Presidential Debate #1

I just finished watching the first presidential debate, as did probably many of you in the US, and I'd love to know what you thought. The pundits and spin doctors on TV are predictably trying to slant it one way or another, some saying that Obama came out on top and the others saying that McCain did. PBS says they came out even, more or less. PBS, by the way, is my safe haven because they have tolerable commentary by people who aren't in love with the sound of their own voices. (If even they get too much for me, I switch to C-SPAN, that dry silent-observer channel).

Given that historically, the first debate (the first half an hour of it really, is what I heard) holds a lot of sway in the presidential elections, I really would love to know your impressions.

Katie Couric's interview of Sarah Palin

In case you missed Katie Couric's interview of Sarah Palin yesterday, here it is. Katie Couric asks some probing questions and cross-questions her at times too (unlike Charlie Gibson whose questions were just designed for the recitation of Palin's talking points).



She's clearly so out of her depth here and the fact that she even got herself into this situation (by not saying no to McCain's offer in the first place) tells me that she's got about as much capacity for self-reflection as President George W. Bush has. He was promoted to incompetence by the Republican machine by being their nominee, and that's exactly what's happening to her. In between my cringes, I was trying to envision how this interview might come across to her supporters: There are words... right-sounding words... words that haven't quite been memorized (she has to look constantly at her notes during this interview) but that's ok... she'll manage because she's a governor and that's political experience... she's got the know-how... she knows more words than Pres. Bush knows and he's president so that's really good... and besides, that Katie Couric shouldn't be asking some of those questions... that's just not the way to treat someone who's new to all this.
(I'm sorry, I just can't assign a higher level of intelligence to anyone who is enamoured with Palin. But that's just it -- the Republicans have the full support of the elite and the wealthy but they also need the support of the uneducated to win. Thus Bush. Thus Karl Rove's anti-gay/ evangelical strategy. Thus Palin).

Electoral College Map / Debate Delay Tactics

I want to share a really good map of the electoral college that I just discovered, one where the size of each state is distorted to represent the number of electoral votes. (A weird map of the U.S. that reminds me of the motor/sensory homunculus based on the distribution of sensory neurons in the human body). Since the number of electoral votes is based on the population of each state, it can be seen as a distortion in terms of the population. This map shows the current standing of "McCain safe" states and "Obama safe" states. Take a look. Yes, the red rural states are comfortingly shrunken but there's still too many of them! What's with New Hampshire, by the way? What the...? And it's interesting that Hawaii appears slightly larger than Alaska.

Today's news has McCain trying to delay the much-anticipated first debate that is scheduled for Friday evening. He wants to put aside campaigning to help Washington take care of the economic crisis. Hmm... there are enough senators and congressmen focusing on it, and anyway, what could McCain possibly contribute by putting aside 2-3 days of campaigning? He's been campaigning for a year and a half already. I have no doubt that he's just freaking out at the prospect of facing Obama the Orator. That's got to be scary, especially from the point of view of someone who inserts foot in mouth every other day and retracts his statements every alternate day... for no real reason.

Canvassing in Gary, Indiana - Part III

At the end of the street, we turned around and worked our way back on the opposite side. Most of the houses were unoccupied. We went to one home where the mother of the house was not registered to vote, but the daughter who opened the door said that her mom had just returned from work and had just gone to sleep and that there was nothing on this earth that was going to get her to wake up her mother. We left the forms for her with some doubt that they would get completed and mailed in. The last house on the end of the block was the house across the street from Roy’s, and as it turned out was his mother-in-law’s house. She, being over 65 years of age, was eligible for an absentee ballot (that's something that is being encouraged in swing states, to ensure that some contingency or other doesn’t prevent that vote from either being cast or counted on election day). Roy was still in his yard working, and his wife was back, waiting for us. I got her voter registration form completed and she stepped over to her mother’s to make sure she understood what her mother was signing. They were really happy to see us, which surprised me because the last thing you want on a Saturday is for some stranger to come knocking on your door peddling whatever it is they're peddling. But then again at the Chicago campaign office where they have volunteers make phone calls, the calls are greeted with surprising enthusiasm too. (When they called me, come to think of it, I actually welcomed that call... and that's definitely not how I respond to other organizations who call me even if I've supported them in the past). It occurs to me now that going door-to-door in Gary, we didn't discuss any issues such as the economy, jobs, etc.; the main issue here was the big issue, the one of African-American empowerment.

On our way down the street back to my car, we passed by a 18- or 19-year-old guy whom we'd seen before, washing and polishing his car out on his lawn. (He was still at it). He had already told us he was registered to vote but Linda of course had to pause and comment on how beautiful his car was looking (it was about 12 years old, a large maroon gas-guzzling American car of some sort). He told us that it was clean inside and out, and sure enough, he had detailed it so carefully that it looked like a pristine royal velvety living room inside! Linda suggested that he could perhaps give his neighbors a ride to go vote on November 4, and he told us he didn’t like to let anybody ride in his car! Back on the sidewalk, Mable commented to Linda that this kid was probably suffering from sickle-cell anemia. It turned out that Mable was a pediatrician and Linda an at-home midwife. Who knew?

At Gregory’s house, we found that he was still busy on the phone and wasn’t going to talk to us, despite Linda’s cajoling from the living room (“You’re not going to let us down, are you, Gregory?” and, on our way out, “You know we love you, Gregory!”) His 12-year-old sister stepped outside with us, curious about us. She had already told us earlier that she knew who Obama was because they talk about him in the house so I said to her that she could try to get involved in the campaign if she wanted, that there was probably stuff for kids to do. Linda added that she could then tell her grandchildren that she worked on President Obama's campaign because it would be a historic one. Later on, we passed a 7-year-old boy walking by himself, and had a little friendly exchange with him, and Linda asked him, “You gonna be president when you grow up?” He giggled the way any kid would being asked about his grand plans by an adult. Mable said to me after he had gone that there was a time when you couldn’t even think that. I remembered a conversation I’d had earlier with my husband, and said something to the effect that there was a time when African-Americans couldn’t even get a library card. She said, jokingly, “Oh, that was just yesterday!”

The polling place for all of the people we had just was a church just down the street, and since there was a small crowd of people there and music blaring, we headed over. They had a barbecue going, with free hamburgers, hotdogs, and soft drinks, and were giving away used clothing as well (donations of course accepted). Here’s my video of it. That’s Linda, getting in the spirit of things. (The houses you see around the church are a bit larger and in better condition than the ones we went to).



There was a very enthusiastic woman we met there who told us that she was doing everything she could to promote Obama’s campaign: her backyard faced the church and she was going to hold a voter-registration event there and that when the church heard that, they were going to do one too. She was a student at Purdue University's regional campus and showed us the Obama buttons that someone she knew created and that she wore to class every day. (See pictures above).

On the drive back to Chicago, I couldn't help but wonder what was going to happen to these people if Obama did get elected. On the one hand I know that he has done enough community organizing among disenfranchised African-Americans to never forget them, but on the other hand, when people become presidents, they change. They gain power but the presidency often ends up being bigger than themselves. I just hope I'm not putting my support behind yet another politician who shows up only when when he/she needs votes and forgets them after election day. I'm hoping to go back to Gary with a couple of old high school friends in mid-October.

Canvassing in Gary, Indiana - Part II

When I got to the Obama for America field office in downtown Gary, I found it packed full of in-state and out-of-state volunteers. Each of us got a clipboard full of voter registration forms as well as forms needed for requesting absentee ballots, and very explicit instructions. We were also given a map of the particular district within Gary to which we were supposed to go, as well as the names and addresses of those in that area who were over 18 but not registered to vote. They had really done their homework in that office. Some of the volunteers with me didn’t have cars as they had been bussed in from Chicago, so a couple of women standing near me asked me if they could get a ride with me. We decided that the best thing to do was for the three of us to go to one area and divide up the list of houses to knock on among the three of us.

Linda, Mable (unusual spelling, I know), and I drove around quite a bit trying to find our particular district within Gary (the one crucial thing they forgot to give the volunteers from out of state was a larger map of the town) but even getting lost in Gary was informative. There was no neighborhood that was exempt from total and complete decay. Not only were there buildings downtown that were empty and boarded up (and hardly any businesses to speak of -- I didn't even see a fast food place there), there were homes all over town that were abandoned. Also, most other towns in the U.S. have somewhat reasonably well-kept “in-between” spaces but here there was just overgrown shrubbery and land that looked like they were returning to the prairie land that they were 150 years ago. The entire place just looked like an old forgotten town. We asked a few people for directions with little luck; they had probably lived in Gary all their lives but perhaps only knew their own immediate neighborhoods. To add to the confusion, each numbered street also had avenues and ‘places’ with the same number (eg., 13th St., 13th Ave., 13th Pl.). It occurred to me that most other towns name their streets after someone or something, and perhaps that takes someone with some combination of civic duty and pomp, but clearly, Gary’s citizens had other things on their mind. We finally came across someone working at a gas station (Kenny) who seemed very confident about where we should be headed. (He was drunk so maybe that’s why he was confident but in the end his directions, and some further help from the local Obama office got us to where we needed to go).

Our neighborhood was a residential neighborhood with very small individual houses, with every third house or so being abandoned and in some cases, boarded up. People were out and about, washing their cars, hanging out on their lawns, etc. it being a Saturday morning. (Very different from say, a Chicago suburb where people hang out in their back yards and not a soul is seen out front). Fortunately, my fellow-canvasser Linda, on an extraversion scale of 1 – 10 was a 15, and before I had even parked the car she was calling out to people and asking them if they were registered to vote (adding that we were from the Obama campaign as a sort of afterthought). There were a couple of guys hanging out on the street (they were in their early 20’s, one of them with a do-rag on his head) and they told us that they were registered and they then pointed to their friend Albert, who by then had come out of his house and was approaching us, and told us to ask him. Albert, a slight 18-year-old with cornrows, sort of shyly told us that he too was registered. Linda quizzed them about whether they knew where to go to vote, and jokingly asked them if they were actually going to do so on November 4th. I should say here that Linda and Mable were both African-American women in their 50’s and it was interesting to watch the exchange because it set the tone for the next few hours of our canvassing. They exuded warmth and friendliness without any reservations, and they weren't in the least patronizing (despite what I later found out was a huge class difference). The tone was, "We're in this together and this is our chance to make it happen." I don't think we would have had the sort of reception and the open conversations that we ended up having otherwise.

We decided to start off knocking on doors together, just so we could all get the hang of it. (OK, we were all slightly nervous, even Linda). The first house on our list where someone was actually home had its front door was wide open with a baby in a stroller at the door and a young girl (12 or 13 years old) peering out at us. She let us in (the TV was on and a 15-year-old boy wearing just a towel stared at us from the couch) and we asked for ‘Gregory’ as his name was on our list. No adult to be seen in the house, still. Gregory, we were told, was her older brother and he was busy. After we insisted that we needed to talk to him because we were from the Obama campaign and that he needed to get registered to vote, Gregory answered from his bedroom that he was on the phone and that we should come back. So we said ok and left. The next few homes had people who were already registered to vote. Everyone we had spoken to so far were Obama supporters so there was an air of welcome in the neighborhood. (I had canvassed in the San Francisco Bay Area during the 1992 elections and there were some neighborhoods in the valley beyond the Berkeley hills that did not want Democrats stepping on their lawns, so I still had a little residual cautiousness)! Our first ‘get’ was not really a get at first… the man (who was outside putting vinyl siding on his house to the sound of Bob Marley) was, he told us, registered to vote but his wife who was out at the moment taking the dog to the vet, had had some problems voting the last time around (the primaries, we figured). He (Roy) called her on his cell phone --how's that for a receptive audience? --and we spoke to her. It wasn’t clear what the issue had been but we recommended that she re-register to vote. She'd be home later so that was another home to go back to later. Roy was really friendly and told us that he owned an incense stand inside one of Chicago’s malls, selling incense, perfumed oils, etc. I figured they were doing alright financially: they could afford to have a dog (and take it to the vet) and they were doing house repairs at a time when most people didn’t have the cash or credit for that kind of thing. Roy, as I said was really friendly... he told us to be sure we didn't come back his way with a trail of men behind us because he'd call our husbands and tell them, otherwise! I didn’t take a picture of Roy's house but the picture above shows what was directly next door to him (you can see a bit of his house on the left with his car). The other picture above is of Mable (with white hat on) and Linda in front of two abandoned houses. (You can click on pictures to enlarge them if you'd like).

A few more knocks on empty houses, a few more people telling us that they were already registered to vote, and then we finally got to register someone! Two people together, actually. It turned out to be a little complicated so we were glad that the three of us were there together. The couple of the house (whom I later found out were not a couple at all but a 37-year-old mother who looked no more than 30, and her 18-year-old son who looked more like 28!!) had recently moved, and on top of that, he had changed his last name. They invited us in (I noticed that they had a computer) and we walked them through the voter registration forms as well as the absentee ballot requests as they would both be at work all day on November 4. There were a couple of very friendly toddlers running around (that added to my impression that the adults were a couple… you know, a family of four) but they weren’t even related to the two adults. The mother of the kids showed up while we were there. She was not registered to vote, and was actually on our list of people to talk to, but she didn’t have the time to deal with us. She had to go somewhere and wasn’t interested in filling out a form, even if we left it for her. It turned out that everyone there was living in this tiny this house together. The 18-year-old was in high school and his 37-year-old mother worked as a dealer in a casino. They had had problems with their previous landlord who wanted to charge them $600 per month for a badly-maintained house, so she and her son moved in with the (other) single mom, sharing in the rent. They were hoping it would be a temporary situation. The house they moved out of, they told us, was subsequently robbed because it was empty, the landlord not having been able to find any tenants for $600. The picture above shows Linda (with the child on her lap), Mable with the white cap, and the mother and son in their house.

(To be continued).