Memoirs of a New York Denizen

Yes We Did

2009-02-28T19:55:00.001-05:00

My friend, Adriaan's, post on the campaign

Ohio, Post-Mortem

2008-11-07T16:23:00.002-05:00

Some Other Thoughts
- CNN's David Gergen is awesome, even if his head looks like a potato.

- My friend Samantha from the campaign worked for Elle Magazine and was asked to blog about her experience. Here's the link in case you're interested - there are a few remarkable stories about the people we worked with, including my friend Greg. Greg is, a cancer patient who is in remission, has been fighting for his insurance for months and months, and really made Obama's pledge of healthcare a very personal issue for all of us. Greg is still being treated, but forced himself to come to Ohio to make a difference. He is a great guy and did a phenomenal job for the campaign: http://fashion.elle.com/blog/2008/11/twenty-one-days.html

- Finally, here are all of my photos from the trip, not including the Michelle Obama rally which I sent out during the campaign:

- Thank you so much to those who sent notes of support during the campaign. As small as my role was, it's been a lot of fun to be involved in a part of history. I've very much enjoyed your reactions to my updates, it has meant a lot. And I appreciate your patience if you've read this far :)

I will leave you with a short clip of Obama's acceptance speech and my party's reaction:

Remember, "This victory alone is not the change we seek - it is only the chance for us to make that change."

Yes We Did,
David

Wrong Ideas, Over

2008-11-07T08:03:00.000-05:00

An excerpt from The Rachel Maddow Show on November 5th:

The idea that America is too flawed, too scarred by racism to elect a black president? That idea is over. When Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran said back in April that neither a woman nor black man could ever get elected in a country like this? How satisfying is it to prove that guy wrong? The idea the white voters in Pennsylvania and Indiana could be counted on to vote for a woman, but never a black man? That idea is over. The idea that the Democratic Party is a regional party, it only appeals in the northeast and on the west coast and part of the upper Midwest? That's over. The 50-state strategy with all its risks, signed, sealed, and delivered last night's blue map. The idea that the Republican Party has an indestructible, unbeatable get-out-to-vote efforts? That idea is over. The idea that 527 groups will dominate any election or any candidate they want to - that's over. The idea that liberals can't succeed on television - that's over. Yes, we can.

The idea, I confess, my idea that the parties were so unfairly branded on national security that we couldn't elect a Democrat in wartime anymore -that idea is over. The Bradley effect, over.

For all of those assumptions and theories, I welcome you to obsolescence. All of that is finished. That's all old world. Barack Obama, from who he is to how he ran, he extinguished the old world. If you hear someone suggest those old world assumptions about politics, race, and what the USA is or is not capable of, if you hear it at work, you hear it at party, or at a press conference, or at a United Nations speech or the Thanksgiving table-you are now licensed to laugh out loud at that person. Today is a new world and it is a new world about which we know very little.

The question tonight is not what just ended. We know what just ended. The question is: What happens now?

--Rachel Maddow

Ohio, Day 14: Election Day

2008-11-06T13:15:00.000-05:00

Only Got Today to Change the World
Depending on one's role on E-Day, your morning could have started as early as 5am (or earlier!) as everyone needed to check into various staging locations (SLs) around the county. Some team captains were based out of a SL, some were assigned to a polling location, and some had to remain more mobile throughout the day. There were several primary roles: Line managers (made sure people on line were staying on line, comfortable, hydrated, happy, well-informed, etc), Houdinis (more on this in a moment), & Legal Protection (lawyers & law students stationed at every poll to inform people of their voting rights, and to prevent voter suppression, intimidation, electioneering, and other funny business).

While all of this was going on, we also had Election Day canvass teams once again traversing the county reminding identified supporters to vote. And this is where the Houdini comes in. At 11am, Houdinis are responsible for entering the polling locations where poll workers have posted lists of the registered voters who have already voted (not who they voted for, just that they've come in to vote). Houdini's reconcile these lists with our likely Obama voters, and using a phone hotline and/or website enter those people in. Magically, those people are wiped from the walking lists given to afternoon canvassers to prevent them from knocking on the doors of those who've already voted. Houdinis: Because we make people disappear from the lists.

I started the day as a Houdini, but during the day transitioned to line manager and helped out at three different polling sites before returning to my original poll in the evening for the final tally. As evening approached, many of us began to worry. Despite all of the warnings, there had been no real problems at our polls, but also there weren't the lines we expected. Rather than a deluge of voters, it was a slow trickle throughout the day. I even called my Uncle Perry -- who had courageously volunteered to come to Ohio as a lawyer to monitor polls in Youngstown, OH -- to see if it was the same across the state. He had a couple of voters turned away in the morning, but it sounded fairly calm in his region as well. Was this because of the early voting? Was there just low turnout? Was something else going on?? We were in the dark.

Then the final tally was announced. 430 voters cast their ballot. My official polling site was actually quite close to the neighborhood in which we lost the Brits. It was then no shock when the vote distribution was posted:

Total votes: 430
Obama: 416
McCain: 12
Write-ins: 2

2% is Enough
By 8:45p I left the polls, picked up some horrible Chinese takeout & a Red Bull. While I waited for my food, the owners turned on CNN to watch results. The predictable east coast states had been called, and they were already leaning towards calling Pennsylvania for Obama. By the time I drove back to my host house, it was 9:20 and I had to pick up a few friends for the party by 10:00p. I quickly changed and ate, and as I walked out the door at 9:40, my Blackberry practically exploded with emails, phone calls, text messages, and instant messages. The news had ALREADY called Ohio for OBAMA!!!! With only 2% of precincts reporting?! I didn't even believe it, but by the time I picked up my friends at 9:55p, they were already freaking out. We all knew - McCain couldn't win without Ohio. Ohio was "the tip of the spear". And Ohio went to Obama.

We walked into the party at 10p, and the excitement was palpable. Even though the campaign rented out the appropriately named Renaissance Hotel in downtown Columbus for a city-wide party open to everyone, the longer-term workers (including me) chose to take over the bars and restaurants on the hotel's block. So with 150 of the people I worked alongside, we cheered as states continued to fall in the Obama column. Pennsylvania to Obama. Florida to Obama. Champagne was selling out fast. And as everyone knows, around 11pm EST, the election was called. Our 44th president will be Barack Obama. People cheered, many cried, everyone hugged. Chants of "Yes We Can", "Yes We Did", and "O-BA-MA" echoed throughout the block. We all hung around to watch Obama's acceptance speech, hugged a lot more, wiped eyes, and made our way to the Renaissance and celebrated into the early morning hours.

And then, like that, everyone was gone. People went home, slept for a couple of hours, packed, and headed to the airports. I stopped by my field office one more time around 11am for goodbyes (and to drop off some extra snacks I kept in the trunk of my car) and the walls had been picked bare. Everyone wanted to grab a poster, a sign, some memento of this effort. I raided the supply room to grab stickers, posters, signs, and buttons, threw them all in my bag, waved goodbye, and headed to the airport. By 5pm, I was back in NYC. And most people were home already too. Just a few lead officers hung around the next few weeks to wind our office down, but really, once we said goodbye in the early morning hours of November 5th, it was over.

Note: I still have a lot of items from the campaign. Please let me know if you'd like stickers, posters, etc. I brought them home for all of you. First come, first served.

Ohio, Day 12: Rally Day

2008-11-02T23:49:00.000-05:00

Time to Rally
While at a Halloween party later Friday night, all of our phones began to buzz with a text message: "Sunday Nov 2 - Barack and Michelle returning to Columbus for Statehouse rally 1p". He was coming back to town! Saturday morning was madness at our office as everyone tried to volunteer for a spot working the rally. 50,000 people were expected to show up. Lucky for me, I was friends with all of the decision makers, and by Saturday afternoon I was informed I would be working the ADA (Disabled and VIP) section, and would be placed just left of the stage. I had also been growing a "Beard for Obama" since I'd been in Ohio, and was told it would be a good idea to shave for the rally and look moderately respectable.

On Sunday, we showed up to the statehouse on High Street and Broad Street at 8am for the 1pm rally. As the lines began to form all the way down High Street, we received some quick training and ran through several scenarios. Before long, the attendees began to flood in. I had to learn a little sign language to help direct the deaf, and now I'm a pro maneuvering wheelchairs into very small spaces. Just before the rally, the VIPs showed up, including Ohio Attorney General-elect Rick Cordray (formerly State Treasurer of Ohio), Ohio Governor Ted Strickland, Columbus Mayor Michael Coleman, and former senator, astronaut, and American hero John Glenn. After several glowing introductions, the last of which by Michelle, Barack came out with his daughters to greet the crowd (now estimated at around 60,000). Seeing the 4 of them on stage, it was quite a sight. People older than I kept whispering how Kennedy-esque it looked.

I've posted two clips of Obama's speech here:
Why Barack is Running for President:

Barack's Closing Lines:

At the end of the speech, the place went nuts and Barack quick made his way to the disabled section to shake some hands. Here's one photo of him shaking the hand of a very enthusiastic supporter!

Yes, that's my hand.

6-Hour Wait for Change
After the rally, I headed over to Veteran's Memorial to assist with the early voter lines. I'm trying to think if I've ever seen a line that is literally 6 hours long, and I don't think I have. The line took up two floors of the event center, and still spilled outside onto the street and into the parking lot. I spent most of my time instructing people on how to fill out the ballots, answering questions about voting, and passing out bottles of water. I even took a few photos before I photographed the actual polling room and was kindly asked to go somewhere else.

What's incredible was the dedication of the voters. There were sick voters, there were elderly voters, there were first-time voters, and they all stuck around to cast their vote. And they all enthusiastically accepted "I Voted for Change" and Obama stickers from our volunteers as they left Vet's Memorial. According to exit polls, Obama voters were showing up between 8-1 to 10-1 versus McCain voters.

Said one elderly man on line: "I have cancer, I have bad knees, I'm sick. And I'm standing here on line and I'm praying. I'm not praying for my cancer, or my knees, or my other illnesses. I'm praying Barack Obama gets elected." THIS was the kind of feverish dedication we were seeing in battleground states.

Ohio, Day 11

2008-11-02T07:01:00.002-05:00

Four Days to History
Going into the weekend, the campaign had a nationwide conference call led by Jon Carson, the Obama-Biden Campaign Field Director. 20,000 volunteers called in. At my GOTV (Get Out The Vote) office, we put one volunteer's cell phone on speaker-mode and placed it on a conference table as 30 of us crowded around to hear. Throughout the call, Jon would stop to provide interesting facts and statistics on the campaign. It was gimmicky. Here are a few:

There have been 1,142,000 GOTV shifts across the country
This election has seen 1.9mm new registered voters (111,000 more Dems than GOPs)
The Obama campaign has made 13.3 million contacts (not knocks, but actual CONVERSATIONS)

It turns out that Jon was just filling time. Right before the call ended, Jon made a special announcement - Barack Obama wanted to speak to all of us on the call. Cue Senator Obama, who gave what sounded like a fairly unscripted pep talk. He thanked everyone for their contributions, and said it would be such a shame to drop the ball now. "We cannot leave anything on the field... We must act like we're 20 points behind, and use every moment between [now] and the 4th to get out the vote... Double down our efforts, and we can make history." I can't speak for the other 19,970 callers, but the 30 in my office went bonkers with excitement. It was quite a moment.

Random canvassing video of me

The Force is Strong with "That One"
The final few days of the campaign almost entirely focused on outreach, and Friday October 31st through Monday November 3rd was all about going door-to-door. As opposed to earlier GOTV stages which included a "persuasion" approach, the purpose of the last few days was to ensure voters supporting Obama or leaning Obama were reminded to vote and vote early. At this point, we have canvassed virtually every neighborhood in Franklin County, and have collected as much data as we could on voter preference. Now we just need to turn out that vote.

On the Friday before election day (Halloween), I was asked to take responsibility for a group of 12 British Labour party representatives who came over in a group of 80 Brits to assist on the campaign. After a quick crash course on canvassing (It's pronounced "O-bomb-ah", not "O-bam-ah" where the "bam" sounds like "damn" -- apparently people in Ohio respond poorly to foreign accents), I was given a Ford E-350 commercial van and drove to our assigned neighborhood. To call this downtrodden, impoverished area "the projects" would be too nice. This was ultra-lower class. Most people weren't working, sitting on their porches, some places didn't have doors or windows, and on some streets where they had small houses and not apartment projects, half of the houses were abandoned while the other half just looked that way. I drove around the area dropping off pairs of two canvassers before parking the van with my partner (a very sweet Brit who also happened to be black - the only one in our group) and hit the streets. Unfortunately, no one told me where I was going ahead of time. Imagine the looks I got from everyone in the neighborhood as I strolled through, clipboard in arm, wearing a Brooks Brothers long-sleeved wool polo sweater, jeans, and trendy sneakers, hair parted, clipboard in arm. They must have thought I was the tax man, or worse. I was getting a lot of stares, people were pointing, shaking their head, and some even followed me around as I knocked on the first few doors. Then they saw me with my partner, who was black, and began to back off. Temporarily. Eventually, I was surrounded in the courtyard by several members of the apartment complex, who got very close and began to ask aggressively who I was. They asked sarcastically if I was lost. They told me I shouldn't be here. Finally, I point to my "Obama Biden '08" button and explain I'm with the campaign, trying to get Barack Obama elected. They all look at me incredulously as they give me the up an down. "You wit' Obama??" I nod. "Aight, shit, you cool." From that moment, I was able to walk around all afternoon, freely, without looks! It was like I had a force field around me, and that allowed me to go anywhere. The day before, I was in the richest, most Republican neighborhood in the county and was treated wonderfully by supporters and opponents alike, and yet there I was walking in perhaps the most dangerous neighborhood I've ever been in outside of a car and I was fine. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I've gotten the same reaction from friends who went canvassing in other states, such as the poorest parts of North Carolina. It just speaks to Obama's ability to transcend some socioeconomic differences. McCain's people NEVER came to these poor, primarily black neighborhoods. I honestly believe those canvassers would have been at the risk of physical harm. And for the record, I knocked on 102 doors that day, spoke to 60-70 voters. Wanna guess how many McCain supporters there were? Here's a hint: Zero.

Brits + Ghetto = Trouble
And now the short tale of our lost Brits. As I mentioned, I took a dozen Brits canvassing in a fairly unsavory neighborhood. Our field office was centrally located to the Brits' scattered routes, so the plan was to drop each canvass pairing off at the farthest point from the office, so as they get through their route, they would simply end up walking back to the field office. For 10/12ths of the Brits, that plan worked swimmingly. One problem: during training, everyone was taught to complete their routes, and knock on all of the doors on their lists. Except no one received the one rule that supersedes all others: If you are in a bad neighborhood and it gets dark, come back IMMEDIATELY. So imagine our worry when the sun set and 2 Brits never came home. They didn't have cell phones that worked in the U.S., so we couldn't call. So, after waiting around for 30 minutes after the last group got back, I finally grabbed a flashlight, another Brit, a map of the missing Brits' route, and jumped into the van. I drove with the brights on as my British navigator hung out of the passenger window, shining the flashlight onto each house's doorstep, hoping to find our foreign friends. No luck. As we hit the last few houses on their route, my stomach began to sink. Oh god, this is really bad. Oh god oh god oh god.... It wasn't until I pulled into the field office's parking lot that my cell phone finally rang. They had just walked into the office, and their fine. And they finished their list!

Apparently, as it got dark, the 2 Brits were receiving warnings from people in the neighborhood. They'd knock on a door, and people would open the door and flat out tell them to go home and that it wasn't safe outside! But diligently, they continued on their way, swearing to finish the list and make their first day in America successful.

[cue forehead slap, sigh of relief]

Ohio, Day 10: The Countdown Begins

2008-11-01T19:08:00.001-04:00

"...Obama has 8 scenarios to win, McCain has one. If we win Ohio, it's over. Barack Obama is our next president..." -Ohio campaign manager

Forgive me, it has been 7 days since my last confession. And things have been getting busier and busier.

Getting out the vote to protect
As of this past Monday, I'm no longer working with voter protection. My favorite part of the campaign has been the outreach work (I get to talk more - surprise surprise), so I decided to transfer over to GOTV (Get Out The Vote), which is responsible for all of the phone calls, door-to-door canvassing, and generally hitting the streets. This has been a phenomenal experience. I'm been meeting a REALLY diverse slice of America from all walks of life (and I've been collecting all of these great names that could be characters in the novel I'll write one day).

Basically, the GOTV effort has been divided into a series of stages. The first state was persuasion, where we confirm who's definitely voting for a candidate, and try to convince the undecided voters to vote for Obama. That stage completed last week, and we've shifted now to targeting those who are likely supporters and convincing them to both make sure to vote and to try to vote early (since Ohio has early voting at designated locations). Last weekend, we had an all-hands-on-deck effort to get everyone to canvas the state, and it was done in competition with Pennsylvania, as measured by "knocks" - how many houses we hit. By Sunday night, in a campaign-wide call, we were informed that OH beat PA by visiting 385,600 houses...in a single weekend. The office went nuts. This is most significant because of it's scale. The Obama campaign has managed to mobilize this incredible network of volunteers nationwide who have been at this designing an infrastructure unline any campaign before it. The "staff" has been training the volunteers relentlessly so that when the 4th comes around, they can figuratively sit back and the volunteers will take over all of the poll work, data anlysis, transport, etc. It'll be like a political Rube Goldberg device where every step is a necessary component until the votes are tallied and a winner is announced.

Editorial note:
While many of the GOTV'ers were really excited by the weekend showing, the consultant in me was never thrilled by this measure of success. If I knock on 100 doors and no one is home, how does this affect the vote? How does this compare to knocking on 50 undecided's doors and convincing 26 of them to vote for Obama? Who "wins"? It's hard to measure the actual success of these efforts until we get polling data and have a newly elected president, so I suppose the campaign needs a measure of progress. I don't have a better answer, but this just gets at me. Okay, I'm done.

Columbus the College Town
On Saturday night, The Ohio State University played Penn State here in Columbus, which means the campaign came to a screeching halt at around 4pm so there was sufficient time for local Ohioans to start drinking before kickoff. The city pretty much stops functioning as 105,000 people get into cars, buses, or hit the streets to make their way to Ohio Stadium. Unfortunately, the out-of-staters in my office continued to work at half-productivity as we also watched the defense-heavy game on the TVs and large projection screens we have placed around the office. I managed to get out of the office a little after midnight to meet up with my friend Safe up on High Street...right in the middle of OSU's campus. The traffic was bumper to bumper as far as the eye could see, so I turned into the nearest parking lot and walked to the bar (Side note: It was $1 for 5-hr parking - I love Ohio, it's like the dollar is a different currency here! For those curious, gas is now ~$2.09/gallon in some parts of town).

If you've never been in Columbus on game day, allow me to describe the visual. Have you ever seen Stephen King's "The Shining"? There's a famous sequence where blood begins to pour out of every crevice of the walls, doors, and elevators. In a matter of seconds, the entire hotel is flooded in a sea of vividly red blood. That's how High Street looks on game day. Seething masses of red jersey-clad fans screaming and jumping and yelling and shouting obscenities at whoever is wearing the visiting team's colors (in this case, white and blue) Fortunately, I was just wearing a gray sweatshirt.

Unfortunately the team lost and the crowd was neutered. A handful of Penn State fans cautiously celebrated in a few of the lesser-populated bars. Around 1am, Safe and I ended up at a 3 story semi-outdoor bar (yes, it was 40 degrees, so what?), and among the hundreds of people there, I might have been the only person not wearing red, and the only person over the age of 22. It occurred to me that I was 8 years older than some of the kids in the bar, so around 2am I called it a night since we have scheduled conference calls at 8:30a on Sundays. And yes, whoever schedules 8:30am Sunday morning calls clearly hates happiness. And freedom. And America.

"Towing" the party line
On Wednesday, Barack broadcast his half-hour TV special. While I had hoped it was going to be a variety show, it ended up being a very swingstate-targeted infomercial for an Obama presidency. Afterwards, one woman called our office in tears, explaining that she had voted for McCain last week via absentee ballot and after seeing this special believes she has made a terrible mistake. Wow.

I had a slightly different experience that night. At around 7:30p, I drove my coworker to the Short North (a bar/restaurant district) to sample wine for a party she was going to throw on Halloween. By the time we got out it was 7:55p and there was no chance we were getting back in the office in time to catch the special. So we quickly found the nearest parking lot, jumped out of the car, and ran across the street to a bar that had CNN on their TV. We ordered a drink and an appetizer, and exactly 30 minutes later we paid, left, and walked back to the parking lot and my ca-- wait, where's my car? I parked it right here. Long story short, it turns out that I was in an unmarked private spot, and Columbus is the most diligent town in America with regards to unauthorized parking. They have an enormous fleet of tow trucks that coast through the city hunting for cars to tow. 20 minutes later, I had retrieved my car from a hillbilly with three 3 teeth and who charged me $135 cash to get my car back. I haven't even lost money that fast in a casino.

O-H, I-O, Fired Up, Ready To Go
There's a rule in this great state of Ohio. If someone --anyone-- yells out "O-H!!" you must yell back "I-O!!!" This happens ALL of the time. Michelle Obama did it at the rally. Field organizers do it to get campaign fired up. It's everywhere. Like "HOPE" and "CHANGE" posters.

Interruption
I've been writing this post for the last few days in bits and pieces, so there's no chronology, but as I write this sentence, it's Friday at 1:30, and the campaign just got a text informing us that Barack and Michelle are coming back to Columbus for an 11am rally at the statehouse 2 blocks from my office. I cannot tell you how excited I just got. I will show up before sunrise if it means getting good position. Thank god I still have my HQ badge.

Beards for Obama
A large group of guys in the campaign have decided they're not going to shave until the election. I like these rally beards and I haven't shaved in a week in an attempt to catch up. Barack and Michelle are going to be back here in Columbus for a rally in the morning, and since I'm trying to get selected to work there, I think I need to shave as to not look like a complete vagrant. But more importantly, BARACK AND MICHELLE ARE COMING TO TOWN!!! Which means I'm going to finish up here so I can guarantee my freedom tomorrow morning to attend the rally.

Apologies if this post is all over the place, I've been writing this on and off, and I'm purposely leaving out a few other long stories for the next update. But here's a teaser: We thought two of our British volunteers were murdered in the projects last night. Tune in for the whole story...

O-H!!!,
David

p.s. Mom, the Brits are fine, don't worry.
p.p.s. Update: I just got word I've been selected to work the Barack Obama event tomorrow!! I think I made friends with the right people. 50,000 attendees are expected. Here's hoping I get to be on Special Needs detail, since that section is RIGHT in front of the stage, and the closest possible location volunteers will get to the man himself. No promises for a meeting or handshake with him, but I'll do my best to at least get photos. Maybe an Obama hug.
p.p.p.s. As I post this, the countdown til election day reads 2 days, 2 hours, 51 minutes, and 35 seconds. Add another 6 hours and 30 seconds until polls open here in Ohio.

Election Day Forecast

2008-11-01T17:01:00.003-04:00

Even Mother Nature wants this vote to happen:

Columbus, OH, courtesy of Weather.com

Ohio, Day 3

2008-10-25T17:36:00.000-04:00

Well, I have some downtime on this chilly Saturday afternoon in Columbus, so here's another update. I can't guarantee I'll have time to write every day, but here are a few highlights:

First, a request for help
Do you know any lawyers or law students who are not in a swing state who could be interested in coming to Ohio on Election Day to monitor a polling site? I'm working on efforts to recruit people to prevent any shady behavior that prevent legally registered voters from casting their vote; behavior like intimidation, electioneering, and disseminating misinformation. If you know anyone who might want to sign up or get more info, please email or call me asap. Thanks!

Badges? We don't need no stinking-- oh wait, yeah, badges help
I made it to the Michelle Obama rally! It was held about 10 minutes from our HQ, so 3 of us here at the office jumped in my rental car and zipped across town to Capital University, a school I had never heard of. We had to drive through a few suburban neighborhoods, and it was encouraging to see about 10 Obama lawn signs for every one McCain. The doors opened at 10:30am and Michelle was slated to go on at 11:30am. We got stuck at the office so we arrived around 11am, and almost no one had been let into the arena yet. The line had stretched all the way down the block and around the corner, easily hundreds of people waiting to get in. Fortunately for us, we all had Obama STAFF badges hanging around our necks, so after a few hellos and handshakes with the staff who were working the event, we were allowed to walk past the line and slip right in. There was a section for standing room right in front of the stage, so I managed to stake out the area about 9 people back from the podium.

Michelle Obama for President 2016
There were several people who spoke before Michelle, the most notable was Sherrod Brown, the junior senator from Ohio. He certainly knew how to make the crowd go nuts. He started by saying a few choice words about the Republican senior senator from Ohio, George Voinovich, and went on to hypothesize about how election night might turn out, culminating with Fox anchors Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly being forced to concede that Obama wins Ohio. Video here: http://lermannyc.blogspot.com/2008/10/michelle-obama-rallies-at-capital.html

The wonderful part of the rally was how incredibly diverse the attendees were, both by age and by race. Between speakers, everyone sung along to the music being played on the PA system (fun fact: Buckeyes LOVE Stevie Wonder). When a reverend led the room in an opening prayer, everyone held hands. We even opened the rally with a pledge of allegiance to the flag. It was a level of patriotism and togetherness I just don't see that often in my every day life, and it was nice. I suppose it serves me right for not living in the "real America".

Obviously, the highlight of the rally was Michelle. She's arguably a better speaker than Barack, and in her 25 minute speech she spoke beautifully, never once looking down at notes. She managed to address every major issue and every notable demographic, every class, and every age group. It was executed with skillful aplomb, but the best part? She was FUNNY! Not even scripted funny either. At one point, a guy yelled out from the back "I love you, Michelle!!" and she took that and riffed on it for 30 seconds, claiming he's paid to do that on command: "$5 here, $10 there.....okay NOW!" It was exhilarating from start to finish.

A note to the volunteers asking for support after the event: If I'm already wearing a Barack Obama STAFF badge, changes are I'm not interested in signing your sheet to volunteer for Barack Obama. Thanks though. Keep up the good work.

And finally...

Because there isn't office space on Wealthy Avenue
Obviously the Obama camp isn't the only group stationed here in Columbus, OH. The McCain campaign has an office in town too. Here's the kicker: their office is located on Rich Street. Realizing how bad that looks to many people, they've directed all staff to enter through the side street entrance so that they can claim an alternate mailing address that's more politically palatable.

That's all for now, so here it is, your moment of zen (apologies if you've received this twice):
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/24/waaaasup-the-pro-obama-ve_n_137711.html

Yes We Can,
David

Michelle Obama rallies at Capital University

2008-10-25T17:08:00.007-04:00

Full Gallery

Earlier, the junior senator from Ohio, Sherrod Brown, spoke about Election Night, as the states' results are announced, one by one. First, local news announces New York and New Jersey hav been declared for Obama. State by state, we work west, until 11:30pm, when we tune to Fox News...

Ohio, Day 2

2008-10-24T07:22:00.001-04:00

Hello from Buckeye Country! This is my second full day in Columbus, OH, and I'm working downtown about 10 minutes from the OSU campus. Columbus is a beautiful city for the most part, especially since they cracked down on the weapons trade that existed here to supply the gangs of NY and Chicago. There are still some neighborhoods that are made up dollar stores, pawn shops, and check cashing locations, but these areas have been shrunk and/or revitalized with development. All in all, it's a very manageable city to get around in provided you have a car. Oh, and I have to believe this is the fast food capital of America. The streets are lined with every chain you've ever heard of, and every chain you've never heard of. Sometimes those are the only businesses in the neighborhood. It's incredible and it stretches as far as the eye can see. I have seen the future, and it's loaded with trans fat.

I just activated the GPS in my Verizon Blackberry to help me get around. It's not like I haven't used GPS before, but when it's right there on my Blackberry, I wonder how you ever lived without it. Like the Internet and The Daily Show. I know, it's 2008 and I'm still getting excited about GPS, but whatever, I haven't really driven while living in NYC, so it still has a newness for me. Moving on...

I'm going to try to update my blog with some of my experiences, but since the campaign has a no-blogging policy, I can't talk about my work on it, so I'll only be writing about being in Ohio and posting an occasional photo.

This is Day 2, and so far, everyone has been great and I've been able to help out on a few projects, mainly involving lawyers. I'm working a lot with the voter protection group, helping to ensure we'll have lawyers at the polls on E-Day to monitor things and guarantee things are on the up-and-up. The Ohio Secretary of State is being sued constantly by the GOP to prevent swaths of people from voting here (hooray voter suppression), so I'm supporting the efforts against that, along with recruiting non-swing state lawyers to come here to be at the polling sites.

As time gets close to E-Day, we'll have handled most of that, so the last few days will be devoted to GOTV (Get Out The Vote), a combined effort of calls, door-to-door canvasing, etc to encourage people to go vote, and hopefully vote Obama. This might also include driving people to their polling locations. Apparently my big added value thus far is a combination of my computer/data/Excel skillz and the fact that I have a car. Having a car probably is tops right now :)

I'm staying about 15 minutes away at a volunteer's house in the neighboring town of Bexley. Our host is a lovely middle aged Jewish woman with a PhD in psychology whose daughter is in college and has a few extra bedrooms. She's hosting three people including myself. I'm the only amateur of the three (though I've been given a STAFF lanyard to wear), as one works for the DNC and the other is an official campaign member traveling all around the northeast. The latter of the two is leaving today for Cleveland, so it'll just be me and DNC-guy going forward for a while. I mean that literally. Our host is going away this weekend for a funereal, so the two of us literally have the house to ourselves! I'm kind of shocked by this, but I guess I have a trusting face. A trusting face who's inviting you all to a kegger this Saturday night in Ohio - WOOOOO!!!!! Remember, what happens in Bexley stays in Bexley.

Okay, I need to go convince my group to let me out to see Michelle Obama, who's speaking 10 minutes away. I apparently missed Joe Biden last week, who walked around the whole HQ here and met every single person. For those who know how much I like Biden, this is a huge bummer. Before that, Bill Clinton came by, and Obama himself crashed a training session of 650 volunteers about a month ago. Needless to say, I carry my camera and laptop everywhere in case anyone visits.

That's all for now!

Come To Ohio

2008-10-23T10:37:00.001-04:00

Help Barack in Ohio

Bloodshot Eyed and Bushy Tailed

2008-10-23T07:29:00.000-04:00

I forgot how hard it is to wake up early.

And is it weird that I feel like I'm getting ready for the first day of school?

Arriving into Columbus

2008-10-22T17:21:00.001-04:00

Campaign for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of America

2008-10-21T22:55:00.005-04:00

I got the call. Finally. I'm off to Columbus, OH.

After days of trading phone calls and e-mails all weekend, I received a call from the Deputy Director of Out-of-State Volunteers to notify me of my deployment.

When could I start? Immediately. I'll be on a plane tomorrow.

Do I have a place to live? Nope. Not a problem -- they can set me up at a volunteer's house.

Do I have a car? Nope. Not a problem -- unlike NY or DC, it's only $17/day to rent a car in Ohio.

So, time to pack, buy a plane ticket, and set up a rental car... in the next couple of hours. I still have no idea what I'll be doing when I get there. 13 days til Election Day. Booyah.

Reboot

2008-10-21T14:12:00.001-04:00

I used to keep a blog. Then I became an investment banker.

So this is a second attempt, a veritable rebirth. A way to submit updates while I’m out and about in the world.

First stop, Ohio, for the Obama campaign. Details to follow…

Fall Re-Runs in Syndication?

2007-11-08T01:22:00.000-05:00

Fall Canceled After 3 Billion Seasons

WASHINGTON, DC—Autumn, which had been slotted between summer and winter, will be replaced by stifling humidity, constant sunshine, and little precipitation.

Is ThePudding Worth a Taste?

2007-11-06T13:03:00.000-05:00

ThePudding is a new service that provides free web-based phone calls (a la Google Talk). While you're talking a computer analyzes your voice and serves ads based on what you're saying. Your calls are not recorded, just analyzed on the spot to serve ads the one time. There is no longitudinal data produced on your talking patterns.

Here's TechCrunch's description of ThePudding.

Recently Blake asked what I thought about this application. Here's my response:

As long as there are free services (Skype, Google Talk, yelling really loudly), I don't really know why I would need ThePudding. Targeted marketing is a fine idea to a certain degree, but does it belong in our phone? I'd rather not see the day that speaking face-to-face at a whisper is the only way to communicate without being monitored.

While I don't distrust government or corporations to the degree that I think it's 1984 all over again, I'd also rather not have to worry about a monitoring infrastructure that's in place for any reason. The government has a wire-tapping system - corporations don't need the same privilege. I guess I'm not at the point where I worry about getting black bagged in the middle of the night.

Now I don't know about you, but have you tried any voice recognition software, be it on your cell phone, home computer, or a company's customer service number? It's not perfect. And that lack of perfection is noticeable when you only have to speak a few words clearly! For all we know, there might be no reason to worry. This new company might be so inaccurate that they'll fail anyway.

I guess the proof will be in ThePudding. ( ZING!!)

------------------------------------------
Blake (11:12 am): you clearly wrote that entire response just to make that pun at the end.
Blake (11:12 am): it was kind of worth it.
Me (11:13 am): Not gonna lie - I was one paragraph in when that pun came to me. I structured the rest of my response around that.

Unnecessary Force

2007-11-05T00:26:00.002-05:00

Like I said, dangerously addictive....

Night of the Living...

2007-11-05T00:25:00.003-05:00

I've just begun playing with a new feature at Jibjab.com that allows me to use my own custom "heads" in Jibjab-style movies. This could be dangerously addictive.

Scratching the Surface

2007-06-24T11:19:00.000-04:00

On May 30, 2007, Bill Gates publicly announced a new technology called Microsoft Surface, an innovative combination of software and hardware that puts interactive, touchscreen computing into a tabletop. The interface allows users to select and manipulate data with a touch of a finger.

A short teaser trailer on the Surface can be found here, and here is a parody of that video.

Now, here's my question: Say -- instead of Bill Gates -- Steve Jobs was the one to come out with this invention at the next MacWorld conference, with the mysterious Apple press invitations, a website that didn't say anything except show a glowing silhouette of something, etc. He'd have the big presentation with colorful, glossy images, and an opening pitch to the crowd that went something like:

"We've done it again. Yup. The iPhone was able to take an IPOD...a PHONE...and a FULL WEB BROWSER...and combine it into one amazing device. It was incredible. [murmurs] I knew you'd love it. People doubted us, but we're 5 million iPhones strong in our first year, right on our targets. So I knew I needed to give you more. [cheers] And I did [louder cheers]: I present to you, the iSurface! [wild applause, a few journalists pass out]
You're sitting at home and want music? Don't even get up, just use your fingers to browse through your library with our patented CoverFlow technology. That's right! We took CoverFlow from the iPod and iTunes, and put it in your iSurface! [wild applause] I know, it's great!
How about this - you're out at a family dinner with the spouse and kids. The children are getting loud. Well with a few swipes of your finger, they're watching last night's episode of SpongeBob Squarepants, right in the table, giving you and your spouse a chance to enjoy each other's company, in the calm presence of your children. [wild applause] When you're done, the $1.99 episode will just get tacked on to your bill! And let me use this opportunity to announce that the iTunes Music Store now has every. single. episode. of. SpongeBob! [wild applause, men begin weeping] I know, I know, we finally cracked that nut! We got SpongeBob - take that, Beatles!! [continued wild applause]"

He goes on to talk about the seamless integration of your Mac, your iPhone/iPod, the table. The aesthetic beauty of the interface. The metallic curves of the table. The touchscreen that is fingerprint-resistant. He positions the screen as a better iPhone screen ("If 4 inches is good, 30 inches is amazing!!! We've opened the world to you!") If he can convince you to spend $500-600 on a phone, no one thinks twice when he asks for $10,000 for a table computer.

Walter Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal gives it all the stars in his rating scale, and brags about the fact that he has a test model in his home. A new "Hello, I'm a Mac" commercial comes out:

iSurface: "Hello, I'm an iSurface"
Wooden table: "And I'm a wooden table."
iS: "I can do fun stuff like edit photos, watch movies, and browse the web."
WT: "Well I can stand upright, and hold multiple Chinese dishes or pizzas."
iS: "I have a touchscreen that allows the people sitting around me to interact with my data"
WT: "I have a lovely burgundy finish that seals me against water and wood rot."
iS: "Wow, wooden table, that's great!"
WT: "Yep...I know...[depressed]...but you're so much more fun."
iS: "Oh, don't feel bad, wooden table. Can't you open spreadsheets and pie charts?"
WT: "Nope..."
iS: "Oh..."
WT: [silence]
iS: "Y'know, I can do that."
WT: [lights match, sets himself on fire]
[cue jingle, cut to white screen with Apple logo]

And not one PC user speaks up, pulling the Kool-Aid away from the feverish hysteria of Mac devotees and those who are now embarrassed of their boring wooden tables.

Product tie-ins start to appear: Jack Bauer uses an iSurface in the next season of 24, simultaneously conducting a web-based satellite screen for bad guys while eating the Jack Daniel's Chicken and Shrimp at TGI Friday's (you know, for sweeps week: " Tonight, on an all-new 24: See Jack Bauer eat for the first time! Next on FOX! This episode sponsored by Apple). Around the country, people line up down the street from the Apple Stores, trying to be one of the first to show their friends their iSurface. Nations like Iran & North Korea stop everything and devote all of their nations' resources to try and get their own iSurfaces (they can only get the one-terabyte version, while the western infidels have the option to get the $15,000 two-terabyte version). The world exists in a touch-sensitive-table utopia.

Oh, so I guess I had a question. Here it goes -- What's the likelihood that this is exactly how an Apple-designed surface computer would be received, as opposed to the sarcastic criticism of Bill Gates & Co's invention?
a) 100% likely
b) Entirely likely
c) That is exactly how it would happen
d) All of the above

You Are a Grown-up!

2007-04-22T23:33:00.000-04:00

Have you ever seen the film I Heart Huckabees? It's not crucial to the story, but just know that there was a movie by that title. The movie stars actress Lily Tomlin, with whom I hope you have a passing familiarity.

With that established, I want you to watch this exchange between Michael Showalter and Paul Rudd.

Somewhat disturbing and uncomfortable, no?

Now watch a very real interaction between Lily Tomlin and Huckabees director David O. Russell, during the shooting of the the movie.

WTF?

Watch the Showalter/Rudd thing again.

Is this not brilliant? This is brilliant.

Rain Over Me

2007-04-14T18:48:00.000-04:00

Well this coming week looks supremely craptastic:

Famous For A Fraction of a Second

2007-02-28T16:48:00.000-05:00

Who wants to touch me?

Word from the blogosphere today...I'm apparently a media whore.

Pillow Fight 2007

2007-02-24T21:55:00.000-05:00

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