It’s time! I’m going to go grab some lunch, but then I’m going out to cast my vote, run a couple errands, and then spend the rest of the day on Get Out The Vote activities. When the polls close at 8, I’ll breath a sigh of relief that I can sit down, but I think my nerves will be shot, too, as I go somewhere with my fellow supporters to watch the results come in.
New Hampshire residents, don’t forget to vote!
There was a whole round of new polls yesterday. Notice anything different? Polls are notoriously inaccurate, but Obama, just a week ago 10 points behind Hillary, is suddenly on top. As is pointed out on the site, we can’t rely too heavily on polls. But if a candidate is trailing pretty far in the polls and, in a week’s time, ends up as the front-runner, it’s a promising sign.
As an aside, they don’t show Richardson in the polls, but I’d be very interested to see how he’s done in the past week. He did great in last night’s debate: if I was an undecided I may well have latched onto him.
The work you do as a volunteer for a campaign, quite frankly, sucks. You call hundreds of people, most of whom hang up as soon as they learn why you’re calling. You hear the same stuff over and over. Those that are more involved than I am rarely sleep. It’s just horrible work. I treasure every minute of it.
We’ve been working out of the basement of a wonderful local family, as the official regional campaign headquarters got too crowded and too hectic. All the national people have apparently come in (for obvious reasons), leaving little room for volunteers. With heaps of papers strewn across the table in someone’s basement, one of the organizers asked me, “Is this grassroots or what?” as I walked in.
You meet a lot of people. I mean that in multiple ways. Today I met Deval Patrick (MA governor) in person and he talked to my mom and I for a moment, seeming to genuinely care. I’ve met so many volunteers for the Obama campaign, and they’re all over the place. At dinner last night we sat with a guy and his two young children, and with several adults. Several of the volunteers I work with are younger than I am, many still in high school. And today we worked side-by-side with a woman in her 60s. This is exciting.
And you somehow get access to The Grapevine. We were talking today about how Romney pays his volunteers. This doesn’t make a ton of sense to me: I’m doing my work for Obama because I feel so strongly that he’s the right man for the job. My point isn’t that he saves costs by having volunteers who are, well, volunteers. My point is that since I’m not being paid a dime for my work, there’s no incentive to do it but for the obvious one: to elect him. Some of my new partners have apparently come across a few Romney “employees” who don’t even support him. They do their work, but at the end of the day on Tuesday, their vote won’t be cast for Romney.
Not many people pick up when I call. I’m either calling from a phone whose caller ID shows a candidate’s name, or I’m calling from my own phone, in which case I block caller ID data out of paranoia. (I don’t need some nut who’s had one too many calls coming after me.) And I really don’t blame them–I don’t pick up the phone unless I know who’s calling, either. But the one thing that excites me is that the people who pick up aren’t stupid by any means. You can’t just read some stats to them and swing their vote. They’ve either made up their mind and can articulate exactly why, or they’re undecided and ask tough questions.
This is what politics needs to be about. In New Hampshire, politicians can’t get away with reading us a prepared speech about what they want to talk about. We control the conversation, and we talk about the things that affect us. And the candidates who won’t do that don’t make it out of our state with ratings intact.
What’s remarkable about this election is that it seems that a lot of people are booing attack ads. It seems like I’m far from the only one that much prefers candidates to talk on how they can work together, not to take perpetual jabs at each other. Not only does it not move us forward, but it’s frankly irritating.
In tonight’s debate, Hillary seemed to be in attack overdrive mode. After one particularly pointed remark, John Edwards made a comment about how, before she finished third in Iowa, she didn’t seem to be so focused on the negative politics. Bravo, John.
Anyone who read my (admittedly lengthy and sometimes meandering) commentary on the 100 Club dinner last night–or anyone who went there–remembers one thing that seemed odd: Hillary fans were assigned to tables right by the stage, and right in front of the cameras. The Obama tables were cast into a corner, perpendicular to all the cameras, at a distance. I was somewhat peeved by this, but didn’t think too much of it.
I can’t believe I’m linking to Fox, but it turns out that a Fox reporter picked up on this, with surprisingly good insight. (For brevity, feel free to scroll about a third of the way down and start with the sentence beginning, “Never was that on display more clearly than at the 100 Club Dinner here Friday night.”)
I think I speak for almost everyone, not just fellow Obama supporters, when I say that this type of sneaky campaigning isn’t welcome here. When the Republicans tried phone-jamming our get-out-the-vote (GOTV) efforts years ago, we sent them to jail. We don’t like people who play dirty in New Hampshire, and any politician who thinks they can come into our state and pull the wool over our eyes is in for a surprise. Except it’s really no surprise, but rather, common sense: we like an honest, clean fight in which the best candidate wins, and the voters will speak on Tuesday.
Through my newfound connections, I got myself invited to a dinner with the New Hampshire Democratic Party. Me and 2,999 other New Hampshire residents. It was amazing. Although let me start with one disclaimer: it used to really get under my skin when people would take jabs at Democrats for being disorganized. But between a Youth Democrats of America conference I went to with some college colleagues and tonight, I’ve come to the following conclusion: Democrats are great in government, but terrible at organizing conferences. It took us a good 20 minutes to find a parking spot. It wasn’t that it was crowded (it was), but it was that the people telling us where to go were utterly inept! They’d tell us where to go park, and we’d arrive and have someone else tell us that they had no idea why they sent us there, since we couldn’t park there, and send us somewhere else. So we zig-zagged across the Hampshire Hills complex for quite some time.
In typical style with these posts, I’ll probably mix political and event commentary with some comments about photographic conditions. All photos link through to the Flickr gallery, where I’ve uploaded 21 highlights from tonight.
Let’s begin with the trivial. It was held in a huge dome, newly built at the posh Hampshire Hills dome. Since I’d been there last (a couple years), they apparently built an enormous stadium capable of seating 3,000:
Media swarmed the place, since with Iowa done, we were the next big thing, second only to the news that Britney Spears was taken to the hospital…
So really, the whole nation’s–even the world’s–eyes were upon us. It’s our time to shine… or to embarrass ourselves:
We were all there to see the Democrats running for President, but they made us sit through an awful lot of other stuff. For example, who–or what–is this?
Carol Shea-Porter spoke briefly. While I think everyone in the room was to credit, I was secretly proud for having voted for her. Not only is she spot-on when it comes to the issues, but she’s an outstanding speaker.
A few photography notes… For one, if you ever find yourself in charge of lighting at an event such as this, please consider bringing a photographer in to give you some guidance. The flag had really strange lighting on it. The goal with the black backdrop and intense lighting on the podium may have been to ensure that the background was non-distracting. It’s surely better than the glossy poster behind Bill Clinton. But it threw my camera’s metering through a loop, and I ended up shooting in full-manual mode most of the night. It was so dark that I was using ISO1600 at f/3.5 (as fast as my wide lens goes) and getting exposures of 1/15 second. Terribly dark. But then I was using ISO800 and getting 1/500-second shutter speeds shooting candidates. This is good, except that the light was really harsh, and all the lights were of different color temperatures. So our beloved flag was maroon, white, beige with a hint of blue, and black, while the whitest of speakers had intensely red skin. If the speaker was properly exposed, the podium was underexposed, and the sign in front was overexposed.
John Lynch, New Hampshire’s (Democratic) governor spoke a bit, too. Here you can see another problem: my 200mm lens (effectively 320mm with the digital camera’s crop) was far too short… They need to make a 100-600mm f/1.4 lens for situations like these. (Such a lens would probably weight at least 100 pounds and cost as much as a house, but it would take great pictures!) I honestly don’t know a lot about what Lynch has been up to, but it’s the same way I felt like when Clinton was president: things seem to run smoothly. National politics is a crisis week after week. With both Deval Patrick (MA Governor) and John Lynch, I think no news is good news. (I forget whether it was Lynch or Shea-Porter that mentioned it, but 2008 marked the beginning of civil unions in New Hampshire. So it’s not all no news. I’m frankly kind of proud that what much of the country probably sees as a quaint old farming state is at the forefront of…. rights?)
John Edwards was a no-show. I’m not sure what happened. I’d imagine that he was doing something else, somewhere else, but I’m really not sure why, especially after the surprise of beating Hillary in Iowa, he’d chose to avoid a forum with 3,000 New Hampshire Democrats and cameras from every news network in the country.
So Kucinich went first. While the Caucus results show him having received 0.0% of the votes, he didn’t seem phased by trivial polls.
If you think this is an unflattering photo… You should have been there. I agreed with a lot of what he said, but it was how he said it that I think resigns him to getting 0.0% in important polls. He spoke about how it’s wrong to spy on our citizens (a reference to Bush’s wiretapping), and how we should end the war, etc. But he seemed almost as angry as on Hardball.
It seemed a lot like a fire-and-brimstone speech, except, instead of shouting about Jesus, he was shouting about the Constitution, and, instead of waving the Bible, he was frantically waving his pocket copy of the US Constitution:
What pictures can’t convey is that he was furiously pounding on the podium and began jumping around a bit. Hopefully one of the news stations that was there will broadcast that.
It was assumed that this was his wife:
…although she appears more like a giant than a wife.
We also got to hear from Howard Dean:
He was actually a great speaker, and has a quality I love in politicians: the ability to poke fun at himself a little bit. He started talking about the need for a strong showing not just in Iowa and New Hampshire, and then began to list a few more states with early primaries. “But they tell me I’m not supposed to do lists anymore,” he said, an obtuse reference to his infamous yell. And then he made the reference much clearer by pumping his fist and acting as if he were about to reenact it, drawing laughter and applause.
Tonight’s hidden gem was Bill Richardson.
I’ve liked him for a long time, and he’s a very close second to Obama on my list of preferred candidates. (An Obama-Richardson ticket would be incredible! Hint hint, Obama!) While he doesn’t always photograph well (or maybe I just have bad timing), he sure knows how to give a speech. But perhaps most powerful was what he said about the need to pull out of Iraq. He talked, with evident sadness in his voice, about how he looks forward to the day when he can stop taking down the New Mexico flag to honor yet another of his residents killed in action. It was a really powerful way to put it, and the way he did it was flawless: it seemed like he opposed the war not just for political reasons, or as a soundbite, but because it truly pained him as governor to see his citizens being killed. Wow. Just wow. I really can’t do his speech justice here, but suffice it to say that I think his was the best.
And, of course, Hillary Clinton was there. I didn’t get (m)any pictures of her, because her supporters were standing and completely blocking the podium. (More on this later.) Bill and the much-forgotten Chelsea were there, too. But she began something that left me feeling uneasy: throughout the whole thing, there’d been an awesome sense of compatriotism. Some of us were there for Obama, some were there for Hillary, and some for other candidates. We were all in it together, not for our candidate, but for our future.
Hillary let loose a verbal barb clearly aimed at Obama, saying that we need strong leadership to end the war, not just hope that it will happen. This really rubbed me the wrong way–this type of bickering is exactly what has so many people fed up with politics. I also started to pick up on a sense of animosity between the Hillary fans and the Obama fans. I mentioned earlier that the Hillary fans crowded the stage and remained standing. None of us could see the stage, but with two enormous screens projecting a live feed, it wasn’t a big deal.
The Hillary camp somehow also wound up with all their tables right in front of the podium, while the Obama fans were assigned to tables in the corner. It turns out I was far from the only one to find this a little strange, as the Obama organizers decided to have us all stand and walk up to the stage when Obama came out. This ended up being an utter disaster, though.
Since our seats weren’t anywhere close, we ended up blocking an aisle. This didn’t sit well with the fire marshall, who (emphatically) cleared the aisles. We were still standing, just with a big fire-safety aisle between us, but an announcer demanded that we sit down before the event would proceed. A number of Hillary supporters were also getting testy with us. While really just a minor thing, it seems to me to show a lot of deeper problems: Obama supporters ended up coming off as brash and obnoxious, and I think Hillary fans and Obama fans came to dislike each other a little bit more. This is what we can’t have happening.
Of course, not everyone sat down as requested, leaving those of us who can follow instructions to get some pretty lousy pictures.
Obama, as usual, gave a great speech. He talked a lot about hope (which sums him up well). But he indirectly had a great comeback to Hillary’s jab, saying that, while he acknowledges that he’s a “hopemonger,” it’s time for a President with a can-do attitude, as opposed to focusing on the stale ways of Washington that we’re all so fed up with. Unlike some of the other candidates, he really didn’t use the opportunity to give a basic “You should vote for me” speech, as much as a, “The time is now” speech.
I suppose it’s neat to have him framed by his signs, but I’d hoped for better.
We’ve got a few more days to go. I’m attending a house party tomorrow (Deval Patrick’s coming), and it looks like there’s a Nashua Obama rally. Sunday’s more phonebanking, and Monday’s a Manchester rally for Obama. And then Tuesday is the day. And then it’s all over for us, with the candidates and the news getting a few days rest before scuttling on to the next primary. And an incredibly awkward period of waiting will emerge, leaving us in suspense for months before candidates are finally chosen.
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/primaries/results/state/#IA
Most TV is more focused on what a caucus is than on current results… I’m just refreshing this page a lot.
Iowa Caucus today. I’m glued to my computer. But it hasn’t even started.
This article mentions some interesting scenarios. One is that Edwards has been campaigning like mad in Iowa for a long time, so some are suggesting that he might walk away in first place. But Obama’s camp is also expecting a huge turnout: if we can get a flood of young voters to go to the Caucus, Obama’s a shoe-in. The article even mentions that it wouldn’t really be so surprising if Hillary, generally considered the front-runner, comes out in third place. The polls have started contradicting each other. One December 30 poll shows Obama winning slightly, another shows Clinton winning slightly. It’s all within that margin of error, and, on top of the margin of error, you have to wonder about who’s going to show up at the Caucus.
Giuliani is playing his cards… strangely. It looks like he’s blowing off Iowa again. He’s behind even Thompson in Iowa. I’m still surprised that Huckabee is doing so well in Iowa. He and Romney are duking it out there. (And, while I have major issues with a candidate who proclaims that he’s going to recapture our nation for Christ, I think I’d favor him over Romney.)
New Hampshire’s a bit interesting, too. Averaging polls, and mixing gut feeling in, it looks like Clinton enjoys a slight lead over Obama, and both of them are out in front of Edwards. But I think Iowa’s going to play a big role. If Edwards does really well in Iowa, that may bring him success in New Hampshire. Of course I’m crossing my fingers for Obama.
The Republican front gets interesting here, because the candidates who are polling favorably here aren’t the same ones in Iowa. Giuliani isn’t doing too well here, either–and I recall a recent article suggesting that, the more he campaigned here, the more his numbers dropped–but he’s doing better than in Iowa. Huckabee here falls tremendously, though, to a mere 9%. The two big guys here are Romney and McCain. McCain was actually leading in the most recent poll, although a poll a few days earlier said the same about Romney.
South Carolina’s being called another bellwether state. They have split primaries: the R’s go the 19th and the D’s go a week later. The South Caroliners show no love for their neighbor to the North, John Edwards, who’s polling at 17% pretty consistently. Here, Obama and Clinton are also neck-and-neck, although what’s interesting is that it looks like Obama has been closing in: in previous surveys he wasn’t nearly as close. On the Republican front, they’re quite fragmented: Giuliani, McCain, Romney, and Thompson are all pretty close. Huckabee enjoys a significant lead here, with 28% of the vote. I’m thinking that Iowa and New Hampshire might shake things up a bit: Thompson and McCain aren’t looking viable in the first two, so perhaps their supporters will get behind another candidate.
Before South Carolina, though, we have Michigan. They haven’t been getting polled that often, though. It looks like Romney and Huckabee are the two big guys there. We have to go back to November to see Democrat results, but it looks like Clinton has a significant lead in Michigan. And then there’s Florida, where Giuliani leads, with Huckabee and Romney essentially tied for second. Hillary seems to enjoy a significant lead in the Democratic race.
Don’t get too caught up in the need for instant gratification watching who wins, though. The next week is going to be exciting, and then there’s Super Tuesday (or Super Duper Tuesday as it’s now being called), with over 20 states holding primaries the first Tuesday in February. But we can’t just wait until February to know: as the map shows, a sizable number of states have later primaries. Montana and South Dakota are off in the Twilight Zone, holding primaries in June. (Think they’ve had a lot of candidate visits? Then again, think they’re getting a lot of calls?) The DNC is at the end of August, and the RNC is the next week, starting off September.
As has happened in the past, it seems like the election has been reduced to 2 or 3 talking points–immigration, health care, and Iraq, to name the big ones.
I was brushing up on Obama’s stance on the issues, and found something that really excited me. Check out his page on ethics. It’s not vague talk about how lobbying is bad. He has an awesome plan:
It’s ambitious, but boy would it be awesome! It’s funny: it almost seems like it’s somehow wrong that I should be able to see exactly what my elected officials are doing. And yet it’s really exactly what our government is all about: transparency. Wow-a-wee-wow!
In the most recent polls, Obama is leading narrowly in New Hampshire. And it’s practically a banal phrase at this point, but Iowa is a crapshoot: the “big three” (Edwards, Clinton, and Obama) are pretty much tied. Right now it looks like Edwards is leading, which people thought was unlikely. Thus I’m not too worried at the moment about Hillary’s triumphs in other places.
But for the first time in a while, I’m feeling really excited. This could actually happen!
I’m starting to get interested in the Republican primaries as well: they’re seeming pretty fragmented. Romney and Rudy both have big leads over each other in many states, but McCain and Huckabee are notable contenders in some states, too. (Somewhat humorously, at least to me, Romney has a pathetic 7% in Massachusetts, although the poll is ancient. Someone ought to do a new poll of Massachusetts voters.)
Plans are still up in the air but I may well end up volunteering over at the Obama headquarters later today. The nation is watching us, and I don’t want to sit by idly in the process. We can do this!
Thanks Rusty for finding the Electoral-Vote.com website, something I’d forgotten about from the 2004 election. The data is in a bit of a confusing layout… Disregard the 2004 map and the first little table. He then has a comprehensive list of polls state-by-state.
My eyes are on Clinton:Obama. And I seriously have knots in my stomach here. Clinton is winning by at least 10% in most places. Arizona is 44% to 14%. In his home state of Illinois, Obama’s winning 37% to 33%.
The good news! Iowa, a key state, is slightly favoring Obama. But really, it’s a crapshoot: Obama, Edwards, and Clinton are neck-and-neck. Romney and Huckabee lead the Republican primary. At this point in time, though, my main concern is on the Democratic primary.
Here in New Hampshire, Obama’s trailing, 26% to 38%. This is not good. We’re #2 after Ohio.
Oklahoma’s weird. Obama’s got 13%, with Clinton and Edwards tied at 29%. (Don’t get me wrong: Edwards is good, but I don’t think he has a chance right now.)
The Republican one is interesting to take a gander at, too. In some places, Huckabee’s an also-ran. In Arizona, he got 3% of the votes. Once. In Iowa, he inches past Romney to take first place at 28%. Surprisingly (to me, at least), he’s doing the exact same thing in New Hampshire. With a quick skim (admittedly, much less than I’ve afforded the Democratic primary), it looks like Giuliani is king of the Republican race.
But a few thoughts:
One-sentence conclusion: It’s too soon to really have any idea how things will go, but Clinton has a discomforting majority in many states.
A few parting thoughts: