The 2012 elections

I just saw this remarkably jarring image in a post that talked about the "Election Horror Picture Show" -- so (of course) I had to share it with the three of you who read my blog.  Doin' the time warp again...

Interesting few days ahead

We've been looking for ways to be involved in the elections this year, but some of the traditional election volunteer activities, such as door-to-door canvassing or phone bank staffing, just don't fit our personalities. We've found two that do work, though. We'll be putting out door hangers in our precinct for registered Democrats who have not yet voted, and we'll be working as poll watchers on election day. Each of these is a two-hour commitment and there is training for poll watching, so we'll be a bit busier than usual through Tuesday, but it feels good to be doing more for the election than just voting.

Al Gore and the internet

A recent conversation in which somebody said "Yeah, and Al Gore invented the internet" in a depricating manner -- to which I had no real answer -- left me wondering just what was said. So I looked for sources, and found that he really said, in part,

"During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country's economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system."

Judy managed the University of Iowa's networking system in the late 1980s and she says that indeed, Gore's initiatives were critical in moving from the older networking environments to the real internet, and that it wouldn't have happened without him. This is confirmed by Vin Cerf and Bob Kahn. How did the distortion leak out? Through the efforts of that real Friend O' Truth, George W. Bush and his trusty sidekick Karl Rove, whose efforts continue as consultant to the John McCain candidacy.

Traditional values?

The 2008 Presidential campaign has an interesting twist. The Republicans, the party of traditional values, also has a tradition of campaigning against the Democratic candidate's wife on the grounds that she didn't represent these values. But Senator McCain's wife is anything but traditional. Her Wikipedia entry shows her to have done some admirable things, but she hardly fits into the Mamie Eisenhower - Pat Nixon - Laura Bush middle-America model.On the other hand, Michelle Obama is much more middle-America. She grew up in a working-class family and has small children. She is also very accomplished, as again shown by her Wikipedia entry. Personally, I would much rather sit next to her than Mrs. McCain at a dinner party, because I believe that Mrs. Obama and I would have much more to talk about.

I'm getting tired of politics

I'm getting tired of politics. In this election we have a Republican candidate for President who is basically a really decent guy with some ideas that don't come from NeoconsRUs, but he's turned the steering wheel hard right in order to appeal to the Bob Jones University wing of his party. If he had had the guts to avoid accepting the endorsement of the Current Occupant ... but he didn't.

And also in this election we have two Democratic candidates. One of them is fresh and brings a new balance to the Tennessee feudin' match we call the American political system; the other is being supported in the primaries by the Texas Republicans because if she runs, all the BJU wing will run out to vote against her, and a lot of moderates and independents will likely stay away. See the LA Times online poll results in the figure that show Clinton barely ahead of McCain but Obama hugely ahead. After her "3am phone call" ad, I might leave the top of the ballot blank too, because I cannot abide the running-on-fear campaign that Cheney-Rove-Bush used, McCain is adopting, and Clinton stooped to. What hypocrites -- to run on public safety and to oppose reasonable gun control, when uncontrolled guns kill thousands of people every year.

Yes, I'm pulling for Obama, and keeping my fingers crossed that voters will get tired of fearmongering and choose someone who can look at rebuilding the reputation of the country without trying to do that at the point of a gun/tank/aircraft carrier/nuke.

Our local caucus

We're back from the caucus this evening, and it was an interesting event. It was held in the gym of a local elementary school, and each candidate's representatives staked out an area where his or her supporters gathered. However, as you can see in the photo, the areas quickly overflowed into each other, and it was a grand and glorious confusion. (You can see Judy toward the right side of the picture with a slight highlight.) We were told that no Democratic caucus in Iowa had ever had over some 550 attendees, and our little precinct had 762. This looks like a big year for the Democratic party turnout.

With that number of attendees, each candidate had to have 115 supporters to be viable in the caucus. We caucused for Richardson, who had the largest number of supporters outside the big three, but he only had 57 in the first round. His precinct chair worked really hard to gather people from Biden and Dodd, the only others who had supporters, but in the end only the top three got enough support in the second round even though some still stuck with Richardson. We supported Richardson for the first round and would have liked to see the other minor candidates' supporters join us, but they didn't, so we eventually switched to Obama for the second round. We were disappointed that such a good candidate got so little attention and support, but hope for a Democratic victory in November and hope that the Governor can find a worthwhile way to bring his considerable skills into the government.

So -- in the second round of votes, the final tallies were Obama 341, Clinton 208, and Edwards 153. This translates into 5 delegates for Obama, 3 for Clinton, and 2 for Edwards. We've not turned on the TV yet to see how things turned out statewide, but our precinct looks like Obama may just come away from Iowa with an awfully lot of momentum!

We're caucusing for Richardson

Tonight's rally with Governor Richardson was at The Mill, a fairly small restaurant and bar downtown. We got there an hour early and got a seat, but by the time the event started it was totally packed without even room to add standees. Tom Udall, a Senate candidate from New Mexico, spoke, as did the Red Cross pilot he got out of Sudan, and then Richardson gave a good talk. In spite of the crowd, we were able to get to a place where we could shake hands with him. We've been very close to committing to Richardson for the caucus, and we've now decided to do that. I'll write more about the caucuses tomorrow!

It's an election year!

Well, 2008 is divisible by four, so it's leap year -- and election year. And an election year in Iowa is something to see! We have been bombarded with campaign ads for the last year on TV and in print (everyone is for the environment, but they've sure been killing trees!) The ads have sometimes been informative, but they've sometimes been downright scary; it you like Dick Cheney, you'll LOVE Mitt Romney.

Johnson County, Iowa, is a pretty Democratic area so, in generally pretty conservative Iowa, it's sometimes called "The People's Republic of Johnson County." Clearly they've never seen The People's Republic of Berkeley! There is probably a difference in the way the parties handle caucuses, but with six precincts in Coralville there are six different Democratic caucus sites but only one Republican site.

We've done our part to try to understand the issues and the (Democratic) candidates. We attended the Johnson County Democratic Picnic, went to an Obama rally at UI, and are going to a Richardson meeting tonight. I've never seen "retail politics" before -- politics where the candidate really makes an effort to talk with individuals instead of just using mass media -- except for local races; if all politics were done this way we'd have a lot smaller chance of electing hypocrits like the Current Occupant. The value of the Iowa process is that it forces candidates to communicate at the personal level, and it shouldn't be lost.

Tomorrow night we may walk over to our caucus at an elementary school about a half mile away. It should be very interesting, and I'll write about it here.

But even though almost all our Presidential election years have been leap years (pop quiz: in what years were Presidential election years NOT leap years?), at least we have the actual election on the first Tuesday in November so it can never fall on Sadie Hawkins Day...