Shaking Hands with Bill Clinton

Being an Iowan is a unique perogative on a lot of things. Corn and pork dominate the state so agriculture is huge. The state is very WASP'y with some small pockets of diversity thrown in here and there. We have the Field of Dreams, the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library, and the world's largest wooden nickel.

However, nothing compares to the experience you get as an Iowan every four years when it is time to select candidates for President. Iowans probably take for granted the unrivaled access they get to candidates. They feign interest and complain about all the telephone calls, but then they get special moments like I got today.

50 feet. That is how far I was from the stage at Hillary Clinton's campaign rally. 50 feet from #42 Bill Clinton and his wife. Perhaps one of the most iconic political couples in American history. The experience was akin to a rock concert (also used for the Obama experience, although this crowd was probably only 1/3 of the crowd Obama pulled here). Hillary's speech was nothing special, she does not inspire. However, Bill Clinton was different, even with only 5 minutes. It is something to watch a born politician work. You could tell that Bill Clinton still had "it" and could sell "it" if he needed too. Sure his presence on the campaign trail indicates the Hillary campaign is concerned about surging Obama fundraising. Sure he was kept on a leash in order not to upstage his ordinary partner. But Bill Clinton is still a huge draw. The crowd clammored to be near him.

I was struck by one scene after Bill had spoken and stepped off the stage when an elderly woman reached out to give him a kiss on the cheek. Bill gave her a big hug and kissed her on the hand and then lingered by the rail holding on to the woman's hand. She simply stood there listening to Hillary stroking and patting Bill's hand...clearly comforted by someone that she had obviously deeply connected with in his time in power, even though she had clearly never met him. It was a striking portrait of the humanity that Bill Clinton had/has. The end of his Presidency stripped away some of his humanity but this small portrait demonstrated why he remains popular, and why someone so distantly removed from the common man, like George Bush, struggles so much with the "common man" image.

At any rate, after Hillary was done droning I was able to shoot from my seat and find a good chink in the line so I could get up close...and then I got the chance to shake the hand and look square into the eyes of some one who is an extrordinary man. Bill Clinton had a firm but gentle shake and was a bit damp from the humidity and pressing the flesh with the masses, but you could still see a fire and energy in his eyes. The experience was vastly better then shaking hands and staring into the lifeless eyes of John Kerry in 2004. Bill Clinton simply oozes humanity. He repeatedly said to the crowd, "I am happy to be here, now go work hard for Hillary", or other similar coments that seemed to take the focus off of him and onto his partner. The man is still class to me, and today will go down as a memorable one in my life.

Iowans are lucky and take for granted these moments. The chance to rub elbows with heros and charlatans and make the decisions about who is worthy to proceed is one that should not be taken lightly. But damn isn't it easy to get lost in the glitz of someone like Bill Clinton.

Night #1 in the Obama Campaign Headquarters

My first round of volunteer help was delayed a few days due to work, but I did make it in last night for my first round of assisting in making calls for the Obama campaign. I had some great observations and experiences in the office.

I was able to help out for 2 hours last night, from 6pm to 8pm. I got there and was greeted by one of the interns working on the campaign. She walked me through the script that they were using for the night for my segment. Recently the campaign had sent brochures and DVD's to Iowa Democratic caucus goers and we were doing follow up calls to these folks to see if they had watched the biographical video and if they had any questions. We were also soliciting where people stood in terms of candidate support with 6 months until the caucus. There was another group of callers calling Dems in the next town over to tell them about an informational meeting that was coming up and inviting them to attend if possible. The office is small, but last night there were 10 volunteers making calls, and another 6-10 that had been out all day (in 90 degree heat) doing door to door canvassing.

Calling during the hours I did is hit or miss as it is dinner time and already busy for folks enjoying summer. I was able to place 89 calls during my two hours...but only made 12 "contacts" or people I was actually able to follow the script with. The rest of the calls were wrong numbers, not homes, or busy signals. Most of my list was populated with college students who had their college addresses listed and obviously were not still on-campus...another voting block difficult to track. Of the 12 folks I got to talk to, 10 were solid undecideds and not leaning toward any particular candidate. The other two were solid Obama supporters, so that was nice. I also was able to solicit one name to help volunteer with the campaign, which is always a great thing.

Overall it was a great time. Lots of volunteers and dinner was provided with more people calling in to help keep the volunteers fed. Being there has a way of sucking you into more helping. I am going to do more calls tomorrow and Monday, working tables at the Jazz Festival in town on Friday, and marching in the 4th of July parade...call me a junkie I guess.

On a related note, I will be updating my Where The Candidates stand piece this weekend once we have a better idea of what the second quarter fundraising looks like. Look for all of the Dems to post some nice numbers. I predict that a fourth candidate will be entering the top tier after this weekend...a name I kept hearing on some of the other calls in the office last night that people are excited about supporting...Gov. Bill Richardson.

Return of the Iowawineguy and Updates From The Field!

That's right, my relocation is nearly complete and I am now alive and well and working back in the state of Iowa, thus Greg the Wisconsin Democrat has become iowawineguy once again. I am currently living in a residence hall on the campus of the University of Iowa until I close on my new home in Coralville on July 6th. The job is going great and is a great breath of fresh air.

Something else smells great here too...the smell of caucus politics! Thick cut pork chops, the Field of Dreams, corn, and first in the nation Presidential voting...Iowa has it all!

I hope to be able to bring you better coverage from the the front lines of the 2008 campaign, at least from the GOOD side. I might even get motivated to go check out the GOP folks if they get close enough...Lord knows there will be plenty of seating...

Tonight I went to the field office for Barack Obama here in Iowa City. The office is in a large cluster of offices in a building in downtown, and is approximately 6 offices down from the Hillary Clinton field office. I got to meet several volunteers tonight as well as the county coordinator and volunteer coordinator Chris. I got a quick tour around the office, which is fairly small, changed my voter registration, signed a caucus pledge card for Obama (I really hope Gore doesn't get in the race now!), signed up for phone bank shifts and took myself a bumper sticker!

My initial impressions are very positive. Based on my experience with the Dean campaign in 2003, the Obama group already seems more organized and off to a better start. Of course Dean had a much harder road to hoe then Obama does these days. Chris said that they were having a large influx of volunteers, many of whom were young and had never done campaigns before (much like Dean). Most interesting was that they were getting a huge flood of high school volunteers, which was a new phenomenon to manage...lots of young people signing pledge cards in anticipation of their 18th birthday...remember these folks don't get polled!

The office already had numerous ways for me to get involved: upcoming July 4th parades, community summer events where they would have tables, canvassing, and phone banking.

Tomorrow night is my first round of phone banking, and I will be sure to report back after to let you know how it goes!

Of Many Things

The last two days my head has been swimming with the news and follow up that the elected Democratic Congressional majority is giving up the fight to end the war in Iraq and give George Bush, the great Liar, a blank check to continue this futile and costly war. Clearly Democrats were given the houses of Congress with a clear mandate to end this mess in Iraq and instead of working to do so, they have rolled over and given in...and at the same time ignored once again the will of the electorate. Maybe they will have a better shot come September when the next round of reports come, but my gut tells me this war will not end while George Bush is still in the White House unless funding is cut for the war. The Repbulicans are too strong in standing together so far.

Honestly, I have lost a lot of faith in the Democrats in Congress, and especially with the leadership. It is time for the ineffective Harry Reid to be replaced as Senate majority leader. He just does not have the stones to get the job done in the face of a tough adversary. Nanyc Pelosi...meh. Who knows. But if these leaders cannot get the caucus whipped into shape then they should be replaced for someone that will fight for the will of the electorate.

All of this also has me sizing up the candidates again and really wondering who I should be supporting in this mess. Only John Edwards and Chris Dodd have taken firm stands on ending this war now and they are starting to look like visionary messengers to me. I want to see Obama take the hardline of what is right...and for me what is right is getting the hell out of Iraq and focusing on real problems. So my choices are shaken and I am left doing a lot of evaluating.

Keith Olbermann has become a powerful voice for reason and progressive values on his evening telecast and he issued a scathing indictment to Bush and the Democrats last night. The value is greatest when you view the video, but I will post the text here. I remain, completely frustrated.

A Special Comment about the Democrats’ deal with President Bush to continue financing this unspeakable war in Iraq—and to do so on his terms:

Few men or women elected in our history—whether executive or legislative, state or national—have been sent into office with a mandate more obvious, nor instructions more clear: Get us out of Iraq.
Yet after six months of preparation and execution—half a year gathering the strands of public support; translating into action, the collective will of the nearly 70 percent of Americans who reject this War of Lies, the Democrats have managed only this:
The Democratic leadership has surrendered to a president—if not the worst president, then easily the most selfish, in our history—who happily blackmails his own people, and uses his own military personnel as hostages to his asinine demand, that the Democrats “give the troops their money”; The Democratic leadership has agreed to finance the deaths of Americans in a war that has only reduced the security of Americans; The Democratic leadership has given Mr. Bush all that he wanted, with the only caveat being, not merely meaningless symbolism about benchmarks for the Iraqi government, but optional meaningless symbolism about benchmarks for the Iraqi government.

The Democratic leadership has, in sum, claimed a compromise with the Administration, in which the only things truly compromised, are the trust of the voters, the ethics of the Democrats, and the lives of our brave, and doomed, friends, and family, in Iraq.You, the men and women elected with the simplest of directions—Stop The War—have traded your strength, your bargaining position, and the uniform support of those who elected you… for a handful of magic beans. You may trot out every political cliché from the soft-soap, inside-the-beltway dictionary of boilerplate sound bites, about how this is the “beginning of the end” of Mr. Bush’s “carte blanche” in Iraq, about how this is a “first step.”Well, Senator Reid, the only end at its beginning... is our collective hope that you and your colleagues would do what is right, what is essential, what you were each elected and re-elected to do.Because this “first step”… is a step right off a cliff.

And this President! How shameful it would be to watch an adult... hold his breath, and threaten to continue to do so, until he turned blue.But how horrifying it is… to watch a President hold his breath and threaten to continue to do so, until innocent and patriotic Americans in harm’s way, are bled white.You lead this country, sir? You claim to defend it? And yet when faced with the prospect of someone calling you on your stubbornness—your stubbornness which has cost 3,431 Americans their lives and thousands more their limbs—you, Mr. Bush, imply that if the Democrats don’t give you the money and give it to you entirely on your terms, the troops in Iraq will be stranded, or forced to serve longer, or have to throw bullets at the enemy with their bare hands.How transcendentally, how historically, pathetic. Any other president from any other moment in the panorama of our history would have, at the outset of this tawdry game of political chicken, declared that no matter what the other political side did, he would insure personally—first, last and always—that the troops would not suffer. A President, Mr. Bush, uses the carte
blanche he has already, not to manipulate an overlap of arriving and departing Brigades into a ‘second surge,’ but to say in unequivocal terms that if it takes every last dime of the monies already allocated, if it takes reneging on government contracts with Halliburton, he will make sure the troops are safe—even if the only safety to be found, is in getting them the hell out of there. Well, any true President would have done that, Sir. You instead, used our troops as political pawns, then blamed the Democrats when you did so.

Not that these Democrats, who had this country’s support and sympathy up until 48 hours ago, have not since earned all the blame they can carry home.“We seem to be very near the bleak choice between war and shame,” Winston Churchill wrote to Lord Moyne in the days after the British signed the Munich accords with Germany in 1938. “My feeling is that we shall choose shame, and then have war thrown in, a little later…”That’s what this is for the Democrats, isn’t it? Their “Neville Chamberlain moment” before the Second World War. All that’s missing is the landing at the airport, with the blinkered leader waving a piece of paper which he naively thought would guarantee “peace in our time,” but which his opponent would ignore with deceit.The Democrats have merely streamlined the process. Their piece of paper already says Mr. Bush can ignore it, with impugnity.

And where are the Democratic presidential hopefuls this evening? See they not, that to which the Senate and House leadership has blinded itself? Judging these candidates based on how they voted on the original Iraq authorization, or waiting for apologies for those votes, is ancient history now. The Democratic nomination is likely to be decided... tomorrow. The talk of practical politics, the buying into of the President’s dishonest construction “fund-the-troops-or-they-will-be-in-jeopardy,” the promise of tougher action in September, is falling not on deaf ears, but rather falling on Americans who already told you what to do, and now perceive your ears as closed to practical politics.Those who seek the Democratic nomination need to—for their own political futures and, with a thousand times more solemnity and importance, for the individual futures of our troops—denounce this betrayal, vote against it, and, if need be, unseat Majority Leader Reid and Speaker Pelosi if they continue down this path of guilty, fatal acquiescence to the tragically misguided will of a monomaniacal president.

For, ultimately, at this hour, the entire government has failed us. Mr. Reid, Mr. Hoyer, and the other Democrats... have failed us.They negotiated away that which they did not own, but had only been entrusted by us to protect: our collective will as the citizens of this country, that this brazen War of Lies be ended as rapidly and safely as possible.
Mr. Bush and his government... have failed us. They have behaved venomously and without dignity—of course. That is all at which Mr. Bush is gifted. We are the ones providing any element of surprise or shock here. With the exception of Senator Dodd and Senator Edwards, the Democratic presidential candidates have (so far at least)failed us.
They must now speak, and make plain how they view what has been given away to Mr. Bush, and what is yet to be given away tomorrow, and in the thousand tomorrows to come. Because for the next fourteen months, the Democratic nominating process—indeed the whole of our political discourse until further notice—has, with the stroke of a cursed pen, become about one thing, and one thing alone. The electorate figured this out, six months ago. The President and the Republicans
have not—doubtless will not. The Democrats will figure it out, during the Memorial Day recess, when they go home and many of those who elected them will politely suggest they stay there—and permanently. Because, on the subject of Iraq...The people have been ahead of the media....Ahead of the government...Ahead of the politicians...For the last year, or two years, or maybe three. Our politics... is now about the answer to one briefly-worded question.Mr. Bush has failed. Mr. Warner has failed. Mr. Reid has failed. So. Who among us will stop this war—this War of Lies? To he or she, fall the figurative keys to the nation.To all the others—presidents and majority leaders and candidates and rank-and-file Congressmen and Senators of either party—there is only blame… for this shameful, and bi-partisan, betrayal.

Gore Continues To Leave The Door Open, While Obama Struggles To Gain Traction

If you have been paying attention to polls over the last few weeks you will notice that the slight upward trend Obama had through much of March and April has disappeared with Hillary Clinton gaining back the momentum and then some. For me I think the real issue is Obama's lack of clear policy statements. I also think that as long as he stays this close he can afford to wait on releasing his policy statements until mid-summer/early fall and take the good sized bump they should give him.

Meanwhile, Al Gore continues to leave the door open to his entry in the race, from the New York Times:

When I asked Gore why he hasn’t dismissed all the speculation by issuing a Shermanesque refusal to stand, as he did in 2002, Gore said, "Having spent 30 years as part of the political dialogue, I don’t know why a 600-day campaign is taken as a given, and why people who aren’t in it 600 days out for the convenience of whatever brokers want to close the door and narrow the field and say, ‘This is it, now let’s place your bets’ — If they want to do that, fine. I don’t have to play that game."

I think the fall should be interesting, with some potential big names like Newt Gingrich, Al Gore, Fred Thompson, or the independent ticket featuring Bloomberg or Hagel making an entry into things.

Back in the Saddle, Headed to the Heat of Battle

I am a master of rhymes as well. Welcome back as we look to head into the summer months! Many apologies for my lack of posts...I have been involved in a job search. That process is concluded and in mid-June I will be moving to the great state of Iowa. I did this just to be able to more effectively give you insight on this race!

One development to check out today are two new adds from Bill Richardson. The ads may shock you, because they are meant to be humorous, which is a trait you do not see in many campaign ads these days. The ads do a good job of showcasing the deep resume that Bill Richardson has.

Check them out here.

Nothing to Say Except God Bless Va Tech