“When Tomorrow Comes …”

Pierre, South Dakota

“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

Our minds are on tomorrow as I write this during a punishing, eight-hour haul from Waterloo, Iowa, to South Dakota’s capital. (They knew what they were talking when they named this the Great Plains; My god, it’s endless!). It helps to have set off this morning knowing that Obama could lose every toss-up state (OH, MO, NC, IN, FL, NV and VA) and still take the big enchilada.

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.

Raising The Roof

 Marietta, Ohio

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.

 

 

 

 

Les MisBarack

With apologies to Les Miserables, this is how it sometimes feels for those at the ramparts for Barack in battleground Ohio. Play and enjoy (it’s really quite good!).

Hurly Burly In Cleveland

Cleveland, Ohio

Spirited canvassers from the American Federation of Teachers / S. AuCoin Photos

It was one of those days when a schedule goes screwy but improvisation makes it better than you planned. We were going to meet members of the American Federation of Teachers at their lunch break from a day of professional training and go on to a gathering of canvassers for Working America, an AFL-CIO affiliate.

But the Working America office here didn’t get the message (chalk it up to “the fog of war”) and the AFT lunch would occur an hour later than scheduled.

No problem for Wyn Antonio, our host, a AFT retiree, a union organizer in Mississippi and veteran of more campaigns you can count. We’ll use the time for other things!

The remarkable Wyn Antonio w/ Les & the Obama van

First, we’re off to the labor hall in her car, after she has cleared campaign paraphernalia, empty coffee cups, phone bills, Kleenex boxes and sandwich wrappers off our designated seats. We arrive in time to give an impromptu pep talk to a group of AFT members, fresh off the bus from Buffalo, New York, for a weekend of canvassing.

Cut it, Les; Gotta split! Next stop: a tailgater for AFT canvassers in a parking lot downtown. We arrived to find bratwurst and chicken smoking on grills, country music on a CD player, and a gaggle of bushed but satisfied workers milling around and sitting on lawn chairs.

You’re on, Les! I start riffin’ on the spot, telling them they embody the spirit of Bobby Kennedy and Caesar Chavez, who used to say, “In this country, there’s no man on a white horse to get it done. Here, the people do the work.”

Riffin' on the spot

And I assure them that that’s how we’re going to win this state and take the country back–one person talking to another person, one at at a time.

The canvassers tell Wyn they can’t believe a former congressman from Oregon would drop in on them out of the blue in downtown Cleveland to pump them up, and they all gathered round for photographs.

Off again, this time to pick up the hot lunch for the other teachers. We pull into an Italian restaurant that’s the traditional site for Democratic fundraising events. The food is brought out by the owner, a portly guy with a cuban cigar, who was introduced too fast for me to catch his name, and one of his chefs.

Back now at the Carl and Louis Stokes Academy (Lou Stokes and I served together in Congress; his brother, Carl, was mayor of Cleveland). Wyn isn’t satisfied with my introduction so she gives a peppier one of her own. I speak and we try to leave, but Wyn will have none of it. Gotta eat first.

She accompanies us to the car and we see her walking back as we pull out of the parking lot, seemingly lost in thought. We can only wonder what she’ll conjure up next.

Sue and I love these guys. Sarah Palin, if you want “pro-America,” here they are.

Advocacy On An Appalachian Afternoon

Guysville, Ohio

Les, giving a hoot and a holler for Obama and Biden

The host of of today’s Barbecue For Obama, said to me, “Push the economic issues.”

You bet. I can do that.

Then on the two-hour drive to this Ohio/West Virginia border area, what Ted Bernard meant dawned on me. Appalachia, one of the poorest regions of the country, has been responding for years to the Republican siren song of guns, god, and gays while the GOP serviced the superrich at their expense.

So, with everyone’s political sensibilities shaken by deregulated robber barons, I tried to push the issue hard, starting with health care.

McCain, in response to a question by Tom Brokaw, said affordable health care is a “responsibility.” Code for, “It’s up to you, Jack. And if you can’t cut it, tough.” Obama, bless him, said, “It’s a right.” The god-given right of every American man, woman and child to have health care at least as good as John McCain gets as a U.S. senator.

Bakin' for Obama: Working for change, one cookie at a time. By WORD (Women Openly Reclaiming Democracy)

Thanks to the mainstream media, this chasm between the candidates has barely been noticed. It gets an overwhelming response every time I mention it.

If Obama breaks through in Ohio’s part of Appalachia–a broad geographic and hard-scrabble cultural region stretching from southern Pennsylvania through West Virginia, eastern Ohio, Kentucky and beyond–it’s lights out for McCain, Palin and the Republicans.

However, it remains a very open question. Maybe we’ll take Ohio anyway. But I remember Bobby Kennedy, damnit, and I want to make inroads into this region because my blood boils when I see neocon manipulation. (You can still find a picture of JFK, RFK and Jesus Christ on the walls of a lot of homes in the region. In the old days, it was just two, Christ and FDR.)

Give a President Obama four years, I say, and he’ll transform this region for a generation.

I told this audience that the financial and economic crisis was the gravest since FDR, caused by a get-government-out-of-the-way credo championed by Bush and McCain and the Republicans, and that it’ll take a re-regulating “trickle up” Democratic president, not a trickle-down Republican, to set things right.

But my words paled compared to a local party leader who followed me to the mike. He told the crowd that we had returned to 1932, the year he was born, the year FDR beat Hoover. “I didn’t live through the Depression,” he said, “but I lived through the effects of it.”

His family of eight wore shoes only to go to church and to school, and got a new pair once a year. “Thanks to Bush and Cheney and McCain,” he said, “we’re on the edge of the cliff again.”

——-

I was sitting on a folding chair, speech done, listening to bluegrass, when Kari Gunther-Seymour came up with a basket of cookies. Kari is a person you always hope to know.

'Nuf said, in these parts

The communications director of a reject Republican organization called WORD (Women Openly Reclaiming Democracy) in Albany, Ohio, she and her colleagues founded Baking For Obama: Working For Change, One Cookie At A Time. With their sales proceeds, they fund Democratic action.

“One of many things Appalachian women are good at is cooking,” said the mother of an Iraq war veteran serving his second tour. “And here in Appalachia, lots of things get decided at the kitchen table.”

If you think you have courage, try operating a WORD bake sale on the steps of an Appalachian courthouse. Kari is an inspiration. If the rest of us had an ounce of her determination, this election would be over.

We won’t carry Appalachia, but if we increase the Democratic vote beyond Kerry’s, it’ll help us take this state. A change of only nine votes per precinct here in 2004 would have meant the end of George W. Bush.

An advanced economic/political concept

Live, Together: Jerry Springer And Me

Mason, Ohio

While you can find yourself in … unusual … situations when you’re trying to elect a president of the United States, I did not imagine that I’d share a microphone with TV talk show host Jerry Springer.

That happened here last night at the annual dinner of the Warren County Democrats.

Springer

I was the undercard. Controversial Springer, the main event.

In fairness, Springer has a law degree and was at 33 a popular mayer of Cincinnati. He campaigns tirelessly for Democratic candidates, especially in his home state, Ohio. Last night, a cystic fibrosis patient in a wheelchair wanted to meet him. As soon as Springer was told this, he was out of his chair, asking, “Where is he?”

He also made an impassioned speech for universal health care and education.

Warren County, north of Cincinnati, is hard-rock Republican. Democratic chairman Jeff Leis and other party leaders have dramatically increased the party vote from the 2004 Kerry campaign and the 2006 election of Governor Ted Strickland. Last night, they packed 180 stalwarts into a banquet room, no small feat in an area where folks live their lives in a Republican echo chamber.

My message, in addition to the issues, was urge them not to be discouraged if they cannot carry Warren County for Obama. They won’t. Instead, their job is to do their part to maximize Obama’s statewide margin by delivering every possible Democrat in the county.

Fairfield County Dems ‘Got Game’

Lancaster, Ohio

In downtown Lancaster tonight, Fairfield County Democrats took over the old Elks Lodge on Main Street for a fundraiser with foot-stomping music, wallet-emptying auctioneering, and red meat oratory.

If McCain has to come through here to take battleground Ohio, it’ll run into potholes, barbed wire, traffic bumps and a pitchfork brigade of Democrats who “got game” and are tired as hell and aren’t going to go softly into that dark neocon night. They include Larry Blair, one of the key event coordinators, whose birthday, we discovered, is the same as mine this month.

Les, Ami Williams, and The Next President Of The United States

Young people were in good numbers with the middle aged and seniors–a good sign. Ami Williams was typical of the younger set. She’s president of the Fairfield County Democratic Club, and, at twenty something, reminds me of the energetic late Sixties firebrands who founded Oregon’s DEMOFORUM and went on to dominate Democratic politics for a generation.

My message came out of the Bobby Kennedy/Caesar Chavez playbook: “In this country, we don’t have a man on a white horse to get it done for us. Here, the people do the work.”

Which means, in the next 26 days, instead of watching football and taking in movies, we all need to knock on 50 more doors, phone 100 more people, give ten, 20, 50 dollars more to stop the hijacking of our country.

I said Obama would reregulate high rollers on Wall Street that McCain voted to deregulate and as a result of his vote, the Masters The Universe lost 2 trillion dollars of our savings and retirement funds.

I closed with a little noted moment from Debate #2. Tom Brokaw asked the candidates if they thought affordable health care for Americans was a right or a responsibility. McCain, the owner of 11 homes and too many cars to count, said, “responsibility.”

Obama said it was a birthright of every man, woman and child in America. We’re Americans, after all. We take care of our own. Joe Klein of Time said the answers may will well turn into the defining moment of the campaign.

Plunging Into The Cross-Currents

Mansfield, Ohio

The Obama staff got me into a Democratic lunch in Mansfield, about 80 miles north of Columbus. The party central committee has taken out a mortgage on an old building on the town square and the building trades unions donated time and material to fix it up.

Obama's magnificent volunteers! The woman in the background had not worked in a campaign until this one.

Now the Richland County Democrats have a spiffy headquarters with a kitchen and dining area and full basement and they strut their stuff with an attractive green canopy on the front. They make money by renting the hall out to the community.

Local Republicans are very annoyed.

In my remarks, I stated my view that the country has not been in such an economic and military crisis since FDR, that to get out of this mess will require Barack Obama, a trickle-up Democrat who’ll regulate the high rollers on Wall Street who played with other people’s money and lost over $2 trillion of our savings and retirement funds in 15 months–a leader who will reject the “ready, shoot, aim” military policies of Bush and McCain.

Most of the 40-person audience were seniors except for some loyal labor guys. One woman was pleased with Obama’s lead here but gave me a rueful look and said, “Opinion in this state can turn on a dime.”

Outside, one of the labor guys was verbally handling a man who ranted that he wouldn’t vote for Obama because he (Obama) “won’t say if he’s black or white, and he’s gotta be one or the other.”

“He’s the most capable candidate,” the UAW guy replied, ignoring delirium.

“But he’s one or the other,” the thirtysomethng guy said, “and he refuses to say!”

————

This morning’s news carried another factory closure, this one in Ashland, Ohio, 20 minutes away from Mansfield. One hundred jobs vaporized overnight. Management would not let workers in this morning to clean out their lockers and desks.

———–

We dropped by the Obama headquarters before leaving town, one of 70 in the state. Volunteers were inputting responses from last night’s telephone bank. Obama volunteers have reached 43 percent of Ohio’s registered voters. Nearly 700,000 new voters have been registered this year.

Four Days ‘Til Launch

Bozeman, Montana

On Wednesday, my wife and I will drop everything we’re doing and drive to Ohio to campaign for Barack Obama and Joe Biden for the last month of the campaign.

We hope we can provide a modicum of help in a battleground state for a ticket we hope and believe will lead the country into a new era of progressive governance and away from the law-of-the-jungle, soak-the-middle class, robber baron era of most of the last thirty years.

But the most important thing we will influence will no doubt be our own psyches. If we sit by as observers much longer, we’re both going to blow a gasket. Rather than hoping neoconservatives won’t steal this country, we want to help Obama and Biden stop them from it, and roll back the trickle-down fleecing, the environmental pillaging and the preemptive war-making that has already occurred.

We hope this journal will give you an up-close and personal look at the campaign from the trenches of a hotly contested state that may decide the election. In 104 years–with only three exceptions–no one has won the White House without winning Ohio’s electoral votes.

So, we’ll now throw everything we have into Ohio to try to restore the best instincts of the country we grew up in. If, god forbid, Obama should lose, at least we’ll have a good answer when our granddaughters ask us, “Pop-Pops and Nana, what did you do in the table stakes election of 2008?”