As some of you all know I have become very involved in the Obama presidential campaign.  Every Saturday and Sunday during the day I go door to door talking to voters, getting preferences, and registering unregistered voters.  During the week I make phone calls and work in the office, doing what I can to get Barack Obama elected president.   It was at one of the doors I got to that why I am doing this really struck home. 

I went canvassing last night (the technical term for going door to door) and the last door I knocked on was occupied by a named Terry.  The home was a nice, older style St. Louis house with the sort of landscaping that was once very well kept, but had since fallen into disrepair.  Weeds were growing in the cracks of the cobblestone steps heading up to the house and had it not been for a light on in the upstairs I would have assumed nobody was home.  As soon as the door opened out walked a middle aged man, seemingly a little leery of a stranger approaching his home at 7 o’clock on a Friday evening.  I started my usual shtick of introducing myself, and telling him why I was at his door, to find out who he was voting for and what issues he cared about.  I expected the worst, he scanned me with a very skeptical look and he looked deep in thought.  I assumed coming was some snide remark about how John McCain was our only choice or some falsehood about Obama and his upbringing.  Instead Terry was looking for the right words to express how much we need Obama to be elected president.  He told a story about how he was a foreman for a plant in St. Louis for 25 years.  He was a proud man who worked hard and took care of his elderly parents who lived with him.  At least he could until 3 years ago, when he suffered a brain injury which now impedes his ability to talk clearly and adversely affected his motor skills.  He still takes care of his parents, living off of aid from the government and money he had saved while he was working.  He talked for a long time, clearly nobody had taken the time to hear his story, at least nobody recently.  He is an American, forgotten.

People like John McCain and the republicans tout how big a problem government is.  They say we need to eliminate programs all together and come up with private solutions for all aspects of life.  What a load of garbage.  We live in the greatest country on earth yet we have people who have done nothing wrong, who have worked hard and are proud Americans struggling to pay their utility bills.  We have more wealth that any other nation has, yet we insist that people like Terry are “burdens of the state”, and that a free markets can provide the answers to every question.  Well let me ask you, if we don’t take care of people like him what good is one dollar of that wealth?  Our country wasn’t founded because we wanted no government at all, it was founded because we wanted a government that represented all Americans.  This is what Barack Obama supports.  Right now we have a government that only represents the very rich.  If you don’t have wealth, you have no influence.  This isn’t class warfare, but it is undeniable that we have a tax code that so highly favors the top one half of one percent that we now have the highest disparity between the haves and the have-nots in America since the 1920s.  Republicans call Obama a “socialist” and say he wants big government to run our lives.  Nonsense, he wants a government that works, that cares for veterans and people who have lived their lives in ways that have benefited our nation.  We need change in our nation and we need it badly.  The only way the other side can win this election is if they drive a wedge between the American people.  They want to make us scared of Barack Obama and scared of each other.  While I hate to see how much of my money goes to taxes each paycheck, I know that because I don’t make $250,000 a year yet, under an Obama administration my taxes would actually go down.  If I did make over $250,000 my taxes would go to what they were under Bill Clinton, a time of great economic prosperity in our country.  This isn’t some massive tax hike, it’s a changing of the tax code to make it more fair to the middle class, to give them a chance to make it in America. 

A sign on Terry’s door warned against having an open flame because Oxygen was in use in the house.  He told me not to worry, and his mother puts it on when she sleeps and that it was off during the day.  His nonchalance about something as serious about his mother requiring oxygen was so striking to me.  Few things I have gone though in my life could nearly be as challenging as the daily struggle that he goes though each day to make ends meet. 

Every presidential candidate tells stories about voters they meet and the hardships they face.  It always struck me as incredibly insincere, how could someone running for the highest office in America really care about the concerns of one person?  Well yesterday I learned it does.  Our country is better than this and our nation needs people like us to step up and get it done.

Thank you to everyone who read this.  If you want to get involved let me know and I can get you set up right way.

Best,

Thomas

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-q6LMsc7iic
Dear God... about 2:30 in this clip, he should have lost this election right here.  I am sorry if this got posted earlier but I don't see it on this site yet and this needs to basically go viral.
A little before 7 minutes he gets real angry...
Definitely worth a view.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-q6LMsc7iic
Dear God... about 2:30 in this clip, he should have lost this election right here.  I am sorry if this got posted earlier but I don't see it on this site yet and this needs to basically go viral.
A little before 7 minutes he gets real angry...
Definitely worth a view.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-q6LMsc7iic
Dear God... about 2:30 in this clip, he should have lost this election right here.  I am sorry if this got posted earlier but I don't see it on this site yet and this needs to basically go viral.
A little before 7 minutes he gets real angry...
Definitely worth a view.

Over the next 60 days we find ourselves up against something that will be difficult to beat. We are up against John McCain the idea, not John McCain the man. The difference is something very important for us to understand.
Republicans want us to remember the John McCain of 4 years ago, who lit up a Republican convention with a fiery America first speech.
Republicans want us to remember the John McCain of 8 years ago, who would have stood up to Washington Gimmicks like the gas tax holiday, chanting drill baby drill, against Bush’s tax cuts which rewarded the wealthy and stymied the middle class.
Republicans want us to remember the John McCain of 40 years ago, the brave fighter pilot who gave America five and a half years of his life being beaten, tortured, and malnourished.
They don’t want us to see the John McCain of today. John McCain who panders to the religious right, embraces hawkish neo-conservative shortsighted foreign policy and a Rovian campaign style which so unfairly destroyed his candidacy in 2000. John McCain could not even stand up to his own party to pick the man he thought best could serve America as his vice president. John McCain of 2008 is everything he stood against.

John McCain boasts that he would rather win a war and lose a campaign, but John McCain would rather lose his principals than lose an election.

The Dead Cat Bounce.

The Dead Cat Bounce.
 
As a finance major, I’m going to throw in a finance term here called the “dead cat bounce”, where a stock has been plummeting, and then some event raises a stock price, only to be short lived and have that stock come crashing down.

That is basically the Palin picked summed up. While the Democrats have to toe a fine line when tearing her up, Palin is right now going to cause the McCain-Palin ticket a bump in the numbers. It will, it is inevitable, you gotta figure at least 2-3% of people polled might get their interest piqued and say, sure I’ll give the old guy and the young woman a chance. Then, when Palin is no longer the big story, gas prices rise because off shore drilling in the path of hurricanes leads to supply disruptions, people still get laid off, and the economy is poor, they will realize that she brings nothing new to the equation.

Palin is a personality to be respected, as she is by all accounts very charismatic. That’s where here good points stop. She is somehow even father to the right than George W. Bush.  Is there any possible way people look at her and say, you know what, I’d be ok with her being president? No! Some Vice Presidents are picked to help carry a state, others are picked to help govern. NEVER (other than Potatoe) has a VP been selected in order to get votes. What will she do when she is vice president?

Nothing. And that is why it is a dead cat bounce.
 
Obama-Biden 08!

The Dead Cat Bounce.
 
As a finance major, I’m going to throw in a finance term here called the “dead cat bounce”, where a stock has been plummeting, and then some event raises a stock price, only to be short lived and have that stock come crashing down.

That is basically the Palin picked summed up. While the Democrats have to toe a fine line when tearing her up, Palin is right now going to cause the McCain-Palin ticket a bump in the numbers. It will, it is inevitable, you gotta figure at least 2-3% of people polled might get their interest piqued and say, sure I’ll give the old guy and the young woman a chance. Then, when Palin is no longer the big story, gas prices rise because off shore drilling in the path of hurricanes leads to supply disruptions, people still get laid off, and the economy is poor, they will realize that she brings nothing new to the equation.

Palin is a personality to be respected, as she is by all accounts very charismatic. That’s where here good points stop. She is somehow even father to the right than George W. Bush.  Is there any possible way people look at her and say, you know what, I’d be ok with her being president? No! Some Vice Presidents are picked to help carry a state, others are picked to help govern. NEVER (other than Potatoe) has a VP been selected in order to get votes. What will she do when she is vice president?

Nothing. And that is why it is a dead cat bounce.
 
Obama-Biden 08!

The Dead Cat Bounce.

This one line made my night.  WOW!

"That's not the judgment we need. That won't keep America safe. We need a President who can face the threats of the future, not keep grasping at the ideas of the past."

I don't even know what to say but WOW I loved this line.

Foreign Policy is an issue that does not lend itself well to sound bytes. Good foreign policy demands a deeper understanding of the region or countries involved, as well as American’s relationships and history with them. Despite having been around Washington for decades, John McCain fundamentally fails at this. His bombastic declaration “We are all Georgians” speaks to this misunderstanding. As John McCain may or may not be aware of, Russia and Georgia share a boarder, and as is the case with many post cold-war fledgling republics, these borders don’t reflect clear cut lines upon which ethnic groups lay on one side or the other. Russia has many citizens who live in Georgia, and who have very close ties with Russia. To assume that Russia engaged in an all out invasion with no provocation is foolish and dangerous. It is equally dangerous to assume that Russia is right in its act of war. The problem is that people like John McCain see the world in black and white, with no eye towards compromise or reason. If it can’t fit into a sound byte, its just not good enough for him.
Taking for example the republicans endlessly flogging, declaring that “China is drilling off our coast”, something repeated by congressmen and congress women, and even Rudi Giuliani himself.  Aside from the complete lack of truth in the statement, the idea is to rile up Americans and get them upset that there is foreign control and influence in our region of the world. While we have a duty to help foster fledgling democracies, we must be pragmatic in how this is done. Arming a country directly in the underbelly of Russia and pronouncing our intentions to having them join NATO can not be perceived as anything other than a very dangerous proposition to the Russians. Joseph Stalin was able to maintain control with paranoid claims that the country was surrounded by enemies and spies out to destroy them. John McCain’s dangerous undisciplined calls for actions against Russia make that paranoid threat very real to the Russians, just as we are afraid of China drilling in our midst. One must also wonder to what end would admitting Georgia into NATO? It would either force us to war with Russia, which is out of the question, or make NATO look like the toothless organization which the UN has become. Sadly, John McCain for all his “experience” doesn’t grasp that there are more solutions to foreign policy than force and the threat of force.
The irony of the situation in Russia is that much of the problem is caused by John McCain and George W. Bush’s shortsighted policies in Washington. His vote authorizing the war in Iraq led to this six year debacle which has crushed out credibility. When John McCain says that “In the 21st Century Nations do not invade one another” this is utterly laughable. Matters are even worse because our military is stretched so far beyond its intention we can not hope to involve ourselves in any more armed conflicts at this point. John McCain’s votes years ago against raising fuel efficiency standards, against limiting pure speculation, and against domestic drilling have all helped the meteoric rise in the rice of oil, and our helpless slavery to it. His lack of foresight is astonishing. The same soaring price of oil has enriched and emboldened a new Russia. His push for domestic drilling is now far little far too late, and his opposition to the drilling and energy compromise prove without a doubt that he would rather use this as a wedge issue to garner votes than find any real solutions. Cutting taxes for oil companies has failed to do anything to encourage them to drill or explore more, as these companies have sacrificed that in order to meet quarterly earnings numbers. These tax breaks are essentially a massive transfer of wealth from American motorists and taxpayers to Exxon shareholders. John McCain has failed domestically, and has helped create a foreign policy disaster. We can not afford to have John McCain to lead our nation.

I know, everyone has some wild theory on who is going to be the VP for Obama will be, and yes, this is my first post on TPM, but I really have been struck today but what I think is a clear indication that the pick will be none other than Hillary Clinton.

Now for the rest of the readers who did not immediately hit the back button, here is why. The fact that Clinton is openly pushing for there to be a role call for the delegate count. I do not for a moment believe that she thinks she’s going to overturn who is the nominee, but I do believe that she is making the fact that she got 18 million votes for a reason. What better way to put the ticket together than to say, Obama got X delegates, Clinton got Y delegates, and together we have united democrats of every race, gender, social class, ect.

The main reason is because Bill got the speech on Wednesday, which is slated right before Obama announces who his vice president is. I do not believe for a moment for this to be some sort of cosmic accident. I think this is set up for Bill to give a rousing speech on party unity, on what it means to be a democrat in America, to call his wife at the end, congratulate her for a courageous campaign, and then have the three of them on stage, as Obama, Hillary, and Bill, which would be a sight that people would remember for years. I know, I’m probably wrong and its going to be Bayh or someone of the like, but I think Obama is smarter than most people give him credit for. I also think the Clintons are brilliant politicians as well who would not be calling for this count to get people moving on away from Hillary, but to bring everyone together onto one ticket. -

TAvery

Ok, I tried posting this earlier, but something went wrong, and only the first paragraph got put up so here goes.

I know, everyone has some wild theory on who is going to be the VP for Obama will be, and yes, this is my first post on TPM, but I really have been struck today but what I think is a clear indication that the pick will be none other than Hillary Clinton.

 

Now for the rest of the readers who did not immediately hit the back button, here is why.

I know, everyone has some wild theory on who is going to be the VP for Obama will be, and yes, this is my first post on TPM, but I really have been struck today but what I think is a clear indication that the pick will be none other than Hillary Clinton.