for the city of Shoreline, 32 for the 32nd Legislative District, and 0357 for our precinct number. We signed and printed our names, addresses, phone numbers and presidential candidate preferences. When we signed in we were able to either state a preference for one of the candidates, whether currently in the race or not, or state “Uncommitted.” We were told we could change these preferences later.

Now keep in mind that the caucus was being held in the combination gymnasium/cafeteria of an elementary school, so the seating was elementary-school-sized lunch tables with attached elementary-school-sized benches, a size I grew out of many years ago. Fortunately I was able to sit side-saddle on the bench so I could talk to some of my neighbors. The table contained various pieces of literature (impeachment literature, a resolution calling on the eventual nominee to commit to getting us out of Iraq no more than one year from election day, that sort of thing) and a party-sized sandwich provided by our precinct committee officer, a pleasant fellow named Ken Juell. My daughter and I ended up sitting opposite a very nice lesbian couple who brought their daughter Bailey, age about six. She was carrying a sign that was the best at the caucus, although to be fair its only competition was a big Kucinich sign someone was waving. It would have been awesome even if there had been many more there.

I thought this was pretty clever, and starting improvising a song for Bailey by chuffing a Bo Diddley rhythm:

Bom-ba-bom-ba-bom, ba-ba-ba-bom, I like Obama!
Bom-ba-bom-ba-bom, ba-ba-ba-bom, and so does my mama!
Bom-ba-bom-ba-bom, ba-ba-ba-bom, and so does my other mama!
Bom-ba-bom-ba-bom, ba-ba-ba-bom . . . I need another rhyme for Obama!

“Comma!” she squealed. Pretty good for a six-year-old.

The room started filling up, and I recognized a few of the faces. At a table across the room was a fellow who rides the same bus I do from time to time. My wife’s dentist walked past but didn’t see us. As I looked around at the sea of faces of every ethnicity, gender, religion (one of the women at our table was wearing an Islamic head scarf) and age (two of the girls in our precinct were high school seniors), I heard one of Bailey’s mothers tell her, “Look over there! It’s Freddy’s mom!” Freddy is of my grandson’s friends from school and church. We were happy to see someone we knew at our table. We struck up a brief conversation with Freddy’s mom, who then went over to say hello to Bailey’s mothers. “Our daughter is going to get married to her son,” one of the mothers informed me. “At least that’s what she tells us.” Bailey pretended not to hear.

At 1:30 sharp the meeting was called to order by Chris Eggen, a Shoreline city councilman and the area coordinator in charge of the proceedings. He made a few announcements: rest rooms are through the double doors in the back, any resolutions will be considered at the county convention, did everyone sign in, we would follow Robert’s Rules of Order. I was glad he mentioned the resolutions. There were some grammatical errors in the resolution I found on the table and I was wondering how I would bring them before the body of the caucus; it wasn’t something that would even be discussed, so I didn’t worry about it.

After the introductions about half the groups went off into various hallways, nooks and crannies to caucus. Our group stayed where it was, but with most of the other groups out of the gymnasium it was much less crowded and easier to speak to the people in the group.
Ken started off by introducing himself, asking for a secretary to keep minutes of the caucus and record the votes, and explaining the rules of the caucus. First the secretary would total up the preferences from the sign-in sheets and announce the totals. Then we would have some time to talk about our choices in an attempt to inform and persuade the uncommitted attendees, and at the end, if anyone wanted to change their preference, they would have a chance to do so.

So the secretary tallied up the preferences:

Obama: 30 votes (52%)
Clinton: 20 votes (34%)
Undecided: 7 votes (12%)
Kucinich: 1 vote (2%)

We then got about 30-40 minutes to make the case for our candidates. A woman started off by making her case for Obama. And then suddenly I found myself speaking to the group:

I was never interested in politics until about five or six years ago. The quote on my shirt explains why I started paying attention. (I pointed to the picture of Benjamin Franklin and the famous quote attributed to him, “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”) I realized about then that George Bush and his cronies and enablers in the government were trampling our liberties, destroying the Constitution and destroying everything that makes America, America. I knew I had to do something, so in 2004, I will admit it. I voted against Bush. I voted for Kerry, make no mistake, but it was a vote against Bush.

I’ve also taken a bit of a circuitous route to come to support Barack Obama. I like his message of hope. I like the way he inspires people. I like the thought that, for once, it will be nice to vote for someone instead of against someone else. Barack Obama. Thank you.

The Me of six years ago would have been stunned that I would even say that much about a political candidate. It felt pretty good, though!

Others made their cases. Clinton’s supporters touted her experience (and Obama’s relative inexperience), her ability to work within the system to get things done, and their desire to see a woman president. Others pointed out that one man’s experience is another man’s baggage. I added, “Keep in mind that the Republicans still blame everything that’s wrong with this country on Bill Clinton, and if Hillary is the nominee they will dig up every single sordid thing from their past. Whitewater, Vince Foster, you name it. Barack Obama has said he would not be swiftboated. I like a fighter.” I don’t know if I was telling anyone anything they didn’t know, but I wanted to point out that if Clinton is the nominee, that is what we have to look forward to. One of the high school seniors I mentioned earlier said she was all in favor of a woman for president, and was convinced it would happen, whether this year or in fifty years; but she wanted it to be the right woman.

I talked more than I expected, and probably more than I should have. I would have talked more, but two people brought up points that I otherwise would have. One fellow said that no matter who we caucused for today, no matter who the eventual nominee is, it would all likely come to naught without commanding majorities in the House and Senate. So we should support Democratic candidates across the board, but we should also keep in mind who would be the best Presidential nominee to help those candidates get elected. (I don’t remember for sure if he said that last part, but by golly I would have, had I not felt I was already talking a lot.) The other pointed out that we have a choice between two good candidates, and whoever the uncommitted caucusgoers decided to support, they could hardly go wrong.

Then, after we were all talked out, it was time for those who wished to change their preference to do so. We waited a few minutes for the process to play out, and eventually the final vote total was announced:

Obama: 36 (62%)
clinton: 19 (33%)
Uncommitted: 2 (3%)
Kucinich: 1 (2%)

So most likely what happened was, five uncommitted attendees changed their preference to Obama, and one Clinton supporter switched over to Obama as well. My guess is that the five uncommitted attendees were leaning toward Obama but were waiting to hear what everyone else had to say; the switch from Clinton was a surprise, though.

According to the rules of the caucus, the final vote meant that since our precinct had six delegates allocated to send to the Legislative District Democratic convention, four would be Obama delegates and two would be Clinton delegates. (Those delegates would choose from their number to attend the King County Democratic convention, who will select the delegates to the State Democratic convention, who will select delegates to go to the national convention in Denver. And I thought science fiction fans had a lot of conventions!) Had the final vote tally been the same as the initial poll, the allocation would have been 3/2/1, with one delegate attending and voting as “uncommitted.”

I struck up a conversation with the lone Kucinich supporter, a man who said he’d been an activist for social justice all of his adult life. His views on the state of the country and its future under Clinton, Obama or Kucinich were interesting — interesting enough, in fact, that I missed the beginning of the delegate selection process. By the time I caught up with the voting, four people had already volunteered to be delegates for Obama at the Legislative District convention. I was glad to see that one of the delegates was the young woman who spoke earlier about the desirability of the right woman candidate. Ken then called for volunteers to be alternates, to attend the convention if one of the elected delegates couldn’t make it.

I looked at my daughter.

My daughter looked at me.

We volunteered to be alternates.

So there you have it. In a few short years I’ve gone from a guy who believed in the aphorism, “Don’t vote, it only encourages them” to an alternate delegate to a political convention.

As we left the building my daughter asked me, “Do you remember when you were supporting John Edwards and you made fun of me for liking Obama?”

I hadn’t made fun of her — I had actually told her I liked Edwards’ message, but I could get behind Obama from what I knew about him at the time. But being a storyteller’s daughter, she has learned not to let the truth get in the way of a good story.

“‘Shut up,’ he explained,” I said.

We were both grinning.