Registration..Final Push

We had a great time registering and talking to voters yesterday at Osage Hills. The amount of Obama signage there was truly inspiring, as was the amount of people who had already registered on their own, and the general enthusiasm for the election. I talked to one veteran who served three tours in Iraq, and told me he wants to make sure nobody else gets sent back there. Funny, he didn't once say "let us win", like McCain claims they all say.

I seriously doubt that very many of the folks we talked to out there show up on anybody's "likely voter" list. If all of Tulsa is like this, I think some people are going to be quite surprised come election day.

Today
This afternoon we will be at the OCCJ March toward CommUNITY (details here). Anyone can participate in the march of course, but if you'd like to do so with us, contact Mary Jo at 269-4400.

This Week
Any new voter registrations need to be postmarked by this Friday (the 10th) in order to be elegible for the general election. So even if you can only find a few hours during the week to help, please do so. Just stop by HQ at 3930 East 31 Street (between Yale and Harvard). There we can give you some quick training and a stack of voter registration forms.

If you can't find time during office hours, then I'll give you quick instruction here. You can download and print out the forms directly from the Oklahoma State Election Board's website. The most important things to remember are:

• Do not wear any Obama (or Democratic party) gear.
• Try to fill out the forms for the person, to ensure things are filled out properly and legibly.
• Convicted Felons can vote if they are no longer on parole.
• Try to also get email and phone numbers too, for our own lists.
• Bring a clipboard and multiple pens.
• Please turn all forms back in at Democratic Headquarters, so we can keep track of them.
• If for some reason they are busy (or someone wants one for someone else) they can of course fill the form out themselves and mail it in. It must be postmarked by this Friday!
• Mention that they can vote early to avoid the lines on election day. Early voting is November 1, 2, and 3 (the election is Nov 4).

People you can contact:
Mary Jo for the Tulsa area in general.
Alicia Cater in Wagoner.
Delorus Crawford in the area around Admiral and Harvard.
Blanca Thames for the Tulsa area Hispanic community.

If you can't even leave your computer, there's still something you can do to help. Send this blog to 5 friends. Send this video (embedded below) to five friends. The video is promoting this great voter registration website that Google worked up. Send that to five friends.

Registration Today!

I believe this is our last weekend to register voters. At 11:30 today we will meet HQ (3930 East 31 Street). After a brief orientation, we will be caravaning to the Osage Hills housing project. We hope to find a very large amount of interested but unregistered voters there. Bring a couple of clipboards and pens, and don't wear any politically-identifying items.

Letter from an Independent
Greg got this letter after the debate, and suggested I share it. Since I'm doing it only on his permission, the author is not being attributed. A small amount of spelling correction has also been done.

Additionally, below is my observation of last night's VP debate. It is not my only observation but it is one that illustrates the ability of the Republicans to "mainline" into the American psyche, something that continues to elude the Democrats. This failure perplexes me. I am a registered Independent as is my husband. We are the people from whom your party seeks votes.

Observation:
Please tell the honorable Senator Biden that he needs a 2nd change of his "intellectual" precepts.  He stated in the debate that his "1st change" was his perception that ideology of  judicial nominees for the Supreme Court does matter which I support this stance. The 2nd change Biden better recognize he needs to make now IS TO BE SUSPICIOUS OF SOMEONE'S MOTIVES as demonstrated by the "first name" request from Palin. There has been innumerable Media mentions of how friendly Sarah Palin was when the 2 of them first walked onto the debate stage. She asked Senator Biden if she could call him by his first name Joe. On camera. Loudly. And she said it very quickly in a tone uncharacteristic of the Palin pitch and immediately disengaged herself from him, never even acknowledging the Moderator, turned toward her podium & left him out there. Palin was now on target by obtaining his permission to call him by his first name.  Watch the encounter again.

She baited him as her handlers instructed her to in order to accomplish her first goal. Biden thought nothing of this request? And then he said yes!?! Biden could have just gracefully ignored her request by saying "It's so finally nice to meet you, Governor Palin and I am looking forward to this debate" all the while flashing his smile, turning and walking to his podium. She would have been thrown off her rehearsed strategy. However, she obtained ownership of his name. It's Negotiation Rule #1: Never give your adversary ownership of your name. First name basis? Never. Never. Never. Never.  And with Biden's permission, she would later in the debate employ the quip of "Say it ain't so, Joe" and get away with it.  What a primal zinger she has achieved for the Republicans with that one sound bite, that one liner. That was her motive.

Furthermore,  who did mike them? And on their person? How did live mikes happen before they reached their podiums? Doesn't someone set rules by which the candidates are to refer to each other before hand? How did this exchange happen ON STAGE & ON MIKE?

Obama wasn't successful with this "first name" tactic as Obama inadvertently associated success or deference to McCain by saying "John, you are correct" or "John, I agree with you" and you know the rest of that story. Now, the Republicans have doubled back with this tactic and used it to diminish the stature of Senator Biden under the Palin guise of "friendly". The Republicans were able to double back on the gender angle, too, with this "first name" ploy, using it to their advantage. Think on that for awhile.

Tell the Obama team to wake up to these primal nuances or they will lose the election and tell Senator Biden to be suspect of motives, all motives,
especially your opponent's.

I apologize for the length of this email. Thank you for your forbearance in
reading it.
XXX XXXX

BTW: For what it's worth, David Letterman just agreed with me on her motive.

There are some good points in there. However, this is just the VP's we are talking about here.

Debate Wrapup

A good time was had by all at the debate party at the Circle Cinema last night. The crowd this time was a bit less than one hundred. That's less than last time, but not by a huge amount. Fairly impressive.

Ms. Palin didn't exactly sound like leader of the Free World material, but she didn't run crying from the auditorium either. That's probably enough to call it a moral victory for her. Plus everybody's attention was taken away from the lousy economy. That's a big win for McCain.

As far as the actual debate, all the instapolling last night seems to indicate that Biden stomped her. Highlights were him going after Cheney, and a moment late in the debate where he talked about the adversity he's seen in his life, and choked up a bit when he got to the part about his son almost dying.



This isn't even the half of it either. His wife and baby daughter died in the same accident. I've often wondered why he didn't bring it up more often, but it's pretty clear from watching this that he just can't do it without getting emotional and loosing his train of thought. I guess the rest of us will have to bring it up for him.

Again, I don't think in the long run VP debates matter much. For a debate that will matter, meet us back at the Circle on Tuesday for the second presidential debate. This will be in McCain's favorite format, Town Hall, so its his best (perhaps only) remaining chance to turn the election around. However, Obama's not exactly a noob at talking to people one on one and in small groups either. That's pretty much what a community organizer does.

Workin' for the Weekend
We are down to the final week for voter registrations, and need to go out big. Tomorrow we will be doing a big voter registration push at Osage Hills. We suspect there are a very large amount of interested but unregistered voters there. This one drive has the potential to turn the whole election in Tulsa County. So please call Mary Jo at 269-4400 or email Greg and prepare to show up at the headquarters tomorrow morning at 11:30 with a clipboard and a smile.

VP Debate

The VP debate is tonight. Again I'd suggest coming out to the Circle Cinema, rather than rail at your own TV at home.

If you've seen Palin's recent interviews, I wouldn't expect this to go just like those. The debate format isn't an interview, where reporters can follow up (non)answers. It turns out that the one thing in the world Ms. Palin actually has a good amount of experience at is political debating. There's a good article up by one of her former opponents describing her performace. She's probably done it way more than Biden. She got her job as Alaska governor on the strength of her debate performances.

If Biden if known for anything, its for putting his foot in his mouth. To top it off, I can guarantee you that the Reps already have the details worked out on the "Biden disrespected poor Sarah" campaign, and are just waiting to pull the trigger.

Its also true that win, loose, or draw, it probably isn't going to matter all that much. If it did, our VP in 1988 would have been Lloyd Bentsen. The fact is people don't vote for VP, they vote for president. So look for both candidates to be attacking the other ticket's headliner, and mostly ignoring the person across from them.

Fired Up
Here's where I'd like to post a video of Biden to get you fired up and ready to go for the debate. But since this isn't Oklahoma for Biden, I'm instead going to post this amazing clip I came across of a speech Obama gave the day after the last debate. I does have Biden in it a bit.

This speech, on its own, would easily be one of the three best I've heard Obama give. However, it started to rain a few minutes in, and thus events conspired to give us something more.

I remember hearing a interview a few years back with a guy who grew up in the Bronx. When he was a kid he took piano lessons, and was fairly good. He said that once he found himself in the house of a friend of his mom's, and was told to go play with her son William, who was "the same age as you and plays piano like you". So he goes in with this kid where the piano was, and sits down to try to play, only to find that a lot of the keys were broken. He gives up in disgust, and asks the kid how he can possibly play with this thing. The other boy tells him, "Oh, it's no big deal. I just play around the broken keys". William then sits down and proceeds to do just that. That's when this guy realises he's in the presence of someone who's not meerly good, but a genius. William grew up to be known as "Billy Joel".

That's the story that came to my mind as I watched this video. Obama starts by shrugging the rain off as unimportant, much like you'd see in a professional football player. Then he starts to use it. By the end, its as integral a part of his speech as if he'd called it up himself for the occasion. I've never seen anything like this.

Anyway, set yourself aside 26 minutes and watch this.



...and Ready to Go
If you're not fired up and ready to go after watching that, you must be one of those dead Chicago democratic voters the Reps keep telling me about. So I know you are now anxious to come help us this weekend register voters at Osage Hills. Call Mary Jo at 269-4400 or email Greg.

This weekend

This weekend is one of only two left for registering voters for this election. So it's important that we get as many volunteers as possible this weekend.

Osage Hills

At our war council last night we decided to go for broke. We'll be doing the Wal-Marts again, because they have also worked well, but we are going to try for a big push at Osage Hills this weekend. This has a potential to net us a very large number of registrations. The more people we get, the quicker and more efficiently we can get this done.

Please call Mary Jo at 269-4400 or email Greg to tell us you will be there to help.

We will meet at the party HQ (3930 East 31 Street) at 11:30 AM on Saturday for a quick orientation. Then we will caravan to Osage hills and try to cover the entire complex working in pairs.

If you can't work at that time, but still want to help this weekend, go ahead and call Mary Jo. She'll tell you when else we could use the help.

March Toward CommUNITY

I personally plan on attending this, but I'm not sure how well publicised it has been. Sunday afternoon OCCJ is sponsoring a 2 mile march downtown in support of community and justice in the Tulsa area. This is part of their 50th anniversary celebration. It will start and end at the Greenwood Cultural Center (322 North Greenwood). Afterwards there will be a "Blues and BBQ celebration". I'm told that showing up just for that part is discouraged though. (You slackers out there know I'm talking about you. :-) )

There will be $500 prizes given out to the groups with the most participants in five categories. Registration starts at 2, the march starts at 3, and the celebration afterwards begins at 5:45. I'm told other food options besides BBQ will be provided.

As usual, any other ideas or comments you may have are welcome in the comments section below.

Local Campaign News

Registration

We did an event in support of Creek County democrats this past weekend, and ended up registering about 56 voters. In addition, we "showed the flag" up there, to great response.

I think that's a pretty good number, all things considered. However, we know we can do better at events in more densely settled areas in Tulsa. Given that we are down to the last 10 days, we are going to try to keep what resources we have those areas.

We do have one good new piece of news. We got permission yesterday from the Chief of the Osages to do registration events at the tribe's casinos. There's still a layer or two of tribal bureaucracy this has to be pushed through, but hopefully we'll be able to work the casinos this weekend.

All this being said, there's absolutely nothing stopping you from registering voters yourself wherever you think will work and on your own schedule. The forms are available from the Oklahoma Election Board's website. Just read the instructions, download the form, and print out all you need. One caveat is that you can't pump a particular political party or view before you register someone.

Keep an eye on this site for our official registration events.

Ideas

Anyone who has stopped by County HQ in the last few weeks has noticed the transformation. What used to be a sleepy office with friendly people happy for a chance to chat has become a frenzied beehive of activity.

This is great of course, but there is a downside. Some folks who want to call in to give ideas for the campaign have to get the brush-off. We don't like doing it, but we just don't have the time for it right now.

However, here on the Oklahoma for Obama website, we have all the time in the world. So this is the place to come with your ideas for the campaign. Crazy like a fox, or just plain crazy, click the "comments" link below and post them here. We are going to be holding a war council in the next few days, and I'd love to arrive with a pocketful of great ideas from you folks to present.

Poll Upswing Continued

The surge for Obama continues today. Rasmussen doesn't have new numbers up yet, but Research 2000 this morning has Obama up another point to %51 (his highest yet), and McCain down another point to %42. Gallup also has Obama up another point to %50 (and McCain down 2).

Nate Silver argued yesterday that its going to be a lot harder for McCain to come back from this than a lot of pundits are letting on. Hard does not mean impossible though, and the Reps have really yet to start swinging with both hands. The real nastiness won't even start until the last 72 hours, when their dreaded ground game gets into full gear.

As a reminder again, there will be a VP debate watch party at the Circle Cinema this Thursday. It probably won't be a game changer one way or the other, but you should watch. I think you should come watch with us, because it's just way too frustrating to watch stuff like this (video below) alone. You need to hear the groans of the other listeners just to prove that it's not you who is the insane one.



So for the sake of your own sanity, please watch the debate with friends.