New Game

Let's play a little game I like to call Spot the Elitist.
(Click on the image for a larger picture)

Surprisingly, a lot of people seem to be having trouble with this one.

Polls

Before I say anything, I'd like to thank everyone who came out to help register voters at all the events this weekend. I'll try to get some kind of numbers to let you know how we did overall posted here tomorrow.


Most of you probably realise that the week after the RNC Convention was a bad week for Obama. All the talk was about Palin and personalities, her family's choices, field-dressing mooses, etc. None of those are really core message for the Democrats. McCain's numbers shot up and passed Obama's.

Then last week reality poked its nose back in the campaign, in the form of the banking crisis. Its funny what putting the focus on a real problem facing this country can do. I wanted to take this time to show everyone the current numbers, in case you got dejected a week ago and quit looking at the polls.

I'll add the pretty graphics when I can figure out how to do it (they are typically HTML scripts, not nice little pictures), but in the meantime if you check the DailyKos tracking poll or the Gallup Daily Election tracking poll you will see the same thing: McCain's numbers dropped like a rock at the start of last week, while Obama's went up to near 50%. The polls currently show Obama at %49 and McCain at %43 and %45 respectively.

The message here is pretty clear. When the discussion is about the real problems this country faces after 8 (or 30 depending on how you look at it) years of republican rule, we win. When its about personalities and moose-meat, we loose. Keep this in mind when you are talking to your friends and neighbors.

Registration Drive Weekend Update

I got a couple of messages from Greg this morning which I'd like to share. A summary wouldn't do them justice.

My 2 voter reg teams registered 23 voters on Brookside. One woman who I helped was born in 1941 and had never registered to vote until today and primarily did so because of Pallin! I mainly did a visibility, sign sales, and volunteer recruitment, thing. I must have sold 100 Obama Biden yard signs (sold out!). People honked and cheered!

and

Not only did I sell out of Obama signs ... people took all (almost) of the other candidates' info I on display! Moreover, a lot of people commented on how many Obama signs they see all over town and how few McCain/Palin signs. Most saw last week as pivotal, and feel the McCain’s campaign is in self-destruct mode.

Just to make it clear, this was a 68 year old woman who has never in her life even registered to vote. But she's doing it this year so she can vote against Palin. These are the kinds of inspiring Tulsans you can meet when you help us register voters.

We still have lots of registration events left for today, so pick one, call the coordinator, and show up to make a difference. (See my two previous posts for events, times, and basic instructions).

Work Day

Today is our big day for voter registration drives! Please pick one or more from the list in yesterday's posting and come out to help make a difference.

Things to remember about voter registrations:

• Bring a clipboard and extra pens.
• The coordinator should bring plenty of forms, but you can print your own out from here (requires acrobat).
  
• Don't wear any party or candidate identifying clothing or pins, buttons, etc.
• Don't discuss your own political views before a person has completed the form. They'll have to guess. :-)
• Don't discourage anyone from registering for any reason.
  

I want to emphasise that last point. I don't care if they did tell you they want to register Republican or LaRouche or whatever. We try to weed those folks out by picking our locations to perform the drives. However, once we are there it's our moral (and legal) imperative to register everyone regardless of affiliation.

Campaign News

There's a lot of news to get through today.

Office Moving

The first bit of news is that our office is moving. The new address is 3930 East 31st St. This is also the Tulsa Democratic Headquarters, so you can pick up campaign signs and materials for you other favorite democratic candidates when you stop by. Please do stop by, pick up your swag, and volunteer.

Registration Status

Greg turned in a batch of over 200 voter registrations to the county election board office this week. Congratulations to everyone who helped gather those registrations. But we need more, way more.

Now that we have a bit more experience, we can analyze which locations work well and which don't. Half of those registrations were gathered at a single drive at Wal-Mart last weekend. Half of the remainder were gathered at another drive at the east Tulsa flea market. We sent a lot more people to the various football games last Friday, and didn't gather more than 20 or so. So we are going to be dropping the football game drives and refocusing our efforts to locations like the area Wal-Marts and flea/farmers markets. I'll get the calendar updated when I can, but for now know that the football game drives are not happening. If you are going to one anyway and want to take some forms, by all means do so though.

Registration Opportunities

If you want to do something more that just simply voting to help Obama get elected (and every other Democrat in the area), this is your big chance. This weekend we have lots of registration drives going on. Just pick one or two from the list below that fit your schedule, and call the coordinators. We have plenty of opportunities, so don't just sit back an let someone else do it. Come on out and help!

If you want to help with the flea market drive this Saturday morning, contact Mary-Jo at 269-4400. She is also coordinating drives at the Quick Trip Anniversary Festival this Saturday from 5 to 7 PM.

We will also be doing a drive at the TU tailgate party this Saturday from Noon to 5PM at the stip mall on 11th street across from the stadium. Again, contact Mary-Jo at 269-4400 if you'd like to help.

Louis King will will be running a drive outside the BOK center during the Lil' Wayne concert this Saturday from 6-7:30 PM. You can contact him at 437-0310 to help.

Greg will be leading a drive at the Brookside Artzz this Saturday (tomorrow) from 11 to 5. He will also be coordinating a drive at the Jazz Hall of Fame during the concert this Sunday. If you like to listen to some good Jazz while you help register voters, contact him at gregmarkley@att.net.

Finally Blanca is running a drive at the downtown Hispanic Festival this weekend. It is both Saturday and Sunday from 1-10PM. The hispanic community in Tulsa has been growing much more quickly in the last few years than I think most Tulsans realise. Nothing less than the party's future hangs on how well we reach out to this community. Blanca has been working hard to register their voters for the last two years, so she's one of my personal heroes. If you have any free time at all to donate this weekend call her at 231-3340.

Debate Watch Parties

The campaign will be hosting watch parties for the debates. More on this in a later post, but for now mark you calendars.

Mule Skinner's Mail Pouch

I got the following email the other day:

Do you know if someone is doing a similar blog for other parts of the state?

After a long web search, I'm afraid I could find no other local Obama campaign site in Oklahoma. The closest I found was the statewide site up on Barack's main campaign website. It has some local area subpages.

I did find a fairly rich lode of personal blogs of Oklahomans who are writing about the campaign, along with their other concerns. The best I saw were:

• Blue Oklahoma
• Peace Arena - The emailer in question's own blog
  
• Alternative Tulsa
• Just Not Right aka Kittenstomper
• Middle Raged Punk
• Oklahoma Lefty
• Sinister - For those of you who don't know Latin, Sinister means left
• Fourth District Democrat - Covering southwest Oklahoma
• Soonerthought
• The Oklahoma Hippy - Currently has a lot of posts up about last night's Ani Difranco concert. Greg was there too. He had a great time, and registered 20 new voters.

I should also mention Sooner Kos, which isn't as much a blog as a discussion group on the Daily Kos website. Its fairly low volume, but you can find me there.

With a list this long, its inevitable that I missed a few good ones. Feel free to post your favorites.

Registrations Up or Down?

I stumbled across an interesting article by
Randy Krehbiel in Monday's Tulsa World about declines in the voter rolls in Tulsa voting districts. This is despite the fact that the population of the city is growing. This is mostly due to purges in the voter rolls in guess where? That's right, heavily democratic districts in north and east Tulsa.

The six north and east Tulsa districts pictured here lost about 3,000 voters in the last two years.

I'm not suggesting anything nefarious here. Randy's article suggests the culprit is declining home ownership rates in the area. Renters move more, and thus need to reregister more often than homeowners do. I suppose you could call the ongoing impoverishment of the working class, and north Tulsa in particular "nefarious", but that's another story.

I do know that we are going to work our tails off to reverse this. I'm going to try to get some detailed numbers today, but I do know that just two of our weekend registration events alone made up %5 of this deficit. We are still just getting geared up and learning where the most effective places to register people are, so I expect this to accelerate in the days to come.

In the meantime, if you want to help, please call the office (or stop by during business hours). If you have any suggestions for good places to register voters, please post a reply to this message.