Author: PsiFighter37

(cross-posted at Daily Kos)

This diary stems from an idea I had a month ago or so, after which I sent an email to kid oakland, whom I know is a big proponent of blogging at the local level. At this point, conventional wisdom is not if the Democrats will take back the House, but by how much. It’s clear that for Democrats, the blogosphere has become a powerful force in pushing the Democratic Party, no matter how resistant it has been, in the right direction. That being said, many of our current representatives and candidates do not truly wield the Internet to its maximum potential.

That’s the reason I’d like to start a blog after the election, contingent upon the Democratic Party sweeping to power in Congress. With a working title of ‘The Class of 2006’, I’d like to create a blog that is national in scale – but one that focuses on the individual representatives at the local level. Follow me below the fold for an elaboration…
It’s undeniable how much the blogosphere has been helpful in getting candidates off the ground. Whether it was Richard Morrison in TX-22 in 2004, Ned Lamont in the CT-Sen race, or even a long-shot candidate like Barry Welsh in IN-06, we’ve shown that the Internet can be a powerful organizing tool. That being said, I believe that the blogosphere, in its current state, is still much more effective at generating noise and fundraising than it is at organizing. In a ‘wave’ election, we are going to be playing defense in the upcoming years in districts that are much more conservative and where Democrats do not typically win. For those representatives, fighting for re-election is going to be a way of life every 2 years.

That’s where we come in. The Class of 2006, in my mind, would be a website for all the newly-elected Democrats in this election. A slogan would run along the lines of ‘Not left, not right, but forward’, as I believe the progressive blogosphere is not ideologically aligned at the moment except for the issue of Iraq. The idea behind such a website would be to publicize the work of all the new representatives, whether it be what they do in Washington or what they do within the district. In a sense, it would be a form of citizen journalism – reporting on what our representatives are doing to advance the Democratic agenda and how it will help their constituents. Ideally, I would like a local resident (preferably in-district) to be the designated blogger for the district. Additionally, I’d like us to be proactive in contacting newly-elected representatives – call them up, pitch what we’d like to do, and, most importantly, explain why having a foothold in the netroots is going to be crucial for their re-election bids in the future. In this way, we can ‘break’ stories of our own – if a member plans on introducing a particular piece of legislation, for example – before the traditional media gets ahold of it.

Tip O’Neill said “All politics is local.” In the age of the Internet, though, a new paradigm exists, one in which local politics can become national through the power of the Internet. I can’t think of a better way than of a unified local blogging effort meeting at a central flashpoint to show everyone else on the Internet that the incoming group of representatives – whom I’d like to think of as the beginning of a progressive generation of Democrats – are a great bunch. Additionally, sweeping up an entire new generation of candidates in the netroots would firmly entrench the blogosphere as a force to be recognized in politics. I can’t think of a better way of returning politics to the people, which is what democracy is supposed to be about.

I had planned on posting this idea after the election, but I have absolutely no infrastructure and no bloggers who would be interested in such an effort. So if you are interested in being a part of this project (should enough people join), please post your thoughts, recommendations, criticisms, and any other ideas.

(cross-posted at Deny My Freedom and Daily Kos)

The past 2 national election cycles have been looked upon with dread by Democrats. Whether it was being scared of being called weak on national security (the 2002 midterm elections), being called weak on national security (the 2004 presidential and congressional elections), or being called liberal for any number of reasons (going back to before I was born), there has always been a sense of playing defense on our side. Since 2000, we had been guarding our own island without trying to reach out beyond those auspices deemed ‘safe’ by consultants with a noted record of losing, by the media, and by the right wing. What good has it done us? We lost control of the Senate in 2002, and we got whipped in the 2004 election. Clearly, something needed to be done.

Democrats needed to grow a spine. We needed cojones. But most of all, we needed to ditch the myopic vision of targeting only the districts we thought were in play, of being a party that existed where the polls said we did. When Howard Dean was elected chairman of the DNC, we thought it’d be at least a decade before we began seeing any results. If anyone had said 2006 would be a potentially historic election in January 2005, everyone – including ourselves – would’ve have called that person nuts.

And yet, we are poised to do just that. Why? Because we believed when no one else would. We were the ones who weren’t afraid of stepping through the looking glass, of finding out just how deep the rabbit hole went.
To recall a few of the more ‘outlandish’ things that have come out of the Democratic blogosphere, let’s recount two that stand out in particular. First, there’s Chris Bowers in July 2004 – even before our same old strategy got us defeated in the elections only months later:

This list does not include any districts from California, Indiana and Missouri, where I was unable to find a breakdown of the 2000 vote according to 2002 congressional districts. In those three states, there may be as many as ten more districts (all in California) where Bush failed to reach a majority but where a Republican currently holds the seat. Further, this list would more than double if it included districts where a Republican currently holds the seat but where Bush failed to reach 55% of the vote. Overall, there are more than 80 districts where the 2000 Bush vote was under 55% but where Republicans hold seats.

Considering this very substantial list of potential Democratic targets, why on Earth are we only talking about a maximum of fifteen pickups for Democrats in 2004? Granted, the DCCC is taking some of these districts very seriously. However, more than half of them are not being significantly contested. How many of them are PA-8’s in the making? In at least one of these districts, NY-25 where I grew up (the Syracuse area) there isn’t even a Democratic candidate running!

For anyone suggesting that the DCCC should consider finding a “better” candidate than Schrader, I hope that this list serves as a demonstration of just how many winnable districts are out there where only half-hearted attempts are being made to oust GOP incumbents. There will never be a Democratic 1994 unless the DCCC attacks simultaneously on all fronts. Recruiting for every single one of these districts needs to begin on November 3rd.

And in January 2006, someone let us know about a no-name who he said would beat Joe Lieberman – when none of us would dare to make such an audacious claim:

Do you want Joe Lieberman out of the Senate?  Or maybe I should ask: how badly do you want Joe Lieberman out of the Senate?  Hang on Kossacks, help is on the way in the form of Ned Lamont.  He has not formally announced yet, but he is laying the groundwork to run against Lieberman in the Democratic primary.  I know you’ve never heard of Ned Lamont; but you are going to hear a lot about him in the coming months.  He is a businessman from Greenwich, Connecticut.; a progressive Democrat who is anti-war, pro-privacy and civil liberties; with the moxie and the money to go head to head with holy Joe for the Democratic nomination for Senate in Connecticut.

After spending an hour talking with Ned Lamont yesterday, I can assure you, he is the real thing.  He has a tremendous intellect, but doesn’t condescend or talk like a patrician.  I think of him as a Jon Corzine with charisma.  He’s a big thinker who backs up his talk with action.  In the coming weeks and months, Ned will lay out his plan to use the grass-roots and the net-roots to dethrone Lieberman and then proceed to Washington to take back the power in this country from the huge corporations, special interests, big-money lobbyists and their obedient minions in Congress.

Stay tuned.  And remember – you heard it here first.

Every big thing that has happened in history has been the result of something simple. Alexander Graham Bell’s idea for the telephone came from the invention of something else entirely – a multiple telegraph, which he thought about by observing the electromechanical creation of vowel sounds. Everyone knows about Benjamin Franklin’s experiments about electricity using a kite and a key. Howard Dean is like these men: his candidacy for president tapped into the use of the Internet as a means to harness a latent political energy in the Democratic grassroots that had long been dormant. While he may have crashed and burned in Iowa, his legacy lives on not only in the work he continues to do as DNC chairman, but it lives on in each and every one of us.

How does it live on? The Dean candidacy inspired people who had not been as involved before to become rabid political activists. But more importantly, it spawned a group of dreamers who believed that the Democratic Party had to stop living within its own mental confines. In essence, we believed more in the party than even it believed in itself. And it shows in the results – our leaders in Congress have continued to abdicate responsbility on many issues, whether it be the bankrupcty bill, the nominations of Justices Roberts and Alito to the Supreme Court, the nomination of General Hayden to head the CIA, the torture bill, and in being unable to put forward a cohesive policy on Iraq. But we lived on. In the end, the strength of the blogosphere, in my opinion, will not be (at least in the near future) about affecting legislation. It’s about organizing for the thing that matters the most in politics: elections. People may have called us clueless, people may have thought we were nuts to challenge our own vice presidential nominee, but dreams can become a reality if you work hard enough.

After the 2004 elections, people were beginning to declare the Democratic Party a party that would permanently be relegated to the minority. Some of us probably felt the same way – if we couldn’t beat the worst president in our lifetimes, how could we hope to make any more progress? But instead of lying down and meekly accepting conventional wisdom, we came back stronger than ever. It would be easy to take the blue pill and simply go through the motions in the political process that were deemed fit. We wouldn’t have a prayer in Tennessee; George Allen would be preparing an exploratory committee for a 2008 presidential run; and Joe Lieberman would still be laughing it up with Sean Hannity every Sunday while thrusting that knife in our back a little deeper each time. Democrats wouldn’t bother taking a look at seats in places like Wyoming and Idaho. But when you defy the status quo – a status quo that has become stagnant at its rotten core – the impossible can happen. And in one week, we may very well see our tireless efforts come to fruition.

As Howard Dean said, “You have the power”. In less than 2 years, his 50-State Strategy is reaping dividends long before any of us thought possible. Let’s make sure that one week from now, our long, strange, exhilirating trip down the rabbit hole continues.

(cross-posted at Deny My Freedom and Daily Kos)

Since the beginning of September, I’ve been volunteering my time every weekend (except for last weekend, when I was back in Connecticut) for PA-08 Democratic candidate Patrick Murphy. A recent DCCC internal poll showed Patrick up 4 points over his challenger, freshman GOP Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick. A new independent poll by Keystone has Fitzpatrick up 9, but it includes a third-party candidate who won’t even be on the ballot, so it’s hard to take the results seriously. As the campaign enters the final countdown, the campaign’s GOTV machine has been humming to life as it prepares for Election Day. Two weeks ago was the first tuneup for the real thing, and today was a similar experience as well. Below the fold, I’ll talk about how the ground game looks with less than two weeks to go.
Before discussing some of the sentiment in the district, I do have to make one note: whatever Patrick’s campaign did with generating the canvassing and GOTV target sheets, it is a hell of a lot better than anything else I’ve ever seen used by a campaign. I’m pretty sure that all Democratic campaigns use the same database to get information from, but this is the first time I ever had all the people I was targeting listed on one sheet. Usually, canvassers receive bulky packets of addresses, some which only have 1 or 2 names on a sheet, and we’re forced to search through them to see exactly where we need to go. Nowadays, we’re given one page – addresses with names on one side and a map of the canvassing area (complete with marks of where the residences are approximately located) on the other. Additionally, the sheets actually have apartment numbers on them – something that I’ve repeatedly noted were missing in my other canvassing experiences. At one particular complex, where we had to knock on numerous doors that had no identification as to who lived where, this was a huge help.

One of the important lessons of Crashing The Gates is that single-interest groups that want to further their cause should not endorse members of a party that generally opposes their interest, even if the individual candidate supports that interest. Mike Fitzpatrick is known as something of an environmentalist, even though Progressive Punch gives him a rating barely above 50% on the issues. Nevertheless, that sort of mediocre ranking was good enough to garner the endorsement from the Sierra Club. In one of my previous entries on canvassing in PA-08, another volunteer who lives in the district said that environmental issues were fairly important at the local level, so the Sierra Club endorsement may mean something. At least Fitzpatrick’s campaign does; when I stepped off the train, I saw more green signs than I had seen before. Originally, I thought they were additional signs put up by PA State Senate candidate Paul Lang, but they all said ‘Sierra Club endorses Mike Fitzpatrick’ on them. The signs themselves are paid for by the Fitzpatrick campaign, but they are put up everywhere along Bristol Pike, one of the main roads that runs through Bucks County. Some staffers I spoke to were equally disappointed, but part of me wonders: why can’t the Sierra Club see that the GOP leadership – of which Mike Fitzpatrick is far from being a part of – has absolutely no interest in advancing their agenda? The Democratic Party needs to take a page from the Colorado state party and tell Democratic-friendly interest groups to see the bigger picture and work to get Democrats elected. I am unsure of how much this endorsement will help Fitzpatrick, but it sure doesn’t help our side.

Unfortunately, I was the only person from Penn to come out to do some ground work today (I think the recent break we had may have made some people forget that we’re in the middle of an important election), so I was paired up with John, a guy who lives in the district. This may have been the first time he was doing canvassing, but he has the same impression of the race that we all do – it’s a very tight race that will come down to the wire. Today, our assignment was to run a ‘drill’ of the actual GOTV operation that will be in place on Election Day. Our area of canvassing was in Levittown, in Bristol Township, not more than a few minutes from the campaign headquarters. Neighborhoods like these are where the Democratic base is in the 8th District, and in what could be shaping up with be an election ‘wave’, it’s important to make sure that Democrats are aware of who their candidates are and when Election Day is.

On a day that was extremely windy and oftentimes seemed as though a downpour was imminent, there were a good number of people home. If I had counted as contacts speaking to people who were at a particular residence but were not the person listed on my sheet, I probably had over a 50% contact rate, which is pretty good. The neighborhood, which was what I’d call working-middle class, had many more Murphy signs visibly than Fitzpatrick signs. For someone who is trying to call themselves ‘independent’, it probably doesn’t help when diehard GOP households group him with GOP gubernatorial nominee Lynn Swann and Sen. Rick Santorum, both of whom are heading towards double-digit defeats, if every poll that has been put out is to be believed. As I noted in the past, there have been rumors that Fitzpatrick’s campaign has been purposefully moving their publicly-posted lawn signs away from Santorum, as Bob Casey, Jr. is a much more popular figure in the Philadelphia suburbs. Additionally, Patrick’s campaign has been quite diligent in tying Fitzpatrick to Bush, someone the incumbent has been desperately running away from.

Instead of the traditional canvassing that occurs, the ‘drill’ that the GOTV operation is designed around is all about making quick contact. There’s not too much to report about sentiment, as we try not to stick around and get into lengthy conversations with the folks we speak with. A few people gave me a thumbs-up when I told them to vote for Patrick and the rest of the Democratic ticket on November 7. Others proclaimed themselves as registered Democrats and said they would be voting for us. One man who said he’d be voting for Democratic candidates claimed himself to be a registered Democrat, even though his official registration lists him as an unaffiliated voter. It’s a good time to be calling oneself a Democrat, it seems. One man I spoke to said he’d vote for us. “Who else is there to vote for?” he asked rhetorically. It’s the kind of attitude that’s more prevalent nowadays; people are beginning to recognize that voting for a Republican candidate, no matter how ‘moderate’ they claim to be, is an exercise in futility when it comes to change.

That being said, Patrick still has a name recognition problem – or Fitzpatrick’s lawn signs that do not denote his party affiliation are working to a degree. One lady I spoke to thought that Fitzpatrick was the Democratic candidate. While it’s definitely a good thing that we spoke to her, it’s evidence that even though he has gone on the air, done mailings for some time now, and has campaigned with both former president Bill Clinton and 2004 Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), Patrick is still an unknown quantity to many. And at another house I visited – an unaffiliated household – I was reminded of the area’s historically GOP roots. After letting the woman I was targeting know about voting for the Democratic ticket, she quickly declared, “No. I’m for all the Bush candidates!” It has to be the first time I’ve heard anything positive about Bush said on any of the canvasses I’ve done, including those where I’ve spoken to registered Republicans. There may also be a blessing in disguise, though; if that’s how most people think of the GOP candidates these days – as candidates associated with a highly unpopular Bush, instead of candidates of the Republican Party – it could make cross-over voting more palatable to undecided voters in the middle and on the right.

One particular house I visited warrants special mention, though. Composed of an unaffiliated couple, I hoped that they would be amenable to hearing about the Democratic ticket. Before I left, though, I was asked to stay and clarify Patrick’s position on Iraq. They had seen the Fitzpatrick ad that takes on the issue of putting Patrick in a negative light over what should be every Democrats’ strength, particularly his: Iraq. Essentially, it’s a clip of Patrick struggling to answer a question about the conflict on ‘Hardball’, and it could sway those who are undecided to support Fitzpatrick (even though his position on Iraq is much worse). I noted that the clip in question was old (if I recall correctly, it’s before the primary, and Patrick was a much more unpolished candidate) and that Patrick had come out with his own plan for how we should deal with Iraq. I hit on a couple of the basic points (bringing all of the National Guard home within 6 months; having a phased redeployment of our troops). The woman I spoke to nodded, and said that she wanted to know for a simple reason: her son is currently deployed, and he was injured yesterday in an attack. It’s hard to make a pitch after hearing that, and I pointed out that Patrick himself has seen combat over there and that he thinks we do need to change the course, not stay the course (I made a point to use that phrase), as Fitzpatrick would like. I gave them the campaign’s website and said that there was a comprehensive section on Iraq, and I thanked her for her time. She wanted to know ‘when the troops are coming home’, so once she reads about Patrick, hopefully she will vote for him. Personally, I think that if Patrick’s at the campaign headquarters and has 10-15 minutes to spare, he should make a personal visit. Reading about the issue is one thing, but if they hear it straight from the candidate, it could be quite helpful. 2 votes can make a difference in this race, and I suggested to the campaign that it’d be a good idea.

After returning to the office, I filled out some postcards the campaign was getting mailed out (we need to get the Family, Friends, and Neighbors tool that the campaign of CT-Sen Democratic nominee Ned Lamont uses in the hands of every campaign). I had a chance to speak with several people there – veterans, a couple of unnamed Kossacks who recognized me by my entries on the race, and a staffer for outgoing Sen. Mark Dayton (D-MN). It was interesting to hear about the reasons that Dayton decided not to run (one of the reasons was a rather honest admission – he believed he was not the best person to carry the DFL banner this year). There’s a very diverse group of people working to make sure Patrick gets elected – college students like myself, veterans of all ages, union workers – and if these trial runs are any indication, it’s just a matter of having enough volunteers on Election Day to get out the vote to put him over the top.

(cross-posted at Deny My Freedom and Daily Kos)

As some of you may or may not know, I did some canvassing for the now-Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate in Connecticut, Ned Lamont, this summer. A lot of sweat, sore feet, and time went into what many thought was an impossible feat only 6 months ago: defeating Senator Joe Lieberman (now of the Connecticut for Lieberman party), a one-time vice presidential nominee for the Democratic Party and a ‘very popular’ senator from the Nutmeg State. No one gave Ned a chance. Hell, most of us probably just wanted to send a message to Lieberman about his outright disloyalty to the Democratic Party. But dreams sometimes have a strange way of becoming reality, and on August 8, we shocked the world by doing what supposedly couldn’t be done, by succeeding when failure was supposedly the only outcome.

Recently, though, many of us have been worried about recent polling that has shown Lamont falling behind by double digits. This week is my school’s fall break, so while I was back in New York to relax, I decided to make the trip back to Connecticut to see firsthand if all the hand-wringing that’s been occurring in the blogosphere is justified.

Unlike the primary, the office in the 4th Congressional District no longer sits above a fast-food restaurant at one of the most visible intersections in Norwalk. Instead, it’s now in East Norwalk, probably a mile or so down the road and over an inlet from the Long Island Sound. The office is certainly much larger than the old one was, and it probably comes in handy when there’s a lot of people in the office. To say the least, there is no longer the need to have to create the kind of fire hazards that were in abundance the final days before the primary in August. I’m not sure whether I would’ve taken the bigger office over the excellent location and visibility that the campaign had with the previous location, but I think the idea was to house the entire Democratic ticket in one building (the offices for CT-Gov Democratic candidate John DeStefano and CT-04 Democratic candidate Diane Farrell are also at the same location). There’s also a new district coordinator; the previous one, Ryan McLeod, had to leave because of law school. That’s one thing in particular that I noticed; the staffers during the summer had been predominantly college students (even some in high school were staffers), but nowadays, they’re a little bit older. That being said, the new coordinator is someone who should be familiar to the blogosphere. In addition, Senator Russ Feingold’s PAC, the Progressive Patriots Fund, has some people in Connecticut helping out in the state. Just to get it out of the way, I did ask them if they had any idea whether or not Feingold will be running for president. Unfortunately, their guess is as good as yours or mine right now.

Today was a big day of action for the campaign. During the primary, I was regularly tasked to canvass Lieberman’s hometown, Stamford, but today I stayed in Norwalk to canvass what, in my best estimation, is a lower-working class neighborhood. To my chagrin, I forgot to charge the battery for my camera before heading out, giving me only one picture before it became nonfunctional, so I can’t really describe it too well without the visual aid. I’d like to allay some of the fears that some folks are having about volunteers. 3 weekends before the primary election in August, I would say that we probably had 10 people – at most – canvassing in the entire district (if I recall correctly, the actual number was slightly less). Today, we had several times more than that amount burning shoe leather for Ned. In other words, don’t get deflated just because the poll numbers don’t look so great. There are more people than ever volunteering their asses off to win this election, and no one believes it’s over yet. That being said, I did speak to the volunteers I canvassed with, and they were a little concerned about what the recent numbers have been showing. It’s definitely in people’s minds, but it’s not something worth dwelling over. Boots on the grounds win elections, not moping around because of what one of the great pundits of Connecticut polling has been saying.

Per the usual for canvassing on a Saturday afternoon, there were a great many people who were not home. You haven’t experienced a true autumn day until you spend a day like today in New England – cool weather, but not too cold, with a forceful breeze blowing the leaves off the trees. Nevertheless, to say the least, it was a fine day to spend outside the house. As I’ve noted in several past canvassing experiences, whether it be in Connecticut or in Pennsylvania, one thing the Democratic Party could do better with its database is to include apartment numbers when we encounter multifamily residences and apartment buildings. Time is money, and every moment spent trying to figure out who lives where is a moment that could be spent knocking on a door that we definitely know belongs to who we’re targeting. That’s a problem that is probably difficult to rectify in the near future (e.g. this election), but I hope it will be addressed as the party continues to be rebuilt from the ground up. In a future entry, I will elaborate more on what I think are the best targeting strategies for our ground game.

The good news is that I met some voters who were the kind of Democrats that we all like: straight-ticket Democrats. Given Lieberman’s awful ballot position, it makes it less likely that Democratic – and Republican, which matter the most to Lieberman – voters will bother trying to find his name. It’s an ironic twist, I think, that the same ‘low-information voter’ strategy that the Lieberman campaign attempted to employ during the primary will once again come back to hurt them in the general election, albeit it in a different way. Others I spoke to were too busy to have a chat, so I instead left them with literature about the entire Democratic ticket, all the way down to the races for the state legislature. One elderly woman I spoke to was particularly puzzling. She said she hadn’t made up her mind about who she was going to vote for, and it was clear that she was weary of all the television advertising that’s been occurring in the run-up to the election. Despite it all, she said she’s voted consistently in the past. That being said, as soon as I mentioned that I was canvassing for Lamont, she became a bit distressed and said ‘No’ repeatedly. It was a bit of a surprise, to say the least, and I thanked her for her time and quickly departed. I’m still not sure what would incite that particular reaction, but it wasn’t the greatest way to finish up the day.

One person in particular, though, is worth recounting. He had finished cleaning his lawn of fallen leaves when I spoke to him about the upcoming election. Although he didn’t know who he would be supporting in the Senate or in the local races, he did say that he was going to vote for Republican incumbent Gov. Jodi Rell, and that he was leaning towards voting for GOP Rep. Christopher Shays as well. “She’s done an outstanding job,” he said, even though she hardly has any substance to her. Since I’m not as familiar with Connecticut-specific issues (aside from the omnipresent traffic on I-95), I sat down at his request on his house’s steps and made the pitch about Ned – obviously, I mentioned Iraq, but I also discussed other issues on his platform, such as universal health care and making sure that small businesses stayed competitive. I noted that Lieberman has been a staunch supporter of the Iraqi conflict, and he has no other plan than to stay the course – which is not a plan but an exercise in intellectual laziness. He seemed to understand, and I left him with some literature and walked off to hit the next house on my list. “So you’re for this guy Lamont,” he called out. He asked me for more details about how exactly we’d get out of Iraq. I noted that Lamont wanted to get out within a specific time period using a phased withdrawal, not just literally pick up and leave. There’s a clear difference between that sensible plan and what Lieberman believes in, which is doing nothing to change the status quo. The man nodded, and I thanked him for his time. My canvassing partners discovered the same thing with the people they talked to as well. They weren’t as interested about the economy or health care or the environment. Every time, the main issue that came up was Iraq. I know that the campaign understandably needs to broaden its platform for a general election, but in the end, the core issue that is on the minds of voters is the bloody civil war of our creation that we are stuck in the middle of. Iraq as an issue still has a lot of life left; if you look at the recent polling that shows Lieberman ahead, it’s clear that a majority of Connecticut voters are not in favor of our direction in the country. It needs to be hammered home repeatedly until Election Day that Lieberman and George W. Bush are of the same mind when it comes to the war.

When I returned to the office, there were still several teams out canvassing, even though the sun was beginning to set. It’s a good sign that there are so many more volunteers now than there had been during the primary. Furthermore, it should be a message to all of you that this is not over, not by a long shot. One of my canvassing partners – he’s been volunteering his time with the campaign mostly during the general election – noted that he has not yet seen any ground activity from Lieberman’s campaign. The junior senator probably thinks he can coast on his ‘golden’ name alone. We proved him wrong in the primary. With all of your help, let’s prove him wrong again in the general election.

(cross-posted at Deny My Freedom and Daily Kos)

Last weekend, I was unable to write my customary canvassing reports for PA-08 Democratic candidate Patrick Murphy because of a heavy load of studying. In addition, I felt it was better to cover the Swiftboating of Patrick, along with the campaign’s rapid response to the unfounded attacks made by Patrick’s opponent, freshman GOP Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick. As such, the following entry covers not only last week’s canvassing, which was much of the same that I have done the past 6 weeks or so, but it will also cover today’s effort, which was slightly different. As the campaign is entering the final few weeks, it’s important that the GOTV operation is tested today to ensure that it will be operating at maximum efficiency. Today was the first time the campaign did such a ‘stress test’, so to speak, so I will chronicle that as well.

Last weekend, there were some special guests who were already at campaign headquarters by the time I had arrived with a small group of Penn Democrats – some College Dems from Princeton, Penn’s blood enemy in sporting events, were also present (not that anyone really believes there’s such a thing as an intense Ivy League sporting rivalry). After getting a crash course in canvassing, we partnered off, one Quaker with one Tiger, and we hopped in a van and headed out to Northampton Township for the third straight weekend. This time, though, we were in the town of Richboro, which certainly lived up to its name. As the picture above shows, it was another area where houses were spaced apart far and wide. Some of the area, such as that above, was clearly upper-class – the houses were custom-designed, the roads were newly paved, and the elaborate driveways had many a car parked in them. Other parts weren’t as upper-class, but they were definitely what one would call middle-upper class. From the outset, it didn’t appear as though this would necessarily be friendly territory, to say the least.

My canvassing partner was Sarah, a junior from Princeton; she’s another person majoring in nothing too politically-related (molecular biology), but she did have a good deal of experience from the past; during the summer of 2004, she went door-to-door fundraising for John Kerry. For many, canvassing in and of itself – having to talk to complete strangers – is enough, but additionally asking people to donate on the spot? I didn’t even know such a thing existed! Nevertheless, Sarah was able to pull in a few big spenders for $500 a pop. I asked her about the big events that the College Democrats at Princeton were doing, and I was surprised to hear that even though there’s a very tight Senate race occurring this year, Patrick – a candidate from out of the state – was the biggest speaker they’ve had to date. Senator Robert Menendez cancelled an appearance, and it sounds like they have even more difficulty drawing members to meetings than we do at Penn. It’s a damn shame; I would like to think that in the Ivy League – the allegedly most intellectual schools in the nation – there’d be a larger interest in politics. However, that’s not the case, and one can only wonder if the situation would be better if the national College Democrats actually started like a real organization instead of merely something to stick on a resume.

There were several people who were too busy to talk, but when I mentioned that Patrick would be hosting a rally in Bristol with former president Bill Clinton, many people’s eyes lit up, and they were more willing to take our literature as well. One man who was supporting Patrick was noticeably disappointed that he couldn’t attend, probably due to a conflict at work. We were told that it might be best not to give the rally notices to Republicans, who may or may not still hold an irrational hatred of Clinton from the 1990s. Hopefully, some of the people I dropped off notices for went, because it was a hell of a rally.

Unfortunately, a few of the people I canvassed were bound to be Fitzpatrick supporters – after all, we were canvassing both Republican and Democratic households, and in a swing district that leans GOP, it’s inevitable that we have to pull some support from across the aisle. One man, hearing that I was canvassing for Patrick, told me to get off his porch. As I turned around and left, he opened the door again. “[Patrick]’s worthless,” he said angrily. “He’s going to lose.” Well, we’d probably lose if we weren’t at least trying to get some votes from people like him – but right now, things aren’t looking so bad. At another house, a lady opened the door and she nodded her head that she had. After I asked if we could count on my support, she looked down at the bag I was carrying – a Bucks County Democrats plastic bag holding the literature – and shook her head. “But good luck,” she offered as I made a mental note to make sure that side of the bag wasn’t facing Republicans when I canvassed their households. I know that we should be proud to be Democrats – I certainly am – but I wonder if that split-second observation on the lady’s part was the reason for saying she wouldn’t vote for Patrick.

That being said, I did come to a couple of households that held optimism for me. At one place, I asked a man who was clearly in a hurry to do some yardwork about who he’d be supporting in November. To my surprise, he said he’d support Patrick. Again, this was a house that had the American flag waving outside and had Republican occupants – but we still got support for our candidate. One of the effects of the district trending towards Democrats is that although many of the aging residents are Republicans, almost all of the younger ones on my list – living in the same household as GOP members – are Democrats. I’m sure that this probably has some effect on the way the parents vote, and it’s may explain why Al Gore and John Kerry have carried the district in the past 2 presidential elections. One other household – one of the last I canvassed – also supported Patrick. The elderly woman who answered the door didn’t seem to really understand what was going on, but as I was leaving, she asked if he was a Democrat. When I replied in the affirmative, a huge smile came over her face, and she gave me two thumbs-up. It’s hard to end a long day of canvassing with a better reception than that.

—–

This weekend, I came out, expecting to do much of the same as I have been doing. Arriving at the office, I was surprised to find Patrick there, who shook my hand and jokingly said, “What are you doing, stalking me?” (after all, I had seen him just yesterday). Unbeknownst to me, I was unaware that just a couple hours earlier, he had delivered the Democratic weekly radio address, which I probably would have asked him about if I had been remotely aware about it. Reading the end, though, it sounds like it was a good piece to listen to:

America needs policies that are both tough and smart. This Administration and the “Do Nothing” Republican Congress have stood on the sidelines for too long as the situation has in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, and North Korea has grown more dangerous. The American people and the world are craving a new direction and new leaders that will live up to these responsibilities.

I have no allusions that the path ahead will be easy. Whether it is bringing our troops home from Iraq, ending nuclear proliferation, or restoring American prestige, there are no easy answers. But I fought for an America who never shies from the challenges it faces and always rises to meet even its greatest threats.

We need leaders who understand that America faces real challenges in an ever more dangerous world. In my time in the United States Army, I was taught that true leaders tackle the toughest challenges head on. And when I am elected to the United States Congress, I will continue to do the same. I’m Patrick Murphy and I’m running for Congress because I believe we need to change the direction of our country.

Today’s trip out into Bucks County wasn’t really about canvassing this time around. As the voter database system that the Murphy campaign is using had recently been overhauled, they had to get some kinks out of the system. From now until Election Day, there will be some time spent devoted to literally doing a ‘drill’ of sorts in preparation for the GOTV operation the campaign will be employing on Election Day. Today, those of us that showed up didn’t do the regular canvassing, but instead, we targeted a much narrower range of voters – Democratic voters who voted in presidential elections but not the midterms. While our instructions were merely to remind people to vote Democratic on November 7, I’m well aware that Patrick can use all the name ID he can get, so I made sure to mention his name in every pitch I made to a voter.

Today, we canvassed in Croydon in a thoroughly working-class neighborhood, as one can see above. My canvassing partner for the day was Robert, a freshman at Penn who is from Puerto Rico. It was interesting to hear about Puerto Rican politics, which sound far more stagnant than our political system (that’s saying something) and essentially boils down to one issue – statehood versus continued status as a territory. It was the first time he’d been out canvassing, and he seemed pretty excited to be involved in a political atmosphere that was much different from what he’d been used to. I hoped that today would be a good day, and it’d make a good impression so that he’d come back in the closing weeks to help out more.

Unfortunately for us, as one can see from the above picture, it was a picture-perfect autumn day in suburban southeast Pennsylvania. It’d be hard to ask for better weather, and it was clear that the kids who lived in the area were enjoying themselves, biking, scootering, and roller-skating around the neighborhood. A lot of the doors I knocked on were met with no answer; if I had to guess, I would put my response rate somewhere between 15-20% – a downright awful number, but it was probably to be expected, given the circumstances. As my list was made up nearly all Democrats, with a few unaffiliated voters, I wasn’t told to piss off at any of the places I stopped at. Everyone I spoke to smiled and acknowledged my reminder to them. I would have assumed that the neighborhood, given the demographics, would lean Democratic, but I saw quite a few Fitzpatrick signs around the area.

This time around, the turf was much more contained, allowing me to finish in much faster than usual (that, along with the fact that most people weren’t home). I headed to a local deli and ordered a sandwich, and the woman who had taken my order noticed my clipboard and asked me what I was signing people up for. I said it wasn’t for anything, but we were canvassing the neighborhood for Patrick Murphy. “He’s the Democrat, right?” she inquired. After I answered, she nodded and began speaking about Governor Ed Rendell, a highly popular governor who’s going to knock the crap out of Lynn Swann in a month. “Come back when Ed Rendell is president,” she declared. I’ve heard quite a few people express the idea that they’d like the governor to be president, and I certainly think it could happen. While he may not have the body type, and there’s surely some skeletons lying around the Philadelphia machine from his days as mayor, Rendell is another Democrat who is extremely knowledgeable on the issues but does not have a charisma deficiency. The woman continued on, noting that before Rendell entered the gubernatorial race in 2002, her husband had introduced him at an event as the next governor of Pennsylvania. “People thought he was nuts,” she said, but 3 months later, Rendell entered the race – and he did indeed become the chief executive of the Keystone State. It’s a small shop, and I wondered if she’d like Patrick to stop by for a sandwich sometime (it was delicious), but I never got a clear answer on that question. At least we can count on her vote.

It’s 25 days until the election. Any time or money you can spare for any candidate, whether it be Patrick, a local candidate, or someone else, will help immensely. We’re on the way to taking back America; let’s keep the heat up on the GOP.

(cross-posted at Deny My Freedom and Daily Kos)

Thanks to the generosity and kindness of well-known Kossack and blogosphere legal expert Adam B, I was able to attend a fundraiser hosted at the Franklin Institute (pictured above), the famed science museum that is on the outskirts of Center City in Philadelphia. The fundraiser drew what I’d call a crowd of 200-250 to a 3rd-floor ballroom just past the sporting section of the museum, with the proceeds being equally split between PA-06 Democratic candidate Lois Murphy, PA-07 Democratic candidate Joe Sestak, and PA-08 Democratic candidate Patrick Murphy. Also attending were freshman Rep. Allyson Schwartz (D PA-13) and longtime Rep. Chakah Fattah (D PA-02), but the special guest of attendance was Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY). To say the least, many in attendance were excited to see the former first lady (and likely future presidential candidate) speak.

By the time I had arrived at the event (about 10 minutes or so before it was supposed to begin), there were already a fair number of people milling around and chatting. The door in the back of the above picture is where the high rollers (those who donated the maximum $2,100 to each individual candidate) were getting a personal meeting (and undoubtedly those coveted photographs) with the candidates, representatives, and Senator Clinton. After having a few of the exquisite hors d’oeuvres that were served, I ended up running into Kossack Bayern Munich, who had taken the train up from Washington, D.C. to attend the event (also thanks to Adam). Although he is a lobbyist, you don’t have to worry about him fighting against beliefs that Democrats believe in – he’s an animal rights lobbyist (I should have asked him what kind of reaction they get from cat-killer Bill First). He was looking forward to hearing Hillary speak, along with the rest of the candidates. Before the rally began, I also spoke to Adam and his wonderful wife (she’s a well-received author). Adam is a great guy, well-spoken; he likes Hillary as a person (although I don’t recall whether he supported a potential presidential run by her), and he also made a good point: for all the shit that Hillary has had to endure over the past 15 years, it’s amazing that she’s still standing as strong as she is. It takes a person of real strength to survive the mud that has been slung at her and her family ever since the early 1990s. I also spoke with Pam Levenson, a local Hillary supporter who was able to get the fundraiser set up. She thanked me for coming and asked me what the extra cents for the ActBlue donations were. To say the least, it was great fun telling her what the various loose cents at the end stood for, but Adam informed me that all his ActBlue pages are set up with tags to identify which blog they are coming from. Thanks for killing the fun! 😛

Representative Allyson Schwartz warmed up the crowd for us, talking about the great opportunity we had to take back a lot of seats here in Pennsylvania in the House. She hit on all of the main points that Democrats talk about – the economy, the loss of jobs, the incompetence of the Bush administration, but that the Democrats were the ones who were going to clean it up. In mentioning her own hard-fought race for election in 2004 for the seat left open by former Rep. Joe Hoeffel (who was in the crowd), Schwartz reiterated how important it was for us to stay involved as Election Day neared. It’s only a mere 26 days until November 7, and the GOP is sure to go as negative and as low as possible in order to cling to power. She introduced all of us to Patrick, Joe, and Lois before giving way to Patrick, who got to speak to the crowd first.

One of the reasons Patrick is a great campaigner is his ability to speak largely off the cuff without prepared remarks. Today was no exception, even though he probably did something that a lot of candidates do. After making a few quick jokes to his youth (when he was teaching constitutional law at West Point, people would tell him all the time he needed to be in class when he wasn’t dressed in uniform, or something to that effect) and about his rank (even though he was a captain, his wife, Jenni, is the boss – and he doesn’t dispute who’s in charge), he launched into talking about his military service in Iraq. He noted that the only 2 senators to visit the base where he was stationed in Iraq – or at least the first 2 – were Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) and Hillary, which was met with resounding applause. He noted how difficult it was to patrol an area the size of Philadelphia with a brigade that is half the size of the Philadelphia police force. After hearing about how we needed more troops in Iraq – and the administration refusing to take the actions necessary to make Iraq more secure than the chaotic mess it is right now – he decided to run. Patrick then launched into a story about a woman in his district. This woman found out 10 years ago that she had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease), and that she was told she’d only have 3-5 years to live. She’s still alive now, but she’s now on a respirator, only able to speak 20 minutes a day. When Patrick entered the race, she called to speak to Patrick, he recalled. She had called the current representative’s (freshman GOP Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick) office about the vote on stem cell research 3 times – and she never heard back. This is a woman who wants to see her 7 year-old daughter taken to the high school prom, and the only hope for her survival was voted against not once, but twice by Fitzpatrick. You can tell that Patrick isn’t the most experienced politician in the world, because he was tearing up while recounting this story. The woman told Patrick to tell her story everywhere he went, because if Fitzpatrick was going to stand with Bush on this issue, she’d be with our guy all the way.

Next to speak was Joe Sestak, a retired admiral from the Navy. It’s the first time I had the chance to hear Sestak speak in person, and I have to tell you – this guy is amazing. I know it’s perhaps a little late to start, but the man would be amazing in the Senate, or possibly even in a Cabinet position in the future. He took a couple of good-natured ribbing at DCCC chair Rahm Emmanuel (D-IL), saying that if he had entered the race earlier, it wouldn’t be called ‘A New Direction’, but ‘A New Course’ (I presume that ‘course’ is used in Navy lingo); he also said that he went to train stations at 5:30-8 in the morning to greet people – ‘but only because Rahm told me I can’t fundraise at that time’, he said to laughter. Similar to Patrick, Sestak also spoke extemporaneously – and only on 2 topics. The first was about taking his daughter to the hospital when she was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor. Sestak could have easily brought up Curt Weldon’s insensitive attacks on the issue, but he didn’t. Instead, he discussed how he went to the hospital and was able to get his daughter treated – but he overheard another family discussing if they could keep their 2 year-old boy in the hospital since they didn’t have health care. This is what inspired him to get into the race – not just Iraq or any of the numerous other issues, but health care. He noted Hillary’s efforts at universal health care in the 1990s, which got a great reception from the crowd. The second thing Sestak spoke about was a dinner he had with President Clinton and veterans of World War II on the eve of the 50-year anniversary of the invasion of Normandy. The late historian Stephen Ambrose was talking about how even though the Germans targeted the commanders of the Army, we were able to succeed in landing on the beaches of France. What these men had – and what we all have inside of us, Sestak said, was it. He had it, and we all have a part of it – that indescribable intangible within us all to do great things – and that is why we are going to succeed this fall. We have it, and when you have it, it cannot be stopped.

Following Sestak is particularly difficult, and Lois Murphy was quite a change from the two veterans. She stuck to the typical Democratic message of running through a laundry list of issues that we have grievances about – whether it be energy independence or the war on Iraq or the fiscal irresponsibility of the GOP. She noted that she has been the target of particularly nasty ads by her opponent, Jim Gerlach, and the Republican Party. I like Murphy a lot, and I think she’ll put away Gerlach easily this year if 2004 – a strong GOP year – was any indication, when she barely lost after leading much of the way. Nevertheless, it was clear that she was speaking from the stump, as noted by the applause lines she dropped every couple of sentences and the repeated use of ‘A New Direction’ as a sort of cadence for her speech. After being exposed to Patrick for some time now, though, and after Sestak’s amazing speech, it was a little harder to get as excited about her part.

Allyson Schwartz came back to introduce Hillary, whom she had organized a rally with Hillary and Tipper Gore during the 1992 election in Philadelphia. Hillary noted that she and Bill both love being in Pennsylvania, and they have been there so much that ‘we should be paying property taxes’. One gets the idea that Hillary is not the greatest public speaker from news accounts from her speeches, but let me tell you this: she knows what she’s doing. People don’t call her one of the best politicians in the business for nothing. After acknowledging the two other competitive races for PA House seats (Chris Carney in PA-10 and Jason Altmire in PA-04), Hillary began speaking about the need to stop what was going in today’s political climate. She did criticize Bush on Iraq, but she did not mention what some would say has been her staunch refusal to set a timetable. From their perspective, she said, the Republican leadership has driven off a cliff with Bush and Cheney – and they are going to do everything possible to try and win these races. After all, Hillary said, “if the elections were held today, we’d control both the House and the Senate”. But it’s not, and we still have to do everything possible to pull out the stops. In an not-so-subtle reference to her time in the White House and the Senate, Hillary said something that every Democrat needs to take to heart: “Don’t make the first attack. But when they do, you deck them.” And even though it had been noted earlier by Lois Murphy, I believe, that there needs to be a return to civility, we can’t always take the high road. When the other side attacks, we don’t only need to respond. We need to bury them.

As the speech went on, Hillary hit her stride. She told us to talk with people and to be the ‘eyes and ears’ for the campaigns. She recounted one time during her 2000 Senate campaign when she received a call from a man in Albany about a negative test-messaging that Rick Lazio’s campaign had been doing. Hillary noted that although most people will either dismiss it or simply use it to reinforce their beliefs (ironically, she did make a reference to the fact that there are a good portion of people who utterly disdain her), there are some persuadables that can be moved by such attacks. Luckily, the Lazio campaign was stupid enough to go on the air with the negative message (linking Hillary to terrorists via the attack on the USS Cole), and it sent his campaign irrevocably downhill. Additionally, she noted that many more people at her events are Republicans – surprising, given how vilified she was in the 1990s. At a fundraiser nearly a year ago, she spoke with a Republican who had deep ties to past GOP administrations. It was Hurricane Katrina that turned him against the GOP, when he realized that the Republican Party he had been a part of no longer existed. The crowd began applauding steadily louder as Hillary ticked off the items – stem cell research, budget deficits, foreign policy, minimum wages, health care – that the GOP had ignored. “There’s nothing conservative about the Republican Party today,” Hillary proclaimed. “They are radicals.” The room was going wild. This is what we want to see more of from Democrats – unafraid to call the GOP the radicals they are, for being far beyond anything one would consider mainstream, or even traditionally conservative.

After Hillary finished, there was a quick photo op, and the senator quickly exited the stage, undoubtedly in a rush to get to some other event she had to attend. The other candidates stuck around for a while, though. I had a chance to meet Patrick once again, and he was clearly enthused by being a big part of this rally. I also went and spoke to Sestak, and his eyes lit up when I mentioned the group of bloggers who are filming Crashing The States. I had overheard him saying that the new poll released yesterday was ‘a bit too optimistic’, so I decided to ask him what message he’d like to send to the blogosphere. “This election is about health care, the economy, job security – it’s all a part of national security,” Sestak said. It’s true…in the end, every issue is linked in one way or another, and if we want to put an end to the madness in Washington, we have to take back Congress.

26 days, folks. Do everything you can – because the lives of millions depend on it.

(cross-posted at Deny My Freedom and Never In Our Names)

I just got off a conference call with PA-08 Democratic candidate Patrick Murphy. As I wrote about earlier today, his opponent, freshman GOP Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick, decided to open a series of Swiftboat-style attacks on him on Friday. It appears that the Democratic Party has learned its lesson with rapid response, and tonight, the campaign sent out a notice to speak with many prominent liberal bloggers about the upcoming response. The bloggers on tonight’s call included Chris Bowers of MyDD, Huffington Post contributor Taylor Marsh, mcjoan and Armando of Daily Kos (yes, that Armando), and Susan Kreuger of Democracy Cell Project. On the other side of the phone with Patrick were Captain Koby Langley and General Wesley Clark. Under the fold, I’ll recount to the best of my knowledge the content of the call, which was all on the record.
First, it’s a pretty heady experience to say ‘hello’ and have the first voice come back being General Clark. It’s difficult to introduce oneself after that; I stated my name and introduced myself as a blogger and a current college student. “You’re not just a blogger,” Clark said. “The pen is mightier than the sword.” It’s apparent that Clark is a clear supporter of the netroots and is quite engaged in what we are doing.

Captain Langley started off by talking about what he and Patrick did while they were in Iraq. Langley had been a captain in the 82nd Airborne Division as well, and he noted that although Patrick was a JAG, due to the lack of manpower in Iraq, they were often pressed into situations totally unrelated to law. For over a month, Patrick commanded over 75 convoys with Langley, ensuring the safety of the transport and. This is not merely a job that is far from the field, as Patrick’s accusers have stated; this was a job that made them ‘soft targets’, to put it in Langley’s own words. Other soldiers, whose primary task had been more legal-oriented, had been killed in Iraq before – this was dangerous work that Patrick had been involved in. Captain Langley repeatedly noted that Fitzpatrick has never been a member of the armed forces, and that it was disgraceful for him to be saying such things about Patrick, who earned a Bronze Star for his commendable service in Iraq.

General Clark was the next to speak, and you could hear the anger in his voice. He praised Patrick’s service, and although he noted that while there can be different feelings that run between different units in the army, Fitzpatrick has ‘no place in saying who’s qualified’. He said that the Swiftboating was ‘baloney’, and that we have got to stand up to it. Additionally, Clark railed against the ‘cowardice of the Bush administration and the complete corruption of the Republican Party’. He called Fitzpatrick a ‘phony patriot’, noting that he had no right to wear the American flag on his lapel after condoning such remarks. The Republicans, the general noted, ‘will destroy anything to hang on to power, even the reputation’ of a soldier who served America honorably and with distinction. He thanked all of us for being on the call, and he told us not only to raise the outrage meter on the Internet, but to also raise money for Patrick to fight back against these claims and to write letters to the Philadelphia-area papers.

Captain Langley came back and quickly noted that Fitzpatrick was having other veterans do his ‘dirty work’ for him, so as to escape blame. Patrick spoke next and stated that these were ‘baseless accusations’. Fitzpatrick, he stated was ‘putting political ambition ahead of the truth’. He pointed out the clear hypocrisy of Fitzpatrick, who had another news conference after the disparaging remarks were made to distance himself – the trademark of any Swiftboat attack by the right wing. He has released all of his Army records, unlike Kerry, and it’s clear that he has nothing to hide. It’s ridiculous, Patrick noted, that Fitzpatrick makes such claims when he has a 37% voting record on veteran’s issues, according to the Disabled Veterans of America. He implored all of us on the call to help get the truth out about his record, and that he appreciated all the help that the netroots community has given his campaign to date. With that, he opened the floor for questions from those of us present.

Questions from the bloggers
Susan Kreuger from Democracy Cell Project had the first question. She asked General Clark if such criticism of fellow soldiers would weaken our armed forces, which must work together as a team to get their jobs done. Clark stated that any criticism of one’s service was inappropriate. Even if the opposing candidate was a Republican, he said, he would respect the time that they served in their country. Soldiers ‘should be proud of their service’, and it is a disservice to everyone when they are assailed for it. After answering this question, the general thanked us for our time and left, as he had to catch a flight to Iowa.

Next up, Armando (no, that’s not a typo) noted that one of the soldiers who criticized Patrick was an Air Force pilot who served from January 2006 to April 2006. The insurgents in Iraq have absolutely no air capabilities, so the job in and of itself is a lot less dangerous than guarding convey transports on the ground. Armando wanted to know if this was going to be pointed out by Patrick, who replied that it would not be. Patrick’s a nice guy, and he says that he respected the pilot’s service despite the remarks that were said of him. This is a double-edged sword – by pointing out that the pilot never saw any ground action, it could do a lot to nullify the effect his remarks may have had. However, it would also give the GOP an opening in saying that Patrick ‘attacked the troops’, or something to that effect. I’m not sure if there’s enough nuance to give enough leverage to that kind of shallow, incorrect attack, but it’s hard to say.

The next question (I don’t know who the questioner was) asked about the local coverage of the story. It was on the front page of every important local paper in Bucks County, so it is definitely going to get some play there. I did not see any editorials on the matter as I scanned them this morning, so it’s hard to say what the newspaper editorial boards will say in the next few days. However, as I had previously noted, editorials written earlier this year stated there would be no tolerance for attacks on Patrick’s service. Let’s see if that comes through.

Taylor Marsh was the next questioner; she asked if there were any plans to hit local radio. Patrick will be on NPR tomorrow, and he will continue to get his message out on the airwaves. That’s why it’s so important for us to continue to donate to his campaign – with these scurrilous attacks, it’s absolutely necessary for us to hit back as hard – and as often – as possible.

My question was about who might be coming to the district to help give Patrick support. I already had heard of potential names being raised, but I could not disclose some of them (and I believe I still can’t mention a couple of them). Bill Clinton is going to be in town for a huge rally Wednesday morning. In addition, Senator John Kerry (D-MA) will be holding a teleconference with the press on Tuesday to counter these charges, and Patrick will also be hosting another teleconference on Wednesday with Senator Barack Obama (D-IL). He has already held several debates with Fitzpatrick, and he is willing to talk about the issues anytime, anywhere – so long as personal integrity is kept intact. It’s clear that the next debate (scheduled for later this week) could be a much more bitter affair than before. Patrick has already resorted to personally appearing at Fitzpatrick’s press conferences to confront the candidate about lies, and he’s not going to take any bullshit lying down.

After that, Patrick thanked us all for being there, and Captain Langley gave us his phone number to do any follow-up that we may have about his time with Patrick in Iraq. Mike Fitzpatrick chose to mess with the wrong man, and we’re going to make him pay for it. It’s time to have representatives in Congress who respect our troops and their service, not someone who’s never worn the uniform but has the audacity to criticize someone who has put their life in danger. Let’s send this right-wing chickenhawk into early retirement.

(cross-posted at Deny My Freedom and Daily Kos)

As those of you who have been following my blogging as of late know, I have been doing weekly volunteer work for the campaign of PA-08 Democratic candidate Patrick Murphy. Aside from being a progressive Democrat who was one of the original netroots-endorsed candidate, Patrick is a veteran who has served in Bosnia and Iraq, along with being a constitutional law professor at West Point – an impeccable resume of service, to say the least. Since 2004, though, it’s been a trademark of the GOP and its right-wing cronies to question the service of just about any veteran who has seen combat – if they are running for office as a Democrat. I spoke with one of the staffers in the Murphy campaign, who noted that the local newspapers had said early on in the race that they would not stand for any sort of ‘Swiftboat’ attacks on Patrick’s military service by his opponents.

Apparently, that appeal fell on deaf ears. Either that, or Fitzpatrick’s internal poll numbers (which he has yet to release) are bad enough that he has to sink to a new low in his campaign.

Two Iraq war veterans have accused Democratic congressional candidate Patrick Murphy of mischaracterizing what he did in that war-torn country. The charge provoked an angry response from Murphy, who charged incumbent Congressman Mike Fitzpatrick, R-8, with trying to “swiftboat” him.

[…]

U.S. Army Capt. Richard Barbato, who served in the 82nd Airborne, the same division as Murphy, joked that Murphy was always back at the unit’s headquarters while the rest of the unit’s soldiers were fighting.

“While we were up on the front lines … [Murphy] didn’t see the same things we did,” Barbato said.

This picture, pulled from Patrick’s photo gallery, certainly doesn’t seem like he was just hanging around while other soldiers were putting their lives in peril. In addition, the campaign’s official blog pulls up Patrick’s citation for a Bronze Star. While most of it focuses on his work on helping the Iraqi court system get up and running, it takes note that he was not merely involved in administrative matters:

Additionally, he instructed over 600 Iraqi Civil Defense Corps soldiers in the use of force, the profession of arms, and military justice…Additionally, CPT Murphy was the Convoy Commander in over 75 movement-to-contact missions throughout the Baghdad area of operations, one receiving small arms fire and one successfully scouting the eventual detonation of an improvised explosion device, but all resulting in mission accomplishment and no soldiers killed or wounded in action.

Remember how we all criticized John Kerry’s slow response to the Swiftboat attacks during the 2004 election? Well, he’s certainly learned his lesson, and it appears like he’s taking any attacks on our veteran candidates quite personally – and responding with a vengeance:

“I won’t stand for the `swift boating’ of Patrick Murphy. It disgusts me that a congressman who has never worn the uniform of our country stands there in silence as a veteran home from Iraq has his service disparaged.

[…]

“You know why Mike Fitzpatrick is engaged in the lowest form of smear and fear politics?  Because he’s afraid of actually debating Patrick Murphy about the disastrous war in Iraq. He’s afraid to debate a veteran who lives and breathes the concerns of our troops, not the empty slogans of an Administration that sent our brave troops to war without body armor. He’s terrified of actually leveling with the American people about the way the administration misled America into war, and admitting their stay the course slogans just guarantee more Americans die for a stand still and lose strategy.

“Mike Fitzpatrick should finally find the courage to debate the real issue instead of cowardly having his surrogates try to destroy anyone who speaks truth to power. It’s unacceptable to do this to any leader of any party anywhere in our country.”

This was released the exact same day the attacks on Patrick’s military service were made. Fitzpatrick, after the news conference, tried to back away from the statements made by his supporters – even though he did not move immediately to condemn them right after they were uttered.

After the press conference, Fitzpatrick said he disagreed with the veterans.

“In no way, shape or form would I ever question Pat Murphy’s service to our country,” said Fitzpatrick, who is not a military veteran. “I recognize and appreciate Pat’s service to our country as much as anyone in our community.

“As far as his military service in Iraq, I take him fully at his word,” Fitzpatrick added.

It’s the classic GOP maneuver of tossing out aspersions on a Democrat’s military service and subsequently ‘distancing’ themselves from the actual attack itself. You can bet that Fitzpatrick will continue along these lines. However, the Murphy campaign has no intention of taking this lying down. Aside from Kerry’s smackdown on Friday, there is word that several big-name Democrats will be ‘going to bat’ for Patrick, as I was told. I can’t divulge any names, as per the request of the campaign, but you can bet that Fitzpatrick will wish that he and his campaign had kept their collective mouth shut. And when I say ‘big names’, this is in addition to the appearances with Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. There is going to be some major star power coming to Bucks County in support of Patrick.

The lesson from it all? The Republican Party doesn’t care about military service unless you agree with their beliefs. No matter how honorably one served, they will find a way to question our candidates’ service to America, even though the vast majority of them have never served in the military. It’s shameful. It’s disrespectful. And most of all, it’s unpatriotic.

(cross-posted at Deny My Freedom and Daily Kos)

Today, on Penn’s campus, a rally was hosted with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), PA-06 Democratic candidate Lois Murphy, and the incumbent from PA-13, freshman Rep. Allyson Schwartz (D-PA). Members from the campaign of PA-08 Democratic candidate Patrick Murphy were also on hand, distributing flyers for Wednesday’s upcoming rally with former president Bill Clinton. This is the big event on campus for the Penn College Democrats, and our board did a great job of setting up the event. We had a more modernized banner, and we were able to fill the room to standing-only capacity. For 10 AM on a rainy Friday morning, it was impressive to get that kind of turnout to see the next Speaker of the House.

That being said, if there is one thing this rally demonstrated, it is that it’s not very difficult to understand why we have such a difficult time convincing people to vote for Democrats. This rally – although well-organized by the Penn Dems – was the epitome of everything that is wrong with the Democratic Party’s messaging. Follow me below the fold for a full review…
At the rally, these booklets – exactly 25 pages long – were on every seat in the room; I snagged an extra one from the boxes. If you read the content, you will find that it is filled with reasonable ideas about veteran’s rights (above, on the left), energy independence (on the right), and many other issues. The claim that the Democratic Party is without ideas is completely false; and although the online version of A New Direction is much less fleshed-out, as I have previously criticized it for being, the actual booklet has a bunch of good proposals to help out all Americans, not just the well-off. Certainly, these are good ideas that we are running on, but most people don’t have the time to read these booklets. In fact, I have no idea if these are actually being distributed to voters; giving them to the choir isn’t going to accomplish much of anything – we need to convince those that aren’t ready to vote for Democrats.

Lois Murphy lost the closest race in 2004, losing to Jim Gerlach in PA-06 by a couple of percentage points in what was a strong Republican year around the country. She’s ahead in the latest round of independent polling, and many people in the area believe she’ll have no problem knocking Gerlach off this time around. Her speech largely focused on domestic issues, particularly global warming and energy independence. That being said, many of the issues that were touched upon were repeated by Schwartz and Pelosi later on. The one heartening thing Murphy said before the rally ended was that taking back the House was important so that ‘hearings could be held to hold the Bush administration accountable’. Investigations are something that leading Democrats have been shying away from calling for, so it’s good to see that a prospective congresswoman is seeing that such actions will need to be taken if we recapture the lower chamber of Congress.

Allyson Schwartz replaced Joe Hoeffel in PA-13, a swing district that has been trending more Democratic over the years, in 2004. Used by my political science textbook a couple years ago as an example of the prototypical ‘purple’ district, it’s not even on anyone’s radar anymore; when Hoeffel held the seat, his re-election races were never won with dominating margins. That being said, Schwartz touched upon the same domestic issues that Murphy had previously spoken about. To be honest, there was nothing of much note said; in fact, the applause that occurred during her part of the event was sparse and probably numbered less than 5 in interruptions.

Schwartz introduced Pelosi to us, who got a rousing ovation from everyone except for the Penn College Republicans, who decided to stand at the back of the room and watch – probably because they never hold any events to begin with, and the ones they do host aren’t worth the waste of time. After saying a few quick applause lines to get the crowd riled up, Pelosi went about speaking to us about ‘A New Direction’. She touched on just about every major topic in today’s news, with the notable exception of the Mark Foley scandal. I planned to ask her a question about it afterwards, but I wasn’t called upon. Another somewhat surprising observation was that Iraq was not mentioned at all until the very end of her speech – in fact, I’d call it an afterthought, and it was abruptly tacked on just as Pelosi had appeared to wind down her remarks. The first question that was taken from the students was one about whether the Democrats would agree to a one-year timetable, similar to what Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) and Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) have proposed. Pelosi never answered the question directly, saying that most people supported Murtha’s position, citing the unified position that congressional Democratic leaders have taken by calling for a withdrawal plan to be implemented by the end of 2006. Aside from that, your typical bread-and-butter issues were once again spoken about. Noticeably absent from the rally was any discussion about social issues such as abortion and gay rights, which I think is a good sign. When the GOP is on the offensive, it usually seems to force us to defend our stances on the issues. With the Foley scandal and the general collapse of the GOP, there’s no chance for them to use red-meat social issues to fire up their base.

Overall, it sounds like a pretty decent rally, right? A short 45 minutes long, it touched on all the issues we want to hear Democrats talk about, and it brought out probably 200-250 college students and may have inspired them to contribute some time to volunteering (a point that Murphy, Schwartz, and Pelosi repeatedly made). On the contrary, it was highly disappointing, and I wish I had more to talk about with regards to the substance of the rally. Instead, I will critique the event to highlight the problems the Democratic Party exhibits when it campaigns.

Know your audience
To a casual non-observer of politics, it may not have seemed out of the ordinary. But to someone like me – a person who has attended several political rallies – it was painstakingly obvious that Murphy, Schwartz, and Pelosi were not speaking to the audience. At least Schwartz was able to crack a couple of jokes about waking up for the rally and for trading our sleep for volunteering, but aside from that, and everyone spoke about college loans. Past that, though, there was no indication that there had been any adaptation from the traditional stump speech to make it more appealing to a group of young voters. Most people in the audience are not people who have attended political rallies on a regular basis before, so one cannot expect them to know where the applause lines are – they’ll applaud for something they like to hear. There were plenty of lines that would normally draw applause from a much more involved and aware group of people, but in this setting, they drew a stony silence. At certain points, one person essentially began clapping to goad the crowd along. You have to know who you are presenting to, and you have to be able to adapt as such. Patrick Murphy is excellent at doing that – although he includes elements of his stump speech every time he speaks, he is able to make it much more appealing to the audience he is targeting.

Know what issues matter
Being at an Ivy League school, speaking to us about issues like outsourcing manufacturing jobs, health care, and retirement shows a certain tone-deafness. Domestic issues dominated the discussion, but it wasn’t in a context that would appeal to students. Penn in particular is not a place where many people worry about getting a job out of college, given the excellent recruiting program that Wharton has in place, and almost everyone here will be in the upper-level service sector out of college, which does have an outsourcing problem but is less pronounced. I was waiting to hear about Iraq. That is an issue students care about. To their credit, they did mention college loans (although, at an Ivy League school, there are a minority such as myself that have to worry about that problem), but it wasn’t put in the proper context. Finally, civil liberties – as the recent revolt on the networking website Facebook showed, students care a lot about their privacy, no matter how trivial the matter. There was no mention of the Patriot Act, NSA wiretapping, or other personally intrusive behavior. Finally, judging from the outpouring of support on Facebook on the matter of Darfur, human rights issues are also another winner. But no mention of Darfur – or on torture, which probably was not an issue that Pelosi wanted to address. Stem cell research – another big winner with college students – was mentioned only once, by Pelosi, and it got a huge response. The minimum wage is certainly an important matter, but when you’re speaking to a roomful of people who will undoubtedly be working at jobs out of school that pay way above it, one has to wonder why it’s being mentioned. Talk about the issues that young people care about, and they will respond.

Slogans are not a cure-all
I must not have rolled my eyes too much, as they would be rolling on the floor for each time ‘A New Direction’ was mentioned. Just as the party got too attached to the ‘culture of corruption’ phrase when the Abramoff scandal was front and center, the Democrats have got to learn to become more varied in their language. At some point, I began to wonder, “Just what is ‘A New Direction’ all about?” People may not remember the details, but it certainly helps if you delve into the meat of your policy stances instead of throwing one slogan out and telling the audience to ‘Read the book’ (Pelosi literally told us to do that). In addition, this ties into knowing your audience. In an academic setting, students will be eager to hear about the details of the plans and just what that entails. Energy independence is great – but what does it mean? Investing in education is great – but what does it mean? Having a dignified retirement is great – but what does it mean? Abstract phrasing and sloganizing simply aids the perception that we don’t have any ideas. Talk about the details, and talk about them to whatever length is necessary. In general, though, there has to be an improvement in messaging. The audience isn’t stupid, and if they keep hearing the term ‘A New Direction’ over and over, they’ll want to know what exactly that entails.

Tell a story
Having a running theme in a campaign should be required. ‘A New Direction’ is not a theme or a story; it’s a slogan. When one listened to Murphy, Schwartz, and especially Pelosi speak, there was absolutely no running thread at all. We would go from talking about bread-and-butter issues to talking about Philadelphia and the country’s values to national security to global warming – and it goes on and on. There was absolutely no coherent way one could link what each woman was saying together; instead, it was a potpourri of various issues that were spoken about repeatedly without any additional illumination. Perhaps campaigning is supposed to be about saying a whole lot of nothing, but there was so much repetition – without added substance – that it made my head spin. We have to tell a story when we campaign; it can’t just be a laundry list of what we want to do if we retake Congress. This is a problem that seems to afflict all Democrats, and we need to move away from it. Barack Obama’s 2004 DNC speech is a perfect example of the kind of politicking we need to do more of. Make it personal, make it flow, make it matter – and you can captivate anyone. People may agree with us on just about every major issue of the day, but they’re most affected by the messenger. Admittedly, Nancy Pelosi is not the best public speaker, but it would be difficult to string together a more incoherent speech than what she did today.

Simply put, all of these issues fall under the umbrella of framing. One can get away without the best framing when preaching to the choir, but we’re not the ones who will tip the scales at the polls. It will be those voters who know they agree with us, but they are reluctant to do so because we’re not inspiring enough. Republican ineptitude may give us Congress now, but there won’t be a Mark Foley to do our work for us every election cycle. Hopefully, this can serve as a template to identify what we are doing right – but more importantly, what we need to fix.

(cross-posted at Deny My Freedom and Daily Kos)

As has been my weekly habit since returning to Philadelphia, I have spent my Saturdays canvassing for PA-08 Democratic candidate Patrick Murphy, a true progressive running to unseat freshman GOP Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick in this Democratic-trending district. The most recent poll shows the race being very close, with Fitzpatrick leading Patrick by a paltry 5 percentage points. In MyDD’s latest House forecast, this race is ranked a Tier 1.5 race – it’s on the cusp of breaking into the top, but there haven’t been many polls being done on this race, and Patrick’s name ID remains relatively low in the district, which covers much of suburban Bucks County. That’s the main goal of the canvassing operation the Murphy campaign is running – Patrick’s name ID is low, so we have to let people know about him and his plan for bringing positive change to Washington. Below the fold, I’ll recount today’s soreness-inducing canvassing, which covered a lot of real estate in lower Bucks County…
Last week was a hectic weekend – not only did I hit the streets in support of Patrick, but the great guys filming Crashing The States were in town as well. I got a couple of inquiries from the campaign staff and volunteers about the final product. I honestly don’t believe any of the footage has been digitized so that it can be uploaded to the ‘Net for preliminary viewing; hopefully hekebolos will inform us all if any tidbits of the footage they’ve shot to date will be shown before they compile the documentary. The campaign headquarters also seemed a bit quieter today; there seemed to be less volunteers and staffers in the office than usual. However, a group had gone out earlier, and after we had one Penn Democrat get a crash course on the art of canvassing, we headed out to get the word out about Patrick.

Today, my canvassing partner was Josh, a fellow junior at Penn whose chosen field of study is in science and sounds a bit more complicated than anything I studied in high school. As a resident of southern New Jersey, he bemoaned the lack of Democratic politicians in the region, which has been dominated by the GOP for several years now. He’s also a fellow blogger; along with myself, he posts at the official blog of the Penn College Democrats, and he also reads MyDD – so perhaps he can add some additional thoughts once I post this entry. We went out with another canvassing team as well; both appear to be regular volunteers for the campaign (I know the name of our driver – Boris – but I forget the other guy. Apologies for doing so). I’m not sure how much they frequent the blogosphere, but they seemed to have many of the same gripes with our party that we cyber-denizens have: the Democratic Party isn’t strong enough, and the campaign being run by PA-Sen Democratic nominee Bob Casey is awful. Everyone in my car today seemed to believe Casey would lose the race despite his consistently large leads over Rick Santorum, and some were even pessimistic about the chances that the Democrats will take over either house of Congress. I am more optimistic, but to each their own opinion.

Today’s canvassing trip was to the same area I canvassed last week. It was a return to Northampton Township, and this time, I would say our lists were probably majority-Republican households. I think it’s great that we’re trying to flip the other side to vote for Patrick, who certainly has impeccable credentials. In addition, the Democratic ticket strength in Pennsylvania this year should easily help us pick up GOP votes for the down-ticket candidates. One thing that has definitely changed from last week to this week is the exponential increase in lawn signs. Both Republicans and Democrats have been planting all sorts of lawn signs throughout Bucks County, from the governor’s race all the way down to the State Assembly races. The Fitzpatrick campaign has bought billboard ads along Bristol Pike (the road that the Murphy campaign headquarters sit along), and they have smaller-sized stand-alone billboards they have set up that say ‘Elect Fitzpatrick’ – apparently, putting the ‘Re-‘ in front of ‘Elect’ was omitted, perhaps because their internal polling shows that it’s a bad time to say you’re an incumbent? Nevertheless, the more interesting factor, in my opinion, was that there were several bunches of lawn signs that grouped together the entire GOP ticket, as shown above. I can’t imagine why Fitzpatrick, who is in a tight race and has omitted his party affiliation from his signs, would make it so clear who he was aligned with by planting his signs with Lynn Swann and Rick Santorum. One volunteer with Murphy told me that the GOP campaigns for the lower-ballot races – including Fitzpatrick – actually moved their lawn signs away from Swann’s and Santorum’s signs so as to avoid the association. Clearly, they didn’t take care of every cluster of signs, as we saw many of these signs grouped together as we drove to our canvassing destination. But hey, if the Fitzpatrick campaign wants to weigh itself down with a couple of anchors, I’m all for it.

As noted above, today’s canvassing took place in Northampton Township. The neighborhood was essentially the same as last time, with it being strictly middle-upper class neighborhoods that we were targeting, except that instead of being in Holland, we were in Churchville. The only difference was that today, we had a much larger section of turf to cover; in these kinds of neighborhoods, the spaces between houses are bigger than usual, and the driveways are long, requiring a much longer distance to cover to actually reach the resident’s front door. Even though I would guess that the majority of households I canvassed today were Republicans, there were no lawn signs visible – which, I suppose, can’t be a bad thing for us. It could be an indication that the GOP base simply isn’t that enthusiastic this year.

Unlike the previous two weeks, where I got some decent response, this week was a lot of knocking on doors and receiving no response. Although it was lightly raining when we started canvassing, and it wasn’t that warm outside, I knocked on 51 doors and only received 23 contacts – and do remember that there are multiple contacts in each household. Of those 23 contacts, 8 were refusals, a number that only outpaced by those that had no opinion about the race. The response rate wasn’t that great, and unfortunately, those that did answer did not provide much data to be pleased with. As with most undecideds, they hadn’t heard of Patrick. Those that did accept the literature I handed them seemed receptive, but a great deal told me that they weren’t interested in the race. One particularly disappointing episode was a Democratic household that told me they weren’t interested in the race. The next house down – a Republican residence – was willing to at least listen to me talk about Patrick and accept the literature. Another house I went to – one that contained a Republican and a nonaffiliated voter – was more disheartening. After answering the door, I asked the man if he had heard of Patrick. “No,” he replied, smiling. “Would you like to hear about him,” I asked. “No,” he answered, still smiling. I left the porch and wondered what exactly there was to smile about. I wouldn’t be proud of showing no interest whatsoever in my democracy.

Unlike last weekend, where there were some Republicans I canvassed that said they would vote for Patrick, there wasn’t that kind of luck this time around. One household that had a Democratic voter around my age listed on it seemed like a promising opportunity. The person’s mother answered and said that she had heard of Patrick. “He’s the Democrat running for Congress,” she said, a hint of disdain in her voice. I affirmed that and spoke a little more about Patrick, but when I asked whether we could count on her support, the answer came back firmly: “No.” Josh encountered even more Republicans who would be voting for Fitzpatrick, and it appears that in this area, being a Democrat is not highly looked upon. He canvassed one household that, after inquiring about Patrick’s party affiliation, told him that they couldn’t vote for a Democrat. Another person who was driving by stopped and asked Josh if he was lost. After hearing that he was canvassing for a Democrat, the driver took off without so much as a farewell. There’s a positive phenomena I noted while looking over my canvassing sheets, though. Because the district is historically a GOP stronghold, it was of no surprise that the older voters tended to be Republicans. But the younger voters were almost solidly Democratic across the board. One household had 2 Republican parents – and 2 Democratic children. This is why the district is trending our way – the younger blood in the district is squarely blue, and as they continue to become a bigger part of the population, the more solidly Democratic southeast Pennsylvania will become.

Nevertheless, I did meet a couple of supporters of Patrick. One guy said he’d definitely be voting for Patrick. I was about to leave when he began going off on the ‘clowns’ running the government. Even though he was a Democrat, he was disgusted at what was going on, singling out Bush and Cheney for the wrongs our country faces today. In today’s environment, he said, he’d never vote for a Republican. He did note that we’d have a tough time winning here, as he noted that the district was GOP-leaning. “If that’s what people vote for, then it’s what they deserve,” he stated. However, that leadership just doesn’t affect those who vote for it…it affects all of us. That’s why I’m out every weekend, trying to make sure that the Bush agenda is stopped dead in its tracks for the next 2 years. Another elderly man I spoke to said that he’d vote for Murphy as well, stating quite clearly that he didn’t ‘like the other guy’ – Fitzpatrick. I didn’t speak with him any longer, as I had interrupted his lawn-mowing session, but it was good to hear that some people aren’t pleased with the incumbent, no matter how much of a local guy he is.

All in all, there’s still a lot of work to be done. Lack of name recognition is still the big thing that Patrick needs to overcome. Nevertheless, things are looking up for the campaign. The staffers said that the debate last Sunday between Patrick and Fitzpatrick – on Iraq and national security – went very well, and the hall it was hosted in was overflowing with people. Additionally, in line with Kos’ advice, the campaign is doing strictly cable ad buys instead of pissing away money on more expensive network advertising that reaches more people who don’t live in the district. It’s 39 days until Election Day, and the final full month of the campaign begins tomorrow. We’re going to win this.