In our month-long Ohio campaign for Obama, we drove 8,151 miles to, around, and back from the Buckeye state. It is now 28 days days since we pulled up stakes in Ohio for the ride home, and 55 days since we first arrived in the Ohio to begin our Last Hurrah on the political stump.

We savor every minute’s effort to eradicate Bush-Cheney-Rove politics and elect someone who excites us more than any candidate since JFK.

It seems like a year ago and yet like yesterday morning. [See more, below.]

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When Pennsylvania went blue that night, we leapt to our feet in our motel room and Sue wept for joy: McCain’s last, improbable path had been blocked. From that point on, we were lusting for a landslide and, out of pride, Ohio in indigo.

Our actor son, Kelly, performing at the Yale Repertory Theater, placed repeated backstage calls to us and his sister, Stacy, between scenes of the U.S. premiere of Happy Now? Kelly would give and get state-by-state updates, then ring off to run back onstage. (How could he remember his lines for godssakes?)

The Buckeye state went Obama. Stacy called. [She had organized local newspaper ads in Bozeman (signed by more than 800 residents) and canvassed for voter registration and get-out-the-vote.] Whatever she said was washed out by the din at the Bozeman headquarters. Everyone knew what Ohio meant.

When the West Coast came in, CNN threw the results on the screen with Barack’s photo. Each of us felt a spinal jolt as the historic thing we helped cause sunk in. He’ll take the oath in the 200th anniversary year of Lincoln’s birth, in an Inauguration with the theme, “A New Birth of Freedom.” Gives me gooseflesh thinking of it.

Then the hard part begins.

The young political phenomenon faces two wars and an economic crisis, the depth and length of which Americans are only now beginning to fathom.

The solemnity of the acceptance speech at Grant Park suggests that he appreciates the gravity of his challenge, and the nation’s. This isn’t a naif from Plains, Georgia, who stood on a chair at Blair House to tell Democratic congressmen that he’d personally return their phone calls. Nor is the man’s subtle, nuanced mind likely to produce the economic non-sequiturs of Gerald Ford.

Against partisan foes, Obama’s rhetorical skills give him an air capability at least equal to Reagan’s, as one can observe from his victory speech in Iowa caucuses:

However, he yet must learn to master venues presidents use most–press conferences and from-behind-the-desk national TV addresses. On the other hand, Obama’s grassroots network gives him a potential ground force that no previous president possessed.

He’ll need it all and then some.

Team of rivals? God, I hope it works! With due respect to Doris Kearns Goodwin, it didn’t pan out so well for Lincoln.

Yet I feel optimism. One of my heroes, Vaclav Havel, defined optimism as “orientation,” not “prediction.”

The president-elect likely would have his own term: Audacity.

As the eight-year hostile occupation of America comes its end, I’ll cling to both.

Live blogging through Election Day (and night):

9:40 P.M. (MST): We can’t remember anything like it.

My political involvement began with black voter registration in Nashville, Tennessee, and fighting the electrical violence of lunch counter sit-ins.

Yes, we did!

And now this.

We’ve been laughing through our tears since he went over the top.

Not because he is black. But because he is a magnificent political talent who happens to be black.

(Note to John McCain: You were way off base in your concession, speaking about what Obama’s election means to blacks. The point is how he has liberated whites.)

Now we’re waiting for The Speech. And we’ll bawl like children. And go to sleep. And wake up in the morning to find the world covered with dew again.

7:38 P.M. (MST): YEESSS! Ohio goes blue!

6:15 P.M. (MST): CNN just released the first trickle of returns from Ohio. Obama had 67 percent of those returns. Sue and I did a quick calculation. Those votes came from every county we stumped in. Right.

4:01 P.M. (MST): CNN just broke a report that the McCain Campaign is robocalling bile in Cuban precincts in Florida, telling voters that Fidel Castro has just endorsed Obama. The calls were not made by an independent “swift boat” campaign, or the Republican National Committee, but the McCain-Palin campaign!

“Country First,” John? “Straight Talk Express?” Sit down.

3:48 P.M. (MST): I’m so fidgety, waiting for the first returns from Indiana, I went to the Obama website and started calling voters in Missouri and North Carolina to remind them to vote and give them their polling place.

Amazing political use of the Internet. I get the email “Action Alert” with a map of key state. I click on one and a list of names and phone numbers and ages comes up with the address of the voter’s polling place. Once done, I indicate if the voter has voted, if the line is busy, if the number is wrong, and so forth.

A woman in North Carolina gasped when I introduced myself as a former congressman from Oregon.

1:40 P.M. (MST): One smart aleck-my former congressional chief of staff, Bob Crane–wanted to know why we are heading West before the returns come in, suggesting that the post Baby Boom Obamaiacs had no need for a gray beard in the clutch.

In fact, that’s about the size of it. After Saturday, there were no speaking further opportunities to fire up these Obama volunteers. They were “pre-fired” and too busy working on get-of-the-vote to listen to a speech (except that of their candidate, who wowed a crowd of 90,000 last night in Manassas, Virginia.

Um, Sarah Palin, that would be in your “pro-America” part of Virginia.

So, we are back here again in Spearfish. (Careful readers of this journal will remember Spearfish, South Dakota, as the location of our first overnight stop en route to Ohio. I still can find no spears here, or fish.)

Over at FiveThirtyEight.Com, Nate Silver, has aggregated the last of the national and state polls and, on the strength of them, projects a 349-189 electoral vote landslide for Obama.

More later.

“Do you hear the people sing, singing the song of angry men?
“It is the music of a people who will not be slaves again;

“When the beating of your heart echoes the beating of the drums,
“There is a life about to start when tomorrow comes …”

—Do You Hear The People? (Les Miserables)

Messaging, 'til the last dog comes home / Photo: S. AuCoin

And that there’s no way in hell he’ll lose ‘em all.

We’ve got the volume up on music from Les Miserables, The Man from La Mancha, and Anthony Newley’s, Once In A Lifetime, and we’re singing along at the top of our lungs as if the lyrics had been written for Obama and us.

Damned odd not to be campaigning, though.

Several miles back, I started doodling something called the Low-Downest Post-Campaignin’ Blues. Relax, it’s never going to be published, much less sung!

While we’re here bouncing along on I-90W, Obama’s get-out-the-vote volunteers are out in force across the country—including Stacy, our daughter in Bozeman, who seems to have made it her personal responsibility to turn Montana blue.

Well, if you can’t give a speech or phone a voter, you do the next best thing. Noting that our Blazer’s rear window was bare, we opted for some Interstate freeway advertising. We painted the glass: VOTE OBAMA!

A driver just pulled alongside to see who was behind the wheel of this rolling billboard. Spotting two gray heads, he sped on. Other than that, our impromptu promotion is bringing no responses.

I should call the Gallup people and advise them there are no undecideds left.

We rose early in a Dayton suburb, giddy, still, about last night’s labor rally, and drove our pre-packed Trailblazer to Batavia, an eastern suburb of conservative Cincinnati to give a pep talk to canvassers at the Democratic headquarters–the very last event on our Ohio schedule.

Once again, we were in ruby red territory. Once again, Democrats were energized and on the attack.

Democrats stocking up on ammo / Photos: S. AuCoin

The Cincinnati Enquirer sent a reporter-photographer team for a story on Democratic “passion and excitement.” [Click here for it.]

(Clermont County Democratic Chairman Dave Lane was steamed when he emailed me to tell me about the piece. “The reporter called Sue, ‘Sarah‘,” he fumed. “Of all things, Sarah!” ) I could almost hear him spit out the word.

From there, we made a sentimental journey to the home of Mark Schmidt, a wonderful former staffer who I had not seen in twenty years. I had called Mark out of the blue about housing in Ohio and he came through for us brilliantly. (Once an AuCoin staffer, always an AuCoin staffer!)

Mark is an avid reader of this journal and joined us in Dayton for my labor speech and the next morning in Batavia. The 26-year-old kid I’d hired to straighten up the books at my congressional office is now a 46-year-old owner of a successful paving company with seventy employees, a husband and a father of a lovely daughter.

With Mark Schmidt, of Cincinnati: Once an AuCoin staffer, always an AuCoin staffer / Photos: S. AuCoin

Yet even here, a reminder of right wing bigotry bubbled up. One of Mark and Christy’s neighbors, a woman who had a huge Obama-Biden sign in her yard, arrived with a copy of The Enquirer clutched in her hand and folded to an article about a local hardware store owner who has put a despicable race-baiting, anti-Obama sign in his shop window.

“We’ve got to organize a boycott!” she declared.

It was a sobering contrast to the small gathering in the Schmidt family room, which included two of Mark’s friends from boyhood–they had never lost touch with one another. One of them had driven Mark to Washington all those years ago in Schmidt’s blue pickup.

We felt the warmth of lifelong familiarity and friendship and I told Mark as we left that we could not let another twenty years pass before meeting again. Mark handed me Yahoo-downloaded driving instructions to take us through Cincinnati and I-74 West.

Still the staffer. Forever a friend.

When you’re four days out from Election Day and you have an audience of maybe 300 trade unionists and it’s your last big speech of the campaign, it’s time for red meat.

We're gonna toss out the horse thieves! / Photos: S. AuCoin

The frustrated emcee tells the man to stand up and explain himself.

The union man says, “My grandfather was a unionist and a Democrat, my father was a unionist and a Democrat, and I’m a unionist and a Democrat.”

“Well,” the emcee huffs, “if your grandfather was a horse thief and your father was a horse thief, would you be a horse thief?”

“No sir,” he man replies. “Then I’d be a Republican!”

Good job, Bill!

The crowd loved it. I plunged forward:

“In four days, with your help, we’re gonna throw a bunch of Republican horse thieves out of office, from the White House to the state house to the court house–and kick ‘em straight into the outhouse!

“I’m not going to tell you that this election is for all the marbles. You know that.

“I’m not going to tell you that your right to organize is at stake. You know that too.

“I’m not going to tell you that this is about the future of the middle class and keeping union wage jobs in Ohio. You also know that.

“I’m just going to tell you this: the election will probably decide whether we in our lifetime live to see accessible, affordable health care for all Americans.

“John McCain, who has had government-financed health care all his life, opposes Barack Obama’s plan for universal care. I just heard another deceitful McCain ad that stated Obama will coerce Americans into a ‘government run’ plan in which ‘bureaucrats’ would make medical decisions rather than doctors.

“That’s like saying when Eisenhower created the Interstate Highway System, the Secretary of Transportation hopped on a caterpillar and bulldozed the roadbeds, that GS-16s left their desks and poured the asphalt, and bureaucrats are the only ones who can drive our cars on the freeways!”

I fished out my Blue Cross-Blue Shield card (government-wide plan) and held it aloft. “This is my health insurance card,” I said. “John McCain has one just like it but he won’t talk about it. Every other member of congress and every retired member of congress has one too.

“Blue Cross-Blue Shield isn’t the government. It isn’t ‘government run.’ It’s a private company the government pays to insure our health. I get to choose my doctor.

“Because the risk pool is so huge, my costs are incredibly low. A couple of years ago, I paid $400 for a $16,000 operation on my leg!

“Barack Obama says the rest of America deserves what he and John McCain and I enjoy.

“Obama won’t force it you; the Double-Talk Express is lying about that. Anyone can keep their current insurance if they want. But if you join this plan, with an even larger national risk pool you can save an estimated $3 thousand a year, and that’s just if your health is normal.”

I threw in a lot of applause lines to have some fun all around. In return, they came to their feet, stomping, three times and gave an ear-splitting ovation at the end.

As any old war horse will tell ya, it feels damn good to kick some … ankles … on the stump.

Especially for me, in the last big speech of our Ohio odyssey.

We break camp today in Columbus having returned around midnight last night from Mentor, Ohio, on the shore of Lake Erie, part of the congressional district held by my friend, former Congressman Dennis Eckart, who played Dan Quale in Lloyd Bentsen’s 1988 VP debate preparation.

Next stops: Dayton tonight, for a speech at a big labor hootenanny, then a get-out-the-vote (GOTV) rally in Batavia, just east of Cincinnati.

Obama's Ohio surrogate schedulers, who sent us all over the Buckeye state (L to R: Degee Wilhelm, (unidentified), Les, Elizabeth Scott, and Sue

We’ll find a motel with a big king bed and Internet connection somewhere en route and pull in early on Tuesday to watch the returns come in. Our TV will give us the national numbers, my laptop will track the Ohio counties we’ve worked for the last month.

McCain is making a ninth inning charge here to take Ohio back, but we have had a good feeling for the past week; McCain’s pushing back hard, probably because his people share our impression. Can Obama’s +5 to +7 lead absorb the counterattack? I think so.

Democrats we’ve met at every annual dinner–even in Republican counties–have fire in their eyes and report record party registration. My message has been to spend every ounce of energy to get that vote out! Ohio will go to the campaign with the best GOTV operation.

Obama's Ohio war room / Photo: S. AuCoin

We couldn’t leave Columbus without paying a visit to the state Obama headquarters and thanking the surrogate schedulers who worked our … rear ends … off. (See their photo above.) The whole Ohio “war room” is in the basement of the Ohio Democratic Party building on Fulton Street, and you’ve not seen a more organized operation.

Desks are clustered in pods–for mainstream media, scheduling, policy, alternative media, field operations by region, and more.

Sign at Obama state HQ / Photo: S. AuCoin

Last night in Mentor, the Lake County Democrats paraded another first rate slate of office-seekers to the microphone. I’ve been struck, wherever we’ve gone, with the values these candidates express. None of the snarly cynicism, the Big Lie technique or questioning the patriotism of the other party–Republican staples. Rather, a passionate determination to restore government leadership that works to better the community, be it national, state or local.

Real plumbers for Obama / Photo: S. AuCoin

My job at the Washington County Annual Democratic Dinner–as with all such partisan dinners in the run-up to the election–was to stoke the fire, raise the roof and inspire the faithful to reach down deep into themselves for that something extra in these final days.

You can’t read such a speech. You’ve got to riff, based on a central message you’ve thought through. This affords you direct eye contact with the audience, with no piece of paper between you and them.

Two to one! Sounds right to us. / Photo: S. AuCoin

Success depends a lot on the energy you draw from the audience, which in turn often depends on the use of a couple of “claptraps” (i.e., guaranteed applause lines)–preferably funny and pointed–at the outset.

I’ve had nights when I was disappointingly flat, as in Newark, when nothing I tried seemed to rouse the crowd. (I think it was the steak dinner with Jerry McLaughlin and a few other Licking County Democrats immediately before going “on.” On the other hand, hard as it is for me to accept, I’m actually not god’s gift to public speaking.)

Proud members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, ready to canvass for Obama / Photo: S. AuCoin

But at last Saturday’s Washington County dinner in Marietta, the sun, stars and moon seemed in alignment. I started having fun at the microphone and the crowd was having fun with me. If we were playing baseball, the ball would have cleared the upper deck–socked out of the park not just by my oratory but by fabulous candidates and hard-charging union and party volunteers, who have blood in their eye and intend to kick … ankles … next Tuesday.

My schedule this week, thin and spotty even in draft form, became utterly empty when two events fell through, including a joint appearance of surrogates at Mt. Vernon Nazarene College on Monday. (The school heard that the Obama campaign was dispatching a former congressman and pulled the plug on me; the program would be “unbalanced.”)

So we will have been idle for five days by the time I give my last Democratic dinner speech Thursday night in Mentor at the Lake County Jefferson-Jackson Dinner. Thanks to some rogue scheduling by a savvy Democratic operative, I’ll speak at a big AFL-CIO bash on Friday and a get-out-the-vote rally Saturday morning in Claremont County.

Then the time for speeches will be over. And with our car pre-packed and ourselves checked out of our apartment in Columbus, we will start our return trip to the West. We’ll set a more casual pace on our return–no pedal-to-the-metal like we did in our rush to get here–and we’ll pull into a good motel somewhere in South Dakota to watch Obama win on Tuesday night.

The first child to ask a question looked to be in the sixth grade: “Is it true that Barack Obama is working with the terrorist, Bill Ayers?” the boy asked.

“How many of you have heard this rumor,” I asked the students of Graham Digital Academy, a wonderfully innovative school northwest of Columbus.

Almost every hand shot up. Of some seventy young people, perhaps eighty percent had been infected by John McCain’s poisonous, loathsome campaign.

At Graham Digital Academy faculty and local residents, with a blue ribbon for GDA students: Who You Are Makes A Difference Photos: S. AuCoin

Earlier–before I had spoken and before the question–the principal, Dr. Marcia Ward, opened the assembly by calling on a young man to explain what they had been studying about government. “George Washington,” the young man reported. “And the importance of honesty.”

I turned to respond to my young questioner. His face seemed guileless but genuinely concerned. I wanted to say, That’s just shows how John McCain has sold his soul, but I didn’t. “That … falsehood … is being spread by John McCain,” I said, “who knows it’s not true but is spreading it anyway.

“Bill Ayers was a terrorist when Barack Obama was an eight-year-old boy. You’ve been studying the presidency and honesty. How can McCain honestly link Obama to Ayers’ past–a past that Obama condemns?

“Forty years later, Ayers has rehabilitated his life and become a distinguished professor of education at the University of Illinois and Chicago’s citizen of the year for his work in reforming Chicago’s public schools. Only then did Obama meet him, and only fleetingly.

“And what Mr. McCain won’t tell you is that Ayers’ work on school reform was funded by a foundation set up by one of President Ronald Reagan’s best friends, a conservative named Walter Annenberg, and that one of his, McCain’s, major donors worked with Ayers on that project.”

The students seemed satisfied. But driving back to Columbus, my blood boiled at the political pollution McCain, Palin and the Republican National Committee are belching out not only to voters but innocent children.

Upon our return to Columbus, we got the news that McCain and the RNC have begun to paper battleground states with a new flyer. The heading on the cover reads, in fonts that look cut from newspapers headlines, “Terrorists Don’t Care Who They Hurt.” Inside is a photo of Obama and another headline below that reads, “Obama: Do We Really Know Who He Is?”

At Graham Digital Academy, I was presented a plaque and a ribbon that had a message for GDA students: Who You Are Makes A Difference.

It applies to politicians too.

Who are you, John McCain?

My wicked scheduler (at this stage of a campaign, you get dark thoughts about them!) put me into a joint appearance at Capital University, an evangelical Lutheran school in Bexley, a Columbus suburb.

Why do I take these assignments? First, I will not let conservative evangelicals think that the Obama campaign is afraid of them. Secondly, a la “President Jed Bartlet,” I’m prepared to debate them, scripture for scripture.

I arrived on campus to discover that former Attorney General Betty Montgomery had cancelled out. Damn! I had Googled a quote from her about an opponent that I was eager to use:

“We can’t just put up anybody who is not qualified because they could get elected.”

(Darned well said, Betty; now come on over to Obama-Biden!)

Montgomery’s stand-in was the president of the campus conservative club. This would make it harder for me to give the full-throated counterattack I’d planned against McCain and his loathsome campaign.

So I decided to largely ignore the student and speak to the audience, for whom I’d gathered up Biblical passages to support my case:

“I’ve never seen a more mean-spirited, more dishonest campaign than the one John McCain’s running. Exodus 20:16 tells us, “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.” You recognize the scripture: it’s the 8th Commandment. By not telling the truth about Obama, John is “bearing false witness.” If he has a scintilla of honor left, he’ll regret it the rest of his life.

“John says Barack will raise your taxes. Wrong! Obama will give a tax cut to every American who makes less than $250,000.

“McCain says Obama is for socialism because he’ll repeal the Bush tax break for the superrich and cut taxes for everyone else. But if that’s “socialism,” so is the Gospel of Mark: “What you do for the least of these, you do unto me.”

“Moreover, McCain himself opposed that tax cut in 2001! He flip-flopped for this campaign. John was right 2001, and Obama is right today.

“I have to say, the vilest thing McCain and Palin are saying is that Barack “pals around with terrorists” — a charge than has been shot down as false again and again, most recently by former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Colin Powell, who has endorsed Obama.

“John needs to read Mark 8:36: “For what doth it profit a man, to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?”

“In this election, the country stands at a crossroads. One path, Obama’s, points to change. The other, McCain’s, is more of the same.

“More trickle down.

“More wars of choice.

“And more trade policies that ship jobs overseas.

“I’m asking you to vote your hopes on November 4th, not your fears. I’m asking you to vote Obama.”

Postscript:

It turns out that Capital University’s student body is not monolithically conservative or evangelically Christian. (The young conservative club president was actually Jewish.) And we walked out with some votes for Obama.

Which turns out to be not a bad way to spend my 66th birthday.