Author: PsiFighter37

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

Some of these “Democrats” are up for re-election right now. Because it’s too late for it, bring a vomit bag with you to the voting booth this November (except for one of them, where you have a real choice).

But there is no excuse for voting for torture. I don’t care about party loyalty when it comes to an issue that goes straight to the core of human rights and moral leadership. There are some things you cannot abrogate. This is one such issue.

Below the fold, you will see 11 “Democrats” (and 1 ‘independent Democrat’). Next cycle, every one of them deserves a primary challenge. Don’t forget that today, they voted to abandon moral decency and the essence of our humanity. Whether it’s in 2, 4, or 6 years, each and every one of these people must have a primary challenge. Voting for this bill goes beyond politics. It shows a clear moral flaw.

Senator Tom Carper, Delaware

Senator Tim Johnson, South Dakota

Senator Mary Landrieu, Louisiana

Senator Frank Lautenberg, New Jersey

Senator Joe Lieberman, Connecticut

Senator Robert Menendez, New Jersey

Senator Bill Nelson, Florida

Senator Ben Nelson, Nebraska

Senator Mark Pryor, Arkansas

Senator Jay Rockefeller, West Virginia

Senator Ken Salazar, Colorado

Senator Debbie Stabenow, Michigan

—–

I don’t give a damn that politicians like Ben Nelson and Tim Johnson may be the only kind of Democrats who can serve in these deeply Republican states. Max Baucus, Kent Conrad, Byron Dorgan – they live in equally red states, and they voted against the bill. That argument holds absolutely no water this time around.

Contact your senator if they are on the list above. Notify them that when their next election after this year rolls around, they will be facing a primary challenge. Do not try to rationalize their votes, because there is none.

There is never a good enough explanation to legalize torture.

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

Yesterday was a busy day for myself. Although I did my usual canvassing in support of PA-08 Democratic nominee Patrick Murphy, it had the added excitement of meeting with the guys who are filming Crashing The States, an independent documentary chronicling the campaigns of netroots-backed candidates around the country. I wrote an extensive entry on some of my recollections of what we chatted about. That being said, that was only half of the day. Today, I will write about my 4th canvassing experience in support of Patrick – and it’s a little different from some of the previous times I’ve hit the pavement in support of this future rock star of the Democratic Party.
After the CTS crew filmed me being driven out to canvassing, myself and Katie, my canvassing partner for the day, headed out to Holland, a town that, based on the direction we traveled, was slightly to the southwest of where the campaign headquarters in Levittown is located. Although this was the first time Katie had done canvassing in support of Patrick, she’s no stranger to politics; back in 2004, she helped work on Senator Ken Salazar’s (D-CO) winning campaign that resulted in 1 of only 2 Senate seat pick-ups for Democrats (the other was Barack Obama). Today would also be a slightly new experience for myself as well. Most of my canvassing in the past, whether it be for John Kerry in 2004 or for CT-Sen Democratic nominee Ned Lamont, has been largely focused on getting the word out to Democrats. Indeed, canvassing in Connecticut for the Democratic primary was solely focused on turning out the vote within our own party. I took it as a sign of strength, then, when I looked down at my canvassing sheets – and saw probably half of those listed to be Republicans.

It’s not really a surprise, though. As an AP article notes, the Philadelphia suburbs – a traditionally Republican stronghold – has been trending towards the Democrats in the past decade. Al Gore and John Kerry carried the Philadelphia suburbs in the last 2 presidential elections, and Governor Ed Rendell is cruising to re-election this year, largely on the commanding support he engenders from southeast Pennsylvania. The numbers are worth highlighting:

This summer, for the first time since the state began keeping registration records in 1934, slightly more than 49 percent of voters in the four-county region listed their affiliation as Republican.

In 1990, 63 percent of voters in Bucks, Montgomery, Delaware and Chester counties were Republicans. Since then, Democratic registration has increased 7 percent to more than one-third of voters while the number of independent and minor party members doubled to 14 percent.

The same AP article notes that the current incumbent in PA-08, freshman GOP Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick, suffers from low name recognition – a symptom that makes sense, given that he only garners 44% in the latest DCCC internal poll. This race is going to be coming down to the wire, and in a district that still has more Republicans than Democrats, it’s going to be necessary to do some across-the-aisle canvassing. It’s definitely something I looked forward to doing. The area we canvassed yesterday was clearly an middle-upper class neighborhood, with many houses looking like there had been a good deal of money put into it. I didn’t expect to get much of a positive reaction to an area that one would probably assume wasn’t kind to Democrats, but it certainly didn’t turn out all that badly.

On a breezy – albeit humid – Saturday afternoon, it was no surprise that many people weren’t home on Saturday. Also, given that it was Rosh Hoshanah yesterday – and Northampton, the township that we were canvassing in, has one of the highest Jewish populations in the district – it’s no surprise that I got the usual limited response that one gets when pounding the pavement in mid-afternoon. However, I still had interactions at 13 of the 37 doors I knocked on, which is slightly more than 1/3 – a pretty decent rate of contact. In addition, I had the misfortune of catching many people who were busy. One lady who was doing some gardening work told me she didn’t want to chat with me; she probably thought I was selling her something. I didn’t get too far down the driveway, as a ferocious little dog barked quite wildly at me. A couple others were talking on the phone, so I quickly handed them some campaign literature about Patrick and thanked them for their time.

That being said, one young man actually hung up on his phone call to hear my pitch. He was probably about my age, but it warmed my heart to hear him say he was a ‘big fan’ of Patrick and that he’d be voting for him in November – as would his parents. The next house down was a Republican who gruffly asked me, “So, what are you here selling?” I quipped that I wasn’t selling him anything except for a congressional candidate. It turns out that the man, though not interested in talking to me much, did let me know that he was going to vote for Patrick in the election. It was great to have a Republican say straight up that they’d vote for a Democrat. In fact, despite the numerous Republican households that I was to canvass, I did not encounter a single Fitzpatrick supporter while I was on the ground. One household didn’t even bother chatting with me too much, cutting to the chase: they told me they voted ‘straight Democratic’, which was a damn good thing to hear.

There were a couple of disappointing stories, though. One involved an elderly lady who was walking back to her house after I had left a flyer at her door. Introducing myself, I asked if she had any idea who she would be voting for this election. “I’m not going to vote,” she said. This surprised me; I would think that the oldest Americans are the ones most inclined to vote. I tried to inquire why, but she said simply, “Because I’m not going to vote!” I walked away and began heading off towards the next block of streets when the lady called me back. She let me know that she voted in presidential elections, but she had no idea about either Fitzpatrick or Patrick. I offered to tell her about both candidates, but she dismissed me again, telling me that she had no interest in voting. Why? The only way you can save your democracy is if you bother to participate in it. This lady essentially didn’t care enough to vote this year. We can’t wait until the next presidential election to stop what Bush and the far right have done. It has to stop now.

Another household I encountered was a Republican household. The man who answered didn’t seem too pleased when I introduced Patrick, but I brightened up when I heard that he was undecided. I started pitching Patrick as a candidate, beginning with his status as an Iraq war veteran. “I don’t care about that. It means nothing to me,” he let me know as he pocketed the literature. Maybe it figures, as the leaders of the GOP don’t have much military experience – and look at the shitty job they’ve done with our foreign policy. I’d like someone who knew firsthand what the situation was like in Baghdad to be representing myself. I thanked him for his time and readied myself to leave when this man added something particularly insulting. “And tell them to stop with the John F. Kennedy shit,” he added for good measure, taking a not-so-veiled shot at Patrick’s first TV ad. Does it really bother Republicans that much to be reminded of competent Democratic leadership? And it’s not as if Patrick abused the memory of President Kennedy by employing him in his introductory advertisement. I’m sure many folks are reminded of the late president when they see Patrick, an equally young, charismatic Irish-American running for office.

That being said, there are a couple of good stories that came out of yesterday. First comes one from Katie, who canvassed a household that was particularly proud of its Irish heritage. The man who answered the door had a huge Irish tattoo on his arm, and he was excited about Patrick’s campaign – because he also has an Irish background (so does Fitzpatrick, but there was no need to mention that). The man ended up asking for all the Murphy – and Democratic – paraphanelia he could get for free. One household I canvassed was indicative of the kind of swing voters that we can flip this year. It was a Republican household, and the lady didn’t know much about Patrick, but she knew who she was voting for in the governor’s race. I asked who in a tentative manner, wondering if I’d finally met a supporter of the PA-Gov GOP nominee, Lynn Swann. Instead, I was relieved to hear the answer come back, “Definitely Rendell”. With a 50-point lead in the suburbs here, ‘Fast Eddie’ is swinging a lot of Republicans across party lines to back his candidacy. The popularity of the governor may very well easily stream down the ticket. If it does, the Democrats in the crucial swing districts – PA-06, PA-07, and PA-08 – could get an extra boost that pushed them far over the top.

In the end, I had 24 contacts – 6 strong Murphy supporters, 14 undecideds, and 4 refusals. For a canvassing effort that took part on a good deal of Republican turf, I’d have to say that those are the kind of results that are quite encouraging. When I was being driven back to the office, I heard a story of a couple at a parade Patrick was attending who sent their kids to pick up a good number of Murphy ’06 campaign stickers – only to tear them up. The Republicans may try and play dirty, as usual, but that’s not the kind of work that’s going to win this election. Boots on the ground will. And here in PA-08, we’re geared up to do just that.

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

Today was an awesome day. As usual, I made the trip out to Bucks County, a suburban area of Philadelphia in Southeast Pennsylvania, to volunteer my time for PA-08 Democratic nominee Patrick Murphy. This race is going to go right down to the wire, as a new internal poll shows Patrick now within 5 points of the incumbent, freshman GOP Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick. However, it was a little different this time – instead of riding the R7 out to the campaign’s Levittown office, I got a ride there from the guys who are filming Crashing The States, a project that will, in its finished form, be a documentary about the netroots-endorsed candidates and netroots allies. The crew – all 3 of them – are pictured above; from left to right, you have AJ, one of the cameramen and the only non-blogger, Dante Atkins (aka hekebolos), and Gary Abramson (aka Reality Bites Back).
The CTS crew (as I’ll abbreviate Crashing The States throughout this entry) pulled in front of my dorm building shortly after 12:30, if I recall correctly. I’ll admit that I was a bit anxious to meet them; because they are traveling across the country to see netroots candidates of all stripes, I was interested in hearing what they had to say about their experiences to date. Admittedly, PA-08 was early on their list of stops; to date, CTS has covered NC-08 Democratic candidate Larry Kissell, VA-Sen Democratic nominee Jim Webb, and PA-07 Democratic candidate Joe Sestak. After introducing myself to the crew, I was handed a mic to clip onto my shirt while AJ got a camera set up. It was kind of cool to be filmed, in a way – I don’t consider myself any more significant than the thousands of political bloggers throughout the blogosphere. I hopped in the back seat, where Dante was seated, laptop out, satellite Internet connection ready to go. AJ hopped in, and Gary started out towards Patrick’s headquarters with the help of a GPS system. Within the first minute, it was telling us to drive through a fenced-off area.

After getting the basic details out of the way – such as where my blogger ID is derived from (hint: it’s part decade-old RTS game, part David Blaine TV special) – I asked Dante how the beginning of their nation-spanning sojourn had been. So far, I get the impression that it’s been going very well. Clearly, it seems like the best experience to date was when they visited the Webb campaign…something that was covered slightly less due to the incompetence of our congresspeople’s schedulers in Washington, D.C. CTS missed a Webb visit to a torpedo factory, along with the much-publicized rally with Senator Barack Obama (D-IL). They ended up interviewing Representative John Conyers (D-MI) and, perhaps more surprisingly, Senator John Kerry (D-MA). When speaking with Kerry, Dante told me, the senator told CTS that he was well aware that many of us were highly displeased with him. It didn’t deter him, though – he knows that we’re a part of the game. I expressed dismay about how many elected Democratic officials posted ‘hit-and-run’ diaries, and even those who did interacted, such as Kerry has, often don’t respond to questions; instead, they say ‘Thanks for your support’, ‘Keep up the good work’, or other equally vacuous statements. Most of the time, though, politicians don’t actually type their own blog posts; a communications staffer is usually responsible, which is why there’s not much response when we ask questions. The one exception, Dante noted, was Representative Brad Miller (D-NC); we also hypothesized that IN-06 Democratic candidate Barry Welsh does as well.

One of the first questions I fielded dealt with my history within the blogosphere. It’s not as long or as glorious as the path traveled by others, but it’s worth chatting about – we all ended up here in a different way. I started getting involved in the blogosphere more than 2 years ago at The Left Coaster, a blog started by Daily Kos front-page alumnus Steve Soto. After a while I eventually migrated over to Daily Kos by the end of the 2004 summer, and I was a lurker for the most part. I began posting a few stories, but after getting very little response, I became discouraged and stopped writing, choosing to instead comment in whatever threads struck me as…well, worth commenting on. I started hosting the open threads for The Daily Show and The Colbert Report when the latter show began in October 2005. Nevertheless, it wasn’t until around April or May of this year that I became a serious writer – not just one who would rant about something or simply throw up a link to a news story and analyze it without much detail. Since then, I feel like I’ve developed as a blogger, and it’s been much more fascinating to be an active participant of the blogosphere.

One of the questions I was asked by AJ was what I was ‘best known for’ in the blogosphere. I have no idea the perceptions others have of myself are, but I posited (probably reasonably) that it was my series of ground reports from the Connecticut Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate, along with the liveblogging of the victory party for Ned Lamont, that made me a little more known than I had been. I expressed, though, that the blogging really isn’t all about simply writing about what’s popular at the time. I readily admitted that I had been discouraged in my earlier days on Daily Kos, when it seemed like a cult of personality existed around certain members to the point that it was difficult to break onto the recommended list (which, to a degree, it still is). But I’ve found that I have found success through writing about topics that may not necessarily generate as much enthusiasm as the hot topics of the day – such as poverty or the Prudhoe Bay oil field shutdown – if you can analyze a topic in a thoughtful manner and inform others about them as well.

In association with the CT-Sen race, I noted that I believed the next step that bloggers would take more often was the role of a citizen journalist. I believe that the national blogs were helpful in raising Lamont’s profile, but, truth be told, blogs like Daily Kos and MyDD covering the race wouldn’t have won it. It was the local blogs in Connecticut – ones like My Left Nutmeg, CT Bob, Spazeboy, and Connecticut Blog that were ultimately the most responsible for helping to push Lamont towards victory. The Kiss Float, the endless videos recording Lieberman’s every action – this is what drove Lieberman’s negatives up and made Lamont a viable alternative. It’s why I’ve been so diligent in writing my ground reports, whether it be for CT-Sen or for PA-08 – I feel that those in the blogosphere often have a broad overview of the race, but they don’t know the nitty-gritty details of what is going on. That’s why the rise of citizen journalists in the blogosphere is important – they bring details from the source about the races that you won’t get anywhere else.

As we pulled off of I-95 and began approaching Murphy headquarters, we briefly discussed the PA-08 race. Mike Fitzpatrick, Patrick’s opponent, is a lifelong politician who has served roughly 15 years in public office. He’s a local guy, someone who has deep ties to the community, but he’s out of step on the social issues, along with the general trends within the district – John Kerry won this district in 2004, and with Ed Rendell and Bob Casey heading the ticket in Pennsylvania this year, it’s almost expected that Democrats will dominate the southeast PA suburbs, which is where the elections in this state are won. I spoke about what my canvassing has been about to date, and I did include a little bit of criticism about the campaign – namely, that it seems like our ground operation is largely centered around Patrick and his impressive biography, when I believe that as the election pulls closer, we need to start talking about the issues that people care about – Iraq, the economy, health care, and so forth. Nevertheless, as we pulled into the parking lot, I said that we needed to put boots on the ground. We can sit behind our computers and blog all we want, I told Dante (and the camera), but there’s only so much that will do. In the end, getting out, volunteering our time, and hitting the streets is what will win this election for us.

When I stepped in, the CTS guys informed me that they’d like to film me getting my canvassing materials and heading out to the turf I was supposed to cover. At this time, we thought that Patrick wasn’t going to be around – he was supposed to be involved in private events all day, and he wouldn’t be available to CTS for a segment they’d like to do. In the end, though, Patrick emerged from his office at the campaign headquarters and greeted all of us, saying that he’d be available to chat with them for a few minutes. Dante was wonderfully surprised, and the cameras were unloaded from the car. Patrick gave them 5 minutes, but it was definitely more than enough material. He doesn’t forget who his friends are, and he made it clear that without the netroots, he wouldn’t be where he was today. In fact, he believes that if he wins the PA-08 seat, it will be because of all the help – monetary and otherwise – that he has received from us. It’s clear that Patrick is in touch with the blogosphere; his campaign posts at MyDD, he has attended Drinking Liberally here, he has been in contact with the excellent bloggers located in Philadelphia, and Patrick himself is a fond reader of the blogs, something that his wife attested to. After the interview finished, he shook all of our hands as he readied himself for whatever was next on his schedule. Before he departed, we got a quick picture with the candidate, with yours truly on the left and Gary on the right.

As I was running late, I had to get out canvassing. I quickly mic’d myself up again as CTS filmed myself getting my canvassing materials and being driven off to my turf. We discussed much more than I am able to immediately recollect here, but the CTS guys filmed a lot of material, and Dante informed me that they’d digitize some of the video and upload it for others to see. Hopefully, I didn’t make myself sound too foolish, and I may come off as a bit enthusiastic, but it was great to be a little part of this monumental project. Crashing The States is a monumental achievement for citizen journalism by bloggers, and I’m humbled that I could be a small part of it. If you’d like to read Dante’s recollection of the Philly-area events, you can read his Daily Kos diary on the past few days’ happenings.

Part II, which will appear tomorrow, will be my ground report for today’s canvassing in PA-08. I hope you’ll be back to read it.

(cross-posted at Deny My Freedom)

If I see any type of “concern troll” comments talking about how the Democratic Party has lost it way or that certain candidates are either too liberal or too conservative to garner their support, I will not investigate whether such sentiments are genuine or not.  I will assume they are Republican or Green concern trolls who wish us ill.  And I will troll rate them.   If I see a diary entitled “I hate the Democratic Party,” I will troll rate the comments supportive of it therein.  Whether the “concern” comes from the right or left, such comments have no place on Daily Kos this close to an election.   Such comments aid the Republicans and do not help the Democrats.

And my comments are not just aimed to new users or fraudulent users here on Daily Kos, but also are aimed to certain disappointing Senators and other professional pundits.  Senator Obama and his comments about the Democratic Party recently come to mind.  Yes, I am calling Senator Obama a concern troll who is no better than Kean campaign spokeswoman Jill Hazelbaker and her many sockpuppets.

Yesterday over at Daily Kos, Kossack Delaware Dem took concern trolls of all stripes within the Democratic Party to task in the aforementioned post. His anger is well-placed and has a foundation. Recently, there have been a spate of troll diaries or ‘concern trolls’ wondering about the Democratic Party and November’s elections. I’ll readily admit that I like Delaware Dem, unlike this poster. I’ve met him in person, and he’s a great guy to chat and have a good laugh with. However, while I believe his intentions are good, it paints far too broad a picture of what the blogosphere needs to do.
It’s frustrating to have trolls of any kind, whether they be right-wing nutjobs in disguise or people who appear ‘concerned’ about the chances of the Democratic Party in the 2006 elections. However, the fact of the matter is that boots on the ground are what we need this election. It is imperative that the mad reign of the GOP be brought to a halt with a Democratic takeover of Congress. So Democrats haven’t been perfect liberals, like many in the blogosphere wish they would be. So they’re still pretty crappy campaigners, for the most part. So they have trouble getting their message out due to an astounding inability to frame messages properly.

You have every right to be mad at the Democratic Party. They’ve been unable to defeat the worst administration in our country’s history in the last 2 election cycles. Some of our candidates were selected in a wholly undemocratic fashion and are too conservative for our tastes.

Tough fucking luck.

I don’t care how long you’ve been holding your nose and voting for Democrats. Unless you’re volunteering your time for a campaign, unless you are talking to your neighbors and your acquaintances and making sure they talk to their friends, unless you’re being a citizen blogger like the amazing folks of Connecticut such as CT Blogger, Spazeboy, and CT Bob, you are not doing enough. Sitting on your ass and whining about the Democratic Party on the Internet is going to achieve absolutely nothing, because frankly, most of us are too insignificant to make that kind of change online. Whether your candidate is Ned Lamont or Bob Casey, make sure they get elected. And if you simply can’t stomach volunteering your time for a particular Democratic candidate, find one that fits your ideals more. For me, that means volunteering for Patrick Murphy instead of helping an uninspiring candidate kick out Rick Santorum.

There are plenty of ways to help out. If you don’t put in the effort, and the Democrats lose again, you can only blame yourself.

That being said, Delaware Dem ignores the fact that criticism of the Democratic Party is a central reason why the blogosphere has gained any sort of major clout in the political world. MyDD’s Adwatch is such a program – it lets us criticize (or praise) the Democratic Party’s advertisements, arguably one of its weakest areas in the campaign arena. Our pressure is the reason why Democratic Party leaders were whipped into line before the CT-Sen primary, pledging to support the primary winner. Simply put, we are a vocal representation of the grassroots that the Democratic Party has for so long been deeply out of touch with. We are the conscience of the Democratic Party, and although we can mercilessly rip into some of our leaders (Rahm Emmanuel comes to mind), it is because we have the best interests of our party – and our country – at heart. It is not because we are mean-spirited and are looking to grab power. It is because we want to win, we want our party to not be afraid of the other side, and we want to take our country back from those who have destroyed so much good and cast so much evil upon the world in the past 6 years.

There’s a difference between hollow criticism and criticism strengthened by ideas. I believe that Delaware Dem means to speak out against the kind of criticism of our party – from supposed ‘supporters’ of it in the blogosphere, as well as some of our apparent leaders – that puts forth nothing new and simply reinforces the negative image of the Democratic Party. I am all for scrutinizing how our party acts, as long as it puts forth genuine ideas about how we need to move forward.

But unless you are doing something to help get Democrats elected this November, then I agree with Delaware Dem’s sentiments: you can shut your fucking piehole…and keep it closed for good.

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

As I have been doing the past weekends since I have returned to Philadelphia for the academic year, I once again visited the suburbs to volunteer some time in support of PA-08 Democratic nominee Patrick Murphy, an Iraqi war veteran running a strong challenge against the incumbent, freshman GOP Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick. In the latest round of polling, Patrick was found to be behind 53-45 in a poll that overweighted the GOP advantage in the district by 13%. When adjusted for the proper registration breakdown in the district, Fitzpatrick holds an extremely slim 50-48 advantage. These last couple of weeks are going to determine this race, and every single dollar that anyone can donate or any time they could volunteer would be extremely helpful.

Today, I woke up extremely early to attend a union rally before pounding the pavement. Read on below the fold for the rest of my report…

At a United Steelworkers office, a union rally was hosted today in support of the entire Democratic slate of candidates, from candidates running for local office all the way up to the governor’s office. Today was apparently a statewide union push to hit the pavement for Democratic candidates around the state; John Murtha, Bob Casey, and other prominent Pennsylvania Democrats were out in force across the state. The union presence was very visible, as were the campaigns for the major candidates statewide and in Bucks County. Governor Ed Rendell, PA-Sen Democratic nominee Bob Casey, and Patrick all had tables set up for people to sign up and volunteer at after the rally. After getting lost a few times on the way, myself and a few other Penn College Democrats ended up at the rally. It was raining, but turnout was very good for the miserable weather; I would estimate the crowd at around 100-150 people, the majority of whom were union activists.

After State Representative Tony Melio warmed up the crowd, Patrick took the stage to a rousing reception by the crowd. He acknowledged that many people knew him because of his service in Iraq, and he proceeded to cover a little bit about his biography. Patrick didn’t cover the foreign policy issues as much, given the demographics of the crowd. Instead, he proceeded to hit on the problems of outsourcing that the country (and Pennsylvania, in particular, has; Pennsylvania is the 3rd-largest manufacturing state in the country) faces. As I’m sure many Democratic House candidates are doing, Patrick linked Fitzpatrick to his affirmative vote for CAFTA, despite his previous statements indicating that he would vote against it. It was a good tone to strike, especially for a union crowd that has strongly backed Patrick. Patrick didn’t speak for very long, as it was presumed that Rendell would be arriving very soon. However, I feel like he hit the important weaknesses Fitzpatrick has with issues important to labor that they will provide the campaign with strong support up to the election.

After Patrick finished, he introduced the president of Pennsylvania’s AFL-CIO, Bill George. To be honest, I’ve never attended a rally with such a heavy union presence before, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. All I can say is…damn, unions are pissed at the GOP. I don’t think I’ve ever heard such a speech filled with that much anger before, even on an issue such as Iraq. George particularly reserved a good deal of ire for Bush and Senator Rick Santorum, castigating them for signing unfair trade agreements, not keeping jobs in America, and letting China (in their view) dump a bunch of cheap metal into the American pipe market. In addition, he noted that health insurance costs were a problem and that it was important to vote for change this upcoming election. What I liked the most was that he repeatedly stated we needed to elect Democrats. When he began his speech, George stated, ‘The only party that supports working families is the Democratic Party’, a line that got wild applause from the crowd. It’s true, and it’s refreshing to hear someone, even if he’s not a public official, speak truth to power. In closing a longer-than-expected speech (due to a tardy Rendell), George said that we needed to get out the vote for the generations that came before us, but also for the generations that will come after us. That’s what this election is about: taking care of our past while ensuring that the future remains bright for all of us. To wit, George noted his 101-year old father – the oldest member of the state police union – has voted straight Democratic since coming of voting age, and he was going to vote that way via absentee this election. If a centenarian can bother to vote, it’s up to us to make sure everyone else does, too.

After George finished, a couple of locally elected Bucks County Democratic officials spoke to the crowd. They noted that the registration demographics of the county were moving in favor of our party, and that we needed to keep up the trend this year. They didn’t speak for too long, as Rendell’s bus pulled in as they were speaking, drawing everyone’s attention away from the podium and to the impending arrival of the governor.

After being greeted to sustained applause and chants of his name, Rendell launched into a 5-minute story about…soft pretzels. Certainly not one to stick to his lines (someone noted later that his speechwriter was probably having a heart attack), Rendell warmed up the crowd with a little humor before launching into a speech talking about the bread and butter issues. He noted that Pennsylvania was turning the corner in terms of jobs, and that there was going to be more funding for job retraining for those who had lost their job. He promised to provide universal health care to all Pennsylvanian children by the time he leaves office if he is reelected, something that played very well with the crowd. The most interesting moment of his speech, though, was at the end, when he took on Santorum. Recently, Rendell took some flack from the grassroots for his praise for the odious senator. Today, he called Santorum ‘hypocritical’ and took a swipe at the latest ads from Santorum, which he criticized as ‘despicable’. He implicitly acknowledged the difficulty many Democrats may have when it comes to voting for Casey, someone with far more conservative social views than most in the party. Rendell said, “If we take perfect over good, then we’re gonna get creamed”, and it’s something that we should take to heart as the stretch run continues this fall. Casey is certainly not the choice of many in the blogosphere. But he’s our candidate, and he will still be a million times better than Rick Santorum as a senator.

The rally ended and the crowd converged on Rendell for a moment, with many hoping to talk to him, shake his hand, or take some pictures (I did the latter). Afterwards, we Penn students got our canvassing lists sorted out and headed off to Bristol Township to do a round of canvassing. The area, pictured above, was literally one block away from Murphy headquarters. We also had a pleasant surprise – Patrick was going to be doing a little canvassing himself in support of his candidacy. After pulling off to the side of the road, one woman noticed our bumper stickers and asked for a few lawn signs. She got an extra treat herself when Patrick stepped out of his car and spoke with her for a few minutes. It’s great to have a charismatic candidate who really gets people excited once they get to know him. I canvassed with one other Penn Dem and Cindy, a Democratic Town Committee member in another part of Bucks County. Originally from New York, she’s a proud Democrat who has Democratic bumper stickers all over her van and recognizes just how bad a turn the country has taken as of late. She’s a support of a potential HIllary Clinton presidential candidacy in 2008, something that I was curious about and discussed with her a bit. Most of all, though, she’s tired of losing. She found it impossible to believe Bush won the 2004 election, and she’s tired of seeing politicians in Bucks County hide their Democratic Party affiliation. Patrick is a good candidate to work for in that respect – he’s got the ‘Democrat’ label on his campaign ads and his literature that we hand out. It was her first time canvassing for Patrick, but she seemed to get a good hang of it by the time the day was over.

To be truthful, the response we got today was amazing. Normally, more than half of the houses I’ve covered on weekend canvassing outings are empty, and I’m lucky if a quarter of doors knocked are answered. However, perhaps because I was out earlier than usual (we canvassed from roughly 11 AM to 1 PM), I actually had a majority of the doors I knocked on being answered. Not to boast, but the response was outstanding. Of a total of 26 doors knocked on, Cindy and I had 20 contacts. An amazing 80% of those (16 total) supported Patrick, 2 didn’t know enough about him to make an opinion, and 2 essentially told us to get off their property. Of those two that did not know enough about Patrick, it seemed like they had a positive response to our short introduction of him. Although this canvassing was officially sanctioned by the Rendell campaign in support of Rendell and Casey, we made sure to ask about Patrick as well. In the end, many people knew who he was and were going to vote for him. Others didn’t know, but once they heard he was a Democrat, they stated they were straight-ticket Democratic voters, something that is going to help us a lot this year with the big names (Rendell and Casey) at the top of our ticket. One man stated he knew about Patrick, and I asked him if we had his support. “Let me put it this way,” he said. “I’m a Democrat.” It makes me feel very good to hear people say it unapologetically.

One person that didn’t go down on our official tally sheet was an elderly lady we spoke to on the street. She hadn’t heard of Patrick, but upon learning he was a Democrat, she said she would vote for him, along with Rendell and Casey. This lady was a lifelong Democrat, ‘from my head down to my toes’. She was quite happy to see us out in the neighborhood, and she wished us the best of luck. Another person knew who Patrick was, and he said he and his entire family would be voting for Patrick on Election Day. Aside from asking for lawn signs and buttons, this man was also tired of the country being run by the GOP and their ‘oil cronies’. He also noted the widespread appeal Rendell has in the state; his brother-in-law, a staunch Republican, would not vote for any Democrat – except for Rendell. This was something that I noticed in many people when I spoke about Rendell; there is a genuine affection for the man and for the way he has governed the past 4 years. There was even a suggestion from someone we canvassed that they’d like to see Rendell run for president. This may be what helps down-ticket the most – Rendell’s ability to swing voters across party lines to vote for him. One person noted Lynn Swann was promising to cut taxes if elected. “But Rendell’s been reducing taxes!”, they noted. Rendell warned at the rally that his race would tighten, but I think he is being more pessimistic than he needs to be. He will win the gubernatorial race in a romp; now we need to spread his appeal to the rest of the Democratic ticket.

Of the people we had a discussion with, there was notable hostility towards Republicans of any stripe. Folks are tired of the lies, the deceit, and the politics of fear, and they want something different. An interesting conversation we had was with a (presumably) retired union worker who had been the president of his union. He intended to vote straight-ticket, as did his son, whom he was helping move construction materials into the house. The ‘local boy done good’ image that Fitzpatrick portrays certainly did not go over well with this person, who had graduated from the same high school as the Republican, albeit it several years earlier. He noted that Fitzpatrick was a Catholic – as was he – but that he was not doing a good job of representing him. As noted at the rally earlier today, jobs were flowing overseas. Iraq came up, and the ex-union head was greatly worried about how we were going to get out of that conflict. One thing that warmed his heart, though, was how many young people he has seen working on Rendell’s campaign. For the longest time, he hadn’t seen any young campaign workers coming out to hit the streets, but now, he sees a totally different picture. That generation – my generation – is getting involved, he said, and it was important that was continued to do so. Another man we canvasses – also a union employee – noted that it’d be a good idea to have Patrick attend some picket lines to shore up his union support. He expressed similar problems with awful health insurance coverage from companies nowadays, and he seemed worried about what might happen if he didn’t get a contract renewal at his current job. It seems like the bread-and-butter issues are going to play big in the district (along with Iraq, of course), and with the labor support that Patrick has, it’s crucial to make sure that his message gets out to everyone.

It was great canvassing a friendly neighborhood. I saw probably upwards of 10 Murphy for Congress lawn signs, with zero Fitzpatrick signs to be seen. One problem that could be cleared up with canvassing is the issue of hitting apartments. Although we had the exact apartment number we needed to go to, they cannot usually be entered by people without an appointment. In the end, that was a good deal of contacts (probably around 20-25) that simply cannot be reached. Hopefully, in the future, the campaigns will be able to screen out particular residences that may not be the best to canvass. I spoke with Patrick before we went canvassing, and he had read my previous ground report, where I chronicled the problem with canvassing a semi-gated community. It was a detail he noted, and I have faith that there won’t be any such issues from now on.

As I left the headquarters for the train station, a group of roughly 10 Penn Democrats arrived to do an afternoon shift of canvassing. It’s great to see such enthusiasm for Patrick and his campaign, and the fact that more young Americans are helping him out is not only a good sign for my generation, but indicative that our democracy may yet be alive and well. Please do everything you can for the candidates running in your local and statewide elections. As Cindy noted, we need to win this election more than ever. I’m lucky that I have such a cool candidate to volunteer for.

Yours truly is on the left. Rock on.

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

One of the things that Bush and his fellow Republicans are so fond of saying in political speeches is that “9/11 changed everything”. Most people probably think it’s a load of bullshit – and from a policy standpoint, it probably should have been. It’s true that something terrible had happened to our country, and something had to be done about it. But instead of learning from our mistakes, we have compounded them. Instead of showing compassion, we became a nation seemingly filled with anger. And instead of being an honest, upstanding country in the wake of our national tragedy, we have sunk to a lower standing in the world’s eyes than I have ever recalled reading in my history textbooks. In short, there was no reason to steer America as far off-course as our current leaders have done. Such radical change was not required.

But for me – and for people of my generation who have come of age under the shadow of September 11 – 9/11 really did change everything. And as a New Yorker, it’s something I will never forget.
September 11, 2001, started out like any other day for myself. I got to school at 7:30 in the morning, chatted with my friends in class, and mildly paid attention to what was occurring around me. It wasn’t until I arrived at my band’s daily meeting at 10:05 – I remember the exact time that my watch showed – that I found out from our conductor that something was terribly wrong. All we knew was that there was some sort of airplane crash at the World Trade Center towers. While we went through practice, the rest of the day was a horror story being played out. I called home during my lunch break, only to hear my mother tell me that both towers were ‘gone’. “What do you mean, gone?” I replied. They had disintegrated and collapsed from the jet-fueled fires, killing thousands of innocent people. The memories I had of gazing up at them wondrously as a little kid sightseeing in 1993, or of attending a world chess championship match in 1995, when the towers were engulfed in low clouds, or of gazing out at the rest of New York City from the rooftop – it was the only thing I’d have left of them. No pictures, no videotapes; only my mind’s eye.

I came home that night and did no homework. I didn’t read my textbooks. I sat at home and watched in stunned shock of the second plane hitting the South Tower, its demise, and finally the North Tower crumbling to the ground. Although I was tangentially aware of the time of Osama bin Laden and other terrorist factions, it still confounded me that anyone could be driven to commit such an act. In the short time thereafter, I had that same patriotic surge that I’m sure many others had. I wanted to get a clip-on flag for our car windows. I was thrilled to read about our success in driving the Taliban from power in Afghanistan. In short, I was a typical gung-ho American. They fucked with us, and now we were going to bomb them all to hell. Good for us. bin Laden and al Qaeda deserved it. They still do.

But somewhere along the way, what happened on September 11 – a day that used to be notable only because it’s my stepfather’s birthday – became something twisted…something sinister. It transformed into a political tool that has become thoroughly exploited by the far right. Nevermind that most of those same people probably would wish nothing but bad things upon New Yorkers, a group that is more liberal, more tolerant, and more compassionate than they could ever claim to be. No, September 11 is now used as a measure of patriotism and as a justification for injecting more poisonous rhetoric into our political culture. Sure, the right-wing pundits were out of control when Clinton was president. But now, any disagreement with their foreign policy goals is branded as being anti-American or treasonous or a similar epithet. A day supposed to be marked by solemn remembrance of those who have passed from this world is now used as a political cudgel by one side to justify anything and everything they undertake.

Of course, the political ramifications of 9/11 led us into Iraq, something that the neoconservatives within the Bush administration had been planning for several years. It was in the run-up to our occupation of Iraq that made me lose complete faith in Bush. I knew he wasn’t the ‘compassionate conservative’ he had spun himself to be in the 2000 election, and I knew he wasn’t the brightest light in the room, but I figured he’d come around. When Clinton was president, everything seemed to work out alright. I guess it was the naive idealism of youth that made me believe such a thing. As the clamor for invading Iraq grew louder, I became more cynical about government. No longer did it seem like a proper representative of our country. Instead, it had become a method for the few to propagandize and influence the beliefs of many. By the end of the summer of 2002, I was resigned to the fact that war was inevitable. It wasn’t a necessary war. It wasn’t a war that would help us find the people who had brought the Towers down. It was fueled by fear. By anger that could be directed to any source. And as I woke up to the news in March 2003 that we had invaded Iraq, I wondered how many more people were going to die. Our soldiers…what were they going to give their lives for? It wasn’t to bring those who had wrought tragedy on us to justice. What was it for? Why did we do it?

My first visit to the site where the Towers once stood was in May of 2003. I had a school trip to the NY Federal Reserve Bank, which is located a couple blocks from the site. Looking through the fence that surrounded the site, I was gripped with an immeasurable sadness. New York may be the city that never sleeps, but standing at that gaping hole in the ground…the physical emptiness and its presence simply stuns you into a deafening silence. I’ve returned a couple of times since then, and it’s still hard to come to grips that the Towers are…gone. Just gone. America’s heart was ripped out on September 11, and I feel like we’ve lost our country’s soul since then. We’re seen as mean-spirited, as petty, as exploitative of anything possible. Cynicism runs abound. So does anger and hate and greed. Losing the Towers didn’t bring out the best in us…instead, it brought out the worst. And justice has still not been served for those who were behind the September 11 attacks. For me, that day forever changed who I was. I became informed. I became aware. But there will always be a creeping fear in me…one that will never quite trust our government again. Instead of Americans embracing each other, this government has sowed the seeds of distrust far too deep for me to ever rely on our democracy ever again. That’s why I became active – because I want to work towards a government that we can trust again, that we can rely on, that we don’t have to dismiss as full of liars.

So today, I will be attending classes. I’ll be giving my stepfather a call to wish him a happy birthday. I will suffer through the readings for class. But through it all, I’ll remember silently what happened September 11. I don’t watch anything about the day, as I’ll be brought to a state where I simply can’t function. For many of you who are older than I am, perhaps it didn’t change your world outlook all that much. But it indelibly shaped the person that I am today. And unlike the Republicans, it is something that will forever be burned into my memory.

Never forget.

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

After a half-week of classes, in which I discovered that I will drown in work in my 6 classes, I was looking forward to going canvassing this morning for PA-08 Democratic nominee Patrick Murphy. At the opening meeting of the Penn College Democrats, where Patrick had spoken to a couple hundred of our members, we had notified members that we would be going canvassing – all expenses paid – in Bucks County for the Iraqi war veteran. To be honest, I was not sure what turnout would be like – when we had attempted to organize a similar canvassing effort for John Kerry in 2004, more students from Brown University showed up in the Philadelphia suburbs than there were Penn students. Needless to say, as one can see above, a good contingent of Penn Dems – 45 was the official count – woke up on a Saturday morning to go canvassing for Patrick. Most were freshmen, which was definitely a good sign. Below the fold is the rest of the day’s events…

Once we arrived in Levittown, we were driven over to the newly-opened campaign headquarters. Before canvassing training began for the uninitiated, campaign manager Scott Fairchild addressed us by standing on the greeting desk. His message was clear: we need to send change to Washington, and Patrick, being an Iraqi war veteran, is just the person to do the job. It seems that the Murphy campaign believes that raising Patrick’s name ID is the main goal to overcome, as an internal poll a couple months ago showed. I think that although this may be a good way to posit it to a large group of college students who may be largely unfamiliar with the candidate, I’m slightly worried that this may not be the best tack to take. Saying over and over that John Kerry was a veteran (and his opponent was a draft dodger) in 2004 didn’t seem to convince people that he was the best person to be president. To wit, I suggested to the volunteer coordinator that a broader focus in later canvassing needs to be about the issues – right now, the canvassing script literally includes no mention of any issues, and Fairchild informed us that we were not supposed to get into ‘policy debates’. However, if you tell everyone who has a policy question to go to your website, they’ll get the impression that we don’t know what Patrick stands for, and therefore, Patrick doesn’t stand for anything, even if his issues page is very thorough.

After that, the Penn Dems were split off into smaller groups for canvassing training. As an experienced canvasser, I decided to chat it up a little with the Democratic candidate for the PA State Assembly in the 142nd District, Chris King. He was taking time off from his campaign today to go canvassing for Patrick, although his flyer was attached to the literature we were handing out for Patrick. I learned that on the local level, the biggest issues are property taxes and environmental issues, such as open space and water quality, along with alternative energy sources, are big. He’s facing off against the incumbent, GOP State Rep. Matt Wright, who has been blasted for being one of the state legislators to vote for the infamous pay raise earlier this year. It’s a pay raise that rocked the primaries in May, when several senior members of the state legislature, including the State Senate Majority Leader and the President Pro Tempore (both Republicans) lost their primaries by wide margins. King said that polls showed he was doing well (I should’ve asked for more specifics, but I didn’t), and I wished him the best in his race.

Although I had come with the Penn Dems, my canvassing partner turned out to be someone who had come from New York to volunteer on Patrick’s campaign. Even more surprising was that this person recognized who I was. His name was Kevin, and he remembered me from the Ned Lamont campaign. Way back in July, I had driven him and a few others to Stamford during a canvassing trip in the more upper-class section of the city. Apparently, he’s going to be splitting his weekends between volunteering for Lamont in Connecticut and Patrick here in Pennsylvania, which is quite admirable. Although Kevin’s a lawyer by profession as of now, he said he’d gladly counsel any of the Penn students to not attend law school. He plans on eventually leaving the New York area (he actually lives in the same city that I do – White Plains) and heading down to Washington to work as a staffer on the Hill. He’s well aware that it’ll be a major paycut from his current job, but I got the impression he’d be a lot happier working in politics than he would as a lawyer. That’s the kind of spirit we need from my generation. Because of the travails we had in actually canvassing, we discussed many different subjects – the CT-Sen race, the VA-Sen race, the PA-08 race, much more about politics, and even a bit about sports. To say the least, Kevin’s the guy you’d want to have a tailgate party with before a game.

The original neighborhood we were supposed to canvass is pictured above. It’s called Shady Brook, and it’s a gated community of sorts in Middletown Township. After having incorrect directions to get there (Mapquest apparently thought a dead-end road kept going in a certain direction), we finally found our way to the residences. However, I was slightly worried that this may have been an incorrect place to canvass, as I had noticed a ‘Private Property, No Trespassing’ sign above. I called the campaign office to make sure that it was okay to canvass there. After being told it was, Kevin and I got out and began knocking on doors. I spoke with one woman who was busy but took some literature about Patrick. She seemed to be impressed with the little bit of his biography I spoke about while pulling out a flyer. Kevin spoke to a college professor who said things that would warm any Democrat’s heart: he believes that Rumsfeld should be fired and that Dick Cheney was ‘the biggest loser in the world’. Yet the college professor hadn’t decided and was hung up on an issue that I wouldn’t think a college professor – someone who ought to be more liberal than most – would not have near the top of their list: illegal immigration.

After this, we were called back by the office and told that it’d be best not to do any more canvassing in the area. That made sense, as it seemed like ordinarily, had there been someone in the checkpoint, we wouldn’t have been able to go through. Just as we were about to pull out, though, we got a call back saying that a high-ranking local Democratic official had informed us it would be okay to canvass the houses. So we jumped out and got ready to walk around the neighborhood when I got one last call informing us that someone higher up had said it’d be best if we didn’t canvass, as it would make the residents angry. We returned to the office to get a new canvassing assignment, but it was a shame that there was so much confusion about the matter – it shaved off a good 30-45 minutes of potential canvassing time that we would have had.

We returned to the office and received new turf to cover – one, unfortunately, that was much less than we had previously before. Once again, it was in Middletown Township, but this area, unlike the preceding area, was clearly middle class. In addition, I was a bit uncomfortable by the fact that many houses (definitely more than usual) had the American flag out at houses. While I’m not a big fan of flags, regardless of what nation they represent (that’s another discussion), I’ve internalized the association between portraying the American flag so openly and the Republican Party, where Bush and every big-time politician is wearing it on their lapel as if they need to show that yes, they are indeed patriots, even if their actions aren’t indicative of it. Nevertheless, I was prepared for a neighborhood that wasn’t as friendly.

As it turned out, as usual, there weren’t many people at home. In fact, I discovered that many people who answered the door would bullshit their way out of it, claiming that they were too busy. One woman said she was busy right after I had heard her turn her stereo on quite loudly, blasting what I would associate with putting one in a romantic mood. One person who was supposedly a registered Democrat made me wait at the door a full minute – she knew I was there, as her dogs were barking after I knocked – only to tell me rudely, “Please go away.” Kevin encountered many people who claimed to know about the race, but they seemed to show a complete lack of curiosity when it came to the issues or what was important to them. When you go canvassing, it often reveals that many people are quite ignorant about the issues and even about the candidates. Kevin spoke with a woman who was going to vote for Patrick because he was cute – which women tell me he is. Although he inquired about whether she had any issues that were important to her, she reaffirmed her support for Patrick merely on his looks.

I was able to speak with a few people. I approached one man as he was about to enter his car. Although he wasn’t on my list of people to contact (he lived at the same address), I approached him and made a pitch about Patrick. “Is he a Democrat or Republican?” he asked gruffly. I answered that he was a Democrat, after which came a lengthy silence, followed by a question about whether he ‘supported the war in Iraq’. I had to tred carefully, as saying ‘No’ outright could possibly lead to my answer being construed as against our soldiers – at least by the GOP’s twisted logic. Instead, I spoke about Patrick’s plan for bringing our troops home and gave him a flier. He didn’t give me an indication of what he believed, but I’d be inclined to believe he was probably a Republican, given his generally hostile attitude. One household knew about Patrick and said they’d vote for him, along with the entire slate of Democrats on the ticket. In addition, they took a lawn sign, which is important. Although Patrick’s opponent, GOP Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick, doesn’t have many lawn signs out, I have yet to see any Murphy lawn signs beyond the campaign headquarters. It’s a little discouraging, to say the least. Kevin also was able to sway one woman to support Patrick after talking about his positions on Iraq, energy, and other bread-and-butter issues.

The last person I spoke with on this canvassing trip deserves a paragraph all for himself. Initially, I wasn’t planning to spend much time chatting – after all, it was my second-to-last door to knock and I was looking forward to getting back to the office. However, this man wanted me to speak more about Patrick. The first issue I brought up was Iraq, where I spoke about Patrick’s belief that we need to redeploy our troops and focus more on the real war on terrorism. He guffawed at this and pointed out that terrorists acted in a completely different manner than we do – they strike quickly and disappear. This man supported immediate withdrawal from Iraq, but he believed that all the politicians – Republicans and Democrats alike – would push the same policy. Instead, he said that the United States should become a terrorist group itself – striking out against nations simply to instill fear in them of us. It seemed odd that he was calling our current foreign policy ‘passive’, and he thought we needed to be even more aggressive. After claiming not to be a ‘faggot Chink pinko treehugger’ (and then stating he wasn’t discriminatory), he backed off a little and said that we needed to have a more sensible foreign policy. I agreed and was about to go on my way when he returned to his rant about the U.S. becoming a terrorist state itself. He used what is an historically accurate analogy – the American Revolution – in claiming that we ‘created terrorism’. Towards the end, he said that we should put a death-row inmate on a plane and fly it into a building full of Muslims. To say the least, I tried to smile as little as possible without eliciting a reaction, and I simply mumbled incoherently occasionally. The man said he’d consider Patrick because of his beliefs on Iraq (he was visibly impressed when I told him that Patrick had served in this conflict, not Desert Storm as he had believed, and that he was a former prosecutor and a law professor). In addition, he said that he’d always been interested in running for local office, and he gave an indication that he was pissed off that local money was being spent on repaving roads when there were other things it could be spent on. He perused my canvassing clipboard and asked my name, after which he proclaimed, “You must be Irish!” (I’m half-Japanese). While it was a light-hearted way to end the conversation, I wondered how he could possibly be a Democrat with that kind of attitude.

Afterwards, Kevin and I returned to the campaign headquarters and hand-wrote postcards to leaners and undecided people we had chatted with. As the Penn Dems rolled in, some were clearly weary from the canvassing experience, but most seemed to have enjoyed it. One thing that seemed to occur a bit was that some people – remember, we canvassed Democrats and independents who vote Democratic in presidential elections – were voting for Fitzpatrick because they had known him in the past. Whether he be a ‘family friend’ or someone they had known in high school, he’s a local boy they believe has done good, and they’re going to vote for him not on the issues, but out of personal loyalty. I overheard one story where someone was vehemently claiming to campaign against Patrick because he wasn’t from the area – even though he grew up in Northeast Philadelphia and attended local colleges. To say the least, Fitzpatrick is definitely a known quantity, and it’s important to continue getting Patrick’s name out.

In the end, it was great to see so many Penn Dems, especially freshmen, come out for the canvassing. It’d be nice to see at least half of them (as one predicted) come back to volunteer, but it’ll be difficult to inspire students to keep coming out to do this once a week. Several times, I tried to speak to some about the importance of making sure they volunteered their time. Having a great candidate is a bonus – but this sign in Patrick’s office says it all:

We’ve got to keep hitting the streets up to Election Day.

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

The revelations of abuse by U.S. soldiers at now-infamous locations such as Abu Ghraib forced America to confront an unpleasant reality: we were treating prisoners no better than they would arguably treat us. The backlash from the revelations of abuse in Iraq and at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba have greatly lowered our moral standing in the eyes of many around the world and in our own country. Although an anti-torture bill was passed around the beginning of this year – one that Bush can easily evade – it has come to light that a bill primarily dealing with military commissions would legalize torture – and it would stop the courts from doing anything about it.

Many of the harsh interrogation techniques repudiated by the Pentagon on Wednesday would be made lawful by legislation put forward the same day by the Bush administration. And the courts would be forbidden from intervening.

[…]

But legal experts say it adds up to an apparently unique interpretation of the Geneva Conventions, one that could allow C.I.A. operatives and others to use many of the very techniques disavowed by the Pentagon — including stress positions, sleep deprivation and extreme temperatures.

“It’s a Jekyll and Hyde routine,” Martin S. Lederman, who teaches constitutional law at Georgetown University, said of the administration’s dual approaches.

[…]

The new bill would continue to give the C.I.A. the substantial freedom it has long enjoyed, while the revisions to the Army Field Manual announced Wednesday would further restrict military interrogators. The legislation would leave open the possibility that the military could revise its own standards to allow the harsher techniques.

I wonder what Senator John McCain (R-AZ), who’s quickly been shedding his maverick image to embrace the far right of the GOP to ready himself for a 2008 presidential run, will respond to this. Let’s recall his words – and Bush’s – when he and the White House reached an ‘agreement’ on the anti-torture bill in the past:

“We’ve sent a message to the world that the United States is not like the terrorists. We have no grief for them, but what we are is a nation that upholds values and standards of behavior and treatment of all people, no matter how evil or bad they are,” McCain said. “I think that this will help us enormously in winning the war for the hearts and minds of people throughout the world in the war on terror.”

Bush said the ban “is to make it clear to the world that this government does not torture and that we adhere to the international convention of torture, whether it be here at home or abroad.”

Of course, it’s no surprise that John Yoo, who was the administration’s architect for its pro-torture, anti-morality stance when it came to handling prisoners, is fully behind this new effort, which will strip the courts of any of the checks and balances it has when it comes to the matter:

John C. Yoo, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and a former Justice Department official who helped develop the administration’s early legal response to the terrorist threat, said the bill would provide people on the front lines with important tools.

“When you’re fighting a new kind of war against an enemy we haven’t faced before,” Professor Yoo said, “our system needs to give flexibility to people to respond to those challenges.”

What’s even worse is that it puts, in writing, that the Geneva Conventions don’t apply to us, even though we were one of the first countries to ratify them, way back in 1882. Here’s the specific text from the bill:

Indeed, the proposed legislation takes pains to try to ensure that the Supreme Court will not have a second bite at the apple. “The Act makes clear,” it says in its introductory findings, “that the Geneva Conventions are not a source of judicially enforceable individual rights.”

Legal experts seem to understand that this new bill is specifically designed to enforce the language in McCain’s anti-torture bill, which is extremely narrow and is open to a wide amount of discretion. In turn, the bill implicitly approves of torture methods not specifically mentioned – and when you see the list, you’ll realize that there are a lot of things that could go unpunished and unwatched if there is a relaxation in the oversight rules.

There is substantial room for interpretation, legal experts said, between Common Article 3’s strict prohibition of, for instance, humiliating treatment and the McCain amendment’s ban only on conduct that “shocks the conscience.”

The proposed legislation, said Peter S. Margulies, a law professor at Roger Williams University, “seems to be trying to surgically remove from our compliance with Geneva the section of Common Article 3 that deals with humiliating and degrading treatment.”

[…]

Dean Koh said the administration’s new interpretation of the Geneva Conventions would further isolate the United States from the rest of the world.

“Making U.S. ratification of Common Article 3 narrower and more conditional than everyone else’s,” he said, “by its very nature suggests that we are not prepared to make the same commitment that every other nation has made.”

[…]

The proposed legislation in any event represents a further retreat from international legal standards by an administration already hostile to them, some scholars said. “It’s strong evidence that this administration doesn’t accept international legal processes,” said Peter J. Spiro, a law professor at Temple University.

Contact your senator immediately tomorrow and demand that this legislation be stopped in its tracks. It is inexcusable that this administration is attempting to legalize immoral and illegal forms of interrogation – and then trying to strip away the judiciary’s authority to check the other two branches of the government when they go out of line.

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

One of the most overlooked facets of the Democratic Party, I feel, is the College Democrats. The national organization is not particularly impressive. As a deputy finance director for my school’s chapter, the Penn College Democrats, I’ve been well-informed about the lack of funds that comes to us from CDA, which is nominally affiliated with the Democratic National Committee. It’s disappointing that the party doesn’t particularly spend any time or money on college campuses, considering that younger Americans are generally more liberal and therefore more inclined to be Democrats. They may come to speak at the CDA national convention, but there’s nary a word more than that.

However, one of the more effective strategies that we’ve come upon here at Penn is something that’s fairly simple: invite the candidates to come to campus and speak for themselves. Although we held a fundraiser last April that features local candidates such as PA-06 Democratic candidate Lois Murphy and PA-08 Democratic candidate Patrick Murphy, as well as prominent bloggers such as Chris Bowers of MyDD and Atrios, it’s a given that the first meeting of the academic year is guaranteed to be the biggest. In 2004, we filled a lecture room in Steinberg-Dietrich Hall – nothing to sneeze at – mainly on the strength that it was a presidential election year. Last year, while we certainly had good turnout, I wondered how it would be possible to sustain the effort, as it was an electoral off-year and there were only local elections occurring – nothing prominent. This year, I knew there’d be a lot of people – but it was difficult to predict what would happen. Because several Penn Dems are working on the Murphy campaign, it wasn’t too much trouble scheduling Patrick to come to our opening meeting – but would that be enough to coax a good crowd to show up?

Simply put, the turnout blew past my wildest dreams.

I showed up roughly 5-10 minutes early to a lecture hall in Huntsman Hall (the new main building at the Wharton School) that seats probably 75 people or so. While I was able to set up shop quickly enough (I foolishly thought I typed fast enough to be a stenographer for Patrick’s speech), the seats disappeared quickly…and people kept flowing in. I had to step out to take a phone call as the meeting began, and there was a group of 30-40 people or so coming down the halls. Eventually, people were literally sitting on any open space available on the floor. I’d estimate that there were about 150-200 people crammed into the room, undoubtedly beyond what the fire safety limit is. Even better, there were many, many faces I had never seen at a Penn Dems meeting before. As I go to the great majority of our meetings, it’s safe to say that a great deal of the attendees – probably 70-80% – were freshmen. This was a great improvement over 2004, when most of the people attending the opening meeting of our organization appeared to be upperclassmen (then again, I was a freshman, so I probably knew next-to-nobody).

After a brief introduction by our president and other board members, we played Patrick’s first ad to hit the airwaves just before he and his wife entered to a rousing reception. One of the great things that Patrick does – which most politicians show a strange inability to do – is to not stick to the same stump speech and to make it more personal. He interspersed it with an anecdote from his days in college, when he introduced President Clinton to an audience at Kings College, as well as getting a little ribbing in on Jenni for being a College Republican (the crowd got a good laugh out of that one). Nevertheless, he spoke a little bit about himself and his opponent, freshman GOP Representative Mike Fitzpatrick, but he appealed to our students on the most important topic – the importance of volunteering. As I’ve witnessed, it’s extremely difficult convincing college students to give up any of their free time for political activities. In 2004, we organized a canvassing trip to the Philadelphia suburbs in support of Kerry. It was slightly embarrassing to see far more Brown University students – who had taken a several-hour bus ride down for the weekend – than the handful of Penn students, including myself. But when you have an exciting new candidate like Patrick make that appeal for us, instead of it merely being relegated to one of our listserv emails – it exponentially increases the effect it has. Last spring, Patrick also attended a meeting of ours the day before a DFA fundraiser for his campaign at a local bar. It was our biggest general body meeting of the semester, and I noticed most of the students coming up and speaking to him afterwards, offering to sign up and volunteer for his campaign.

This year, the reception was no different – but on a much larger scale, as this was a barely standing-only room. Student after student came up to Patrick to speak to him. In addition, I noticed that the majority of people had filled out forms we had handed out for deputy positions within the organization. To me, it shows that having a real, live candidate come and speak off the cuff makes it much easier to connect to the students. Sure, people may not like Rick Santorum that much (I learned today that he and Fitzpatrick attended the same law school – the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree), but it’s hard for the few political junkies in the organization such as myself to convince students that it’s important for them to volunteer their time. Having a candidate come down and spend 10-15 minutes speaking, and then sticking around to make sure that anyone who wants to speak to him is able to – this is how you light the political spark inside students. Being a young guy (he recounted that when he returned to West Point to be a professor of constitutional law, he was mistaken for an incoming freshman), it’s easier for Patrick to really connect with young Americans my age. He asked us to just volunteer one day of our week helping out his campaign. Given that the Penn Dems will be taking a group out to the suburbs on Satuday, I wouldn’t be surprised if we have an incredibly high turnout for the event. It helps that everyone’s train ticket will be paid for as well.

I think the key lesson to be learned here is that Democrats need to reach out more actively for the youth vote. It doesn’t mean paying lip service at the CDA convention, where the attendees are already likely to be active in the political arena. What it means is that our candidates and our elected representatives need to actually show up to local meetings and actively connect with the people who can provide them with more energy and more manpower than they could ever dream of. Maybe they can take our vote for granted – but it takes a lot more effort to convince a college student that they should spend an afternoon on the weekends sweating their asses off for a candidate instead of relaxing or doing homework. Patrick’s taken that message to heart, and I have no doubt that if he wins, it will be in no small part due to the massive support he gets, particularly from those of us attending school in the Philadelphia area.

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

Today is Labor Day. The holiday is a simple one – it is meant to be a day of rest for, as well as a tribute to, the hard-working men and women of America. Most Americans will head back to work tomorrow, having enjoyed their day off. It will seem like any other day for most of us. Here in Phiadelphia, it’s supposed to be raining again. But for those of us who follow politics, tomorrow marks a beginning of sorts, the final dash to the finish line for campaigns all around the country. Candidates will be out on the stump everyday, advertisements will flood our television screens, and direct mailings and solicitations for donations will be deposited in our mailboxes. And from tomorrow, September 5, until Election Day, November 7, it will be a political whirlwind, of which the results won’t be known until the dust settles the day after.

And for each and every one of us in the blogosphere, to those of us that have taken our knowledge of politics beyond a mere glance at the evening news or the morning newspaper, it is our duty to do everything we can to make sure this madness in our country comes to an end. There are no excuses for not doing so.

Why were we in this fight in the first place? Because terrible leaders are doing terrible things to our country and calling this wonderful. Because radical reactionaries are trying to impose their imperialist schemes on whoever they wish and calling this just. Because amoral oligarchs are determined to enhance their slice of the economic pie and calling this the natural order. Because flag-wrapped ideologues want to chop up civil liberties and call this security. Because myopians are in charge of America’s future.
-Meteor Blades, Don’t Mourn, Organize, Wednesday, November 3, 2004

I was politically aware when I was in high school a few years ago, but I didn’t become politically active until I arrived at college at the end of the 2004 summer. Watching Arnold Schwarzeneggar taunt the Democratic Party as ‘girly-men’ at the RNC in New York City and seeing thousands of desensitized human beings mocking John Kerry’s Purple Hearts with Band-Aids convinced me that it wasn’t enough to simply sit on my ass and sound off to those who were close around me. It was clear that the country needed to be pulled out of the dark depths the Bush administration had put it through, and I felt obligated to do my part. I’ve never been the kind who felt a real patriotism before, and I don’t pledge allegiance to our flag. But I did (and do) pledge allegiance to the ideals of America. The freedoms we have held dear for centuries, the millions who have died to ensure that those freedoms endured, the great leaders, Democratic and Republican, that we have had over the years – it was to them that I was compelled into action. I phonebanked for Kerry/Edwards in Philadelphia, canvassed in the suburbs for the Democratic ticket, and volunteered much of my time to the 2004 PA-Sen Democratic candidate, Joe Hoeffel, even though it was going to be an uphill battle against the incumbent, Arlen Specter. I skipped out on far too many classes, studied much too little, but it was worth it. Why? Because I felt like I was fighting for something bigger than myself, bigger than a set of numbers and letters that, at that stage in my life, wouldn’t affect me so much.

We lost on 11/2. Came in second place in a crucial battle whose damage may still be felt decades from now. The despicable record of our foes makes our defeat good reason for disappointment and fear. Even without a mandate over the past four years, they have behaved ruthlessly at home and abroad, failing to listen to objections even from members of their own party. With the mandate of a 3.6-million vote margin, one can only imagine how far their arrogance will take them in their efforts to dismantle 70 years of social legislation and 50+ years of diplomacy.

I spent all of 11/2 doing visibility, GOTV, and canvassing on Penn’s campus. In the end, our efforts helped drive turnout on campus 200% above the levels in the 2000 presidential election, and we delivered roughly 80% of Penn’s vote for Kerry. Watching the returns into the late night, I couldn’t fathom why the results in Florida and Ohio, the two swing states upon which the Democratic Party had hung their hopes, were looking worse and worse by the hour. I eventually went to sleep at 4 in the morning, but in my heart, I knew we had lost. And it hurt. Some of us were angry, some of us were mad as hell, but it was hard watching John Kerry concede the afternoon of November 3. He was far from the perfect candidate – whether it be his verbal missteps on Iraq or his inadequate response to the Swift Boat liars – but in the end, as much as he failed us, we had failed him as well. Despite giving what we thought were our best efforts, we had still fallen short. No matter how much money poured in from the 527s, no matter how many times we highlighted Bush’s failures, it still hadn’t been enough.

Still, Tuesday was only one round in the struggle. It’s only the end if we let it be. I am not speaking solely of challenging the votes in Ohio or elsewhere – indeed, I think even successful challenges are unlikely to change the ultimate outcome, which is not to say I don’t think the Democrats should make the attempt. And I’m not just talking about evaluating in depth what went wrong, then building on what was started in the Dean campaign to reinvigorate the grassroots of the Democratic Party, although I also think we must do that. I’m talking about the broader political realm, the realm outside of electoral politics that has always pushed America to live up to its best ideals and overcome its most grotesque contradictions.

So we grieved for a couple of months. I felt more depressed that winter than I had any other year. The cold weather seemed colder, the night seemed more foreboding, more everlasting. It was difficult to see any reason for optimism when Bush rolled the bankrupcty bill and ‘tort reform’ right through Congress after his second term began. But the blogosphere didn’t roll over, as some may have thought. I think we all rose to Meteor Blades’ challenge afterwards. ‘What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger’ is an adage we truly lived up to. The Democrats stopped the bleeding with a unified stance on Social Security. We retained the New Jersey and Virginia governorships in 2005, as well as winning in areas we had never won before on the local level. Our support of longshot candidates like Paul Hackett and Francine Busby forced the GOP to spend so much money that they now trail us badly in fundraising. Just today, the Democrats presented a unified stance on beginning the withdrawal of our troops from Iraq before the end of this year. Several of our supported candidates, such as Jon Tester and Ned Lamont, are in a strong position as they head into the general election. We have chances to win in places we wouldn’t have thought of dreaming of winning 2 years ago, such as Idaho and Wyoming. We lost in 2004, but it was only one round of the neverending struggle.

So, as Democrats decide over the next weeks on how to vote on John Bolton, domestic spying, and other critical items, I’d remind them that time is cruel, unrelenting, and unforgiving.  There cannot be any acquiescence to a reality that we hope is only temporary, for nothing, absolutely nothing in life (including a Democratic majority) is guaranteed, no matter how long you wait for it. So act. Now.   As Keith Olbermann said, this is still a democracy, “sometimes just barely.”  Let us act with the courage and urgency that this broken democracy deserves.
-Georgia10, The Time For Action, Sunday, September 3, 2006

But having great candidates and having more money doesn’t mean we will win these races. In the end, putting boots on the ground, putting voices on the phones, and putting volunteers in the campaign offices will be what makes us prevail. Democracy is by the people, for the people. For us – the few who know the political landscape and understand that the 2006 elections is our last chance to truly nullify the last 2 years of the Bush agenda – it is our responsibility, our duty, to spread the word to the many. Talk about your local and statewide Democratic candidates. Make sure that they know that the bleeding, literally and metaphorically, has to stop. The madness that the Republican Party has cast on America must come to an end. Don’t spend your weekends blogging – spend them canvassing or phonebanking or doing data entry. Don’t buy that extravagant luxury; give a little extra to a Democrat who could use the money. In short, take action. Get involved. We somehow managed to survive the first 6 years of the Bush administration. I don’t think America can take another 2 years of unmitigated GOP control.

So today, we rest. But tomorrow, we fight. And we don’t rest until we win.