obama

I've been meaning to post a blog since last Sunday, but I've been so tired every night that I fell asleep before I got around to it.

Last Sunday afternoon and evening, I was transporting students to and from the Curry Building so that they could vote early. Right after the poll closed, I picked up for young women to take them back to campus. Judging by their ages, I would guess that this was the first time for each of them to vote, and they were so excited. As soon as they got into the Obama Van, they all got onto their cell phones.

"Mom, I just voted!"
"Daddy, I just voted!"
"Grandma, I just voted!"

These were the types of conversations I heard. When they all finished their calls, they talked amongst themselves, commenting on how the long wait (over two hours) was worth it.

But the best comment of all came when I stopped at Read Center to let one of them off.

As the young voter got out, one of the others said (and I swear, I'm not making this up), "We'll see you later. It was fun making history with you!"

And as we all know, history was made yesterday!

Jake Tapper is reporting that the National Shooting Sports Foundation is accusing the Obama campaign - and specifically, the Indiana for Change campaign - of misappropriating its email list:

Somehow, the NSSF charges, on September 27, 2008, the Obama campaign's Hoosier arm -- "Indiana for Change" -- distributed a press release to the SHOT Show media list, one entitled "Statement from Barack Obama on National Hunting and Fishing Day."

"Obama for America through its Indiana for Change arm has violated NSSF's legal rights and caused NSSF damages for partisan political gain," accuses Lawrence Keane, vice president and legal counsel for the trade association, demanding that Obama's campaign stop using the list, destroy it, and pay NSSF a quarter million dollars for having used it.

You can see a PDF of the NSSF letter here. In my view, the NSSF loses a little credibility by CC'ing "Barak H. Obama". If you can't spell a Presidential candidate's name correctly, what else have you overlooked?

Since I screwed up my wrist, my posting has been a little light. Until I'm typing normally again, here's some good reading for you:

• 538.com profiles the Obama ground game in Bloomington as part of their ongoing contrast between the campaigns. Now that we're a swing state, we're getting all kinds of attention.
  
  

• Julie Thomas lays out the case against building a new jail - an issue she shares with fellow DFMC A-List candidates Mark Stoops, Elizabeth Cure, and Valeri Haughton.
  
  

• New SUSA poll shows Baron Hill up big - and Obama is within striking distance here in the 9th. If you want to know how that's possible, see the first link above.
  
  

• If you missed the County Commissioner forum at Ivy Tech, WFHB has it online.
  
  

• Yet another poll shows that Jill Long Thompson is close to taking out George Bush's Man Mitch. How many polls can be outliers?
  
  

Location: Home of Jennifer and Bill Perry
3807 Bainbridge Dr.

Click here for more details and to RSVP. Seating is limited, so RSVP soon.

UPDATE: Sadly, we must report that McCain has already won the debate. In other news, as Eric pointed out below, Dewey defeats Truman.

The latest poll numbers in Indiana are out - according to a just-released Howey-Gauge poll, Hoosiers are evenly divided in their support for John McCain and Barack Obama:

Hoosiers are likely to find themselves at the American political epicenter over the next 60 days as the latest Howey-Gauge Poll shows Republican John McCain with a 45-43 percent lead over Democrat Barack Obama

It doesn't look like they've released the full crosstabs, but the article has a lot more information to dig through, with some interesting implications for Barack Obama and his upcoming visit to Indiana.

Now, for the bad news:

Mitch Daniels - 53
Jill Long Thompson - 35

Again, I haven't had time to delve into these numbers at all, but this is bad news for a poll this late in the season:

In the gubernatorial race, Democrat Jill Long Thompson faces a dilemma similar to what she faced in the primary. Her total awareness stood at 77 percent, up from 41 percent in February and 59 percent in April. While that number increased, her favs and unfavs both increased 10 percent from 22/9 in April to 32/19 in August.

Also, it appears that Mitch is edging toward that magic "50" on the re-elect question. I'll have more on this later.

Obama's acceptance speech, courtesy TPM:

(Obama's remarks as prepared, also courtesy of TPM.)

You know it's good when Pat Buchanan calls it the greatest convention speech of all time:

I especially like the reactions of the other MSNBC panelists. I don't think Rachel Maddow could quite believe what she was hearing.

(Video H/T Guancous at Daily Kos)

[Update: I posted pictures of the Austin Register for Change rally to my Picasa albums -bmk]

Greetings from Austin! I am currently working in the DFA booth here at Netroots Nation, encouraging people to sign our giant thank you card to Howard Dean. I've managed to swipe quite a bit of swag for my fellow DFMC-ers, so I'll return to Bloomington bearing gifts.

This morning was some of the informal caucus meetings, and the big DFA caucus is tonight.

At noon, there was a rally in the little park across the street, featuring the Chairman of the Texas Democratic party and Howard Dean. Ostensibly, Dean was encouraging people to register to vote - but as he's always said, voting is the bare minimum of democratic participation. The general theme of Dean's remarks, though, was that democracy has to be nurtured. It isn't enough to work to get people elected. After the election, we have to continue to work to secure the future of America.

That is the vision I have for Democracy for Monroe County - to become the organization that provides a consistent progressive voice in local and state politics.

I'll update the site with pictures later, and fill you in on Governor Dean's keynote address tonight.

The furor over Barack Obama's switch (flip-flop?) on FISA should serve as an early warning to progressive activists everywhere, that our work will not be done once he gets elected to occupy the Whitehouse. For one thing, a look at the web page Progressive Punch shows that he only has an 88.05% lifetime progressive rating (below Hillary Clinton's 90.82%). This means that there will probably many more issues over which many of will want to take him to task (universal health care comes to mind).

I write this because I remember what happened back in '92 when Bill Clinton beat another Bush. When Clinton was elected after 12 years of Republican administration, it seemed that everyone relaxed and even went to sleep. The common thinking was that, with a Democratic President and both houses of Congress controlled by Democrats, life was good.