“Truth.  It will set you free. 
But first it will piss you off.”   Bumper strip in Berkeley.
 
We’ve been in Oakland and Berkeley for a series of fundraisers this past week.  For fundraising, this is low hanging fruit country.  The average zip code in America gives $41,000 total to all political candidates.  The three zip codes that gave most of the money to an event with Gary Hart last weekend give an average of over $1.5 million each -- about 30 to 1 for Obama.  So while it was pleasant, it wasn’t totally a surprise when 300 people showed up to hear Senator Hart and gave over $125,000.  Not bad for a Sunday garden party.  It looks like a debate party with Alice Waters and a cast of gustatory all stars will net another $150,000 tonight.
 
This all happened after the economy went to hell.  You know that’s happened in Berkeley when the proprietors of high-end restaurants say their weekday business collapsed on precisely the day of the first big fall in the market and has not recovered.  That is what we were told by Christopher Lee, owner of Eccolo and former Chez Panisse chef.  On the other hand, Sam was told today that an Obama volunteer is walking around a legal conference in Silicon Valley asking for $5000 checks from participants -- and getting them.  It’s harvest time.
 
Here are some campaign updates that you aren’t hearing on Letterman, Jon Stewart, and the Colbert Report.  In Colorado, there are 190 full-time staff members in 32 offices around the state.  Additionally, as of this week, there are 225 full-time volunteers from out of state.  Last weekend, there was a competition with the Virginia Obama campaign to see which state could do more canvassing.  In Colorado, some 4,000 volunteers knocked on over 107,000 doors.  That is an all time record for the state!  But the field team in Virginia, headed by the brilliant Matt Robinson, did even better with hundreds of additional staff and volunteers imported from DC and Maryland.
 
I have a great feeling about tonight, but not just because McCain and Palin are imploding and not because people are sick of what my friend Verne Newton refers to as McCain’s coquettish southern belle half-grin and fluttering eyes. No, I have a great feeling because our daughter Teal got rid of all my scary bad feelings by destroying them in the Crested Butte Grump Festival.  That’s right.  Once a year for the past twenty, the good people of Crested Butte, Colorado, make a huge cloth and metal grump, stuff it full of papers on which their greatest complaints from the past year are written and then set it aflame while screaming “Burn the grump!”.  It’s working for me . . . sort of.
 

Another bumper strip seen in Berkeley:  “I can’t believe I’m still protesting the same old crap.”
 
Send me your thoughts on the debate tonight, particularly your funny ones.

alisonteal@tealdesigns.com

Two of our three children, Nicholas and Willa, are working full time for Rock The Vote through the election.  To be fair, our other child, Teal, is the only one of the five of us who has a real, full-time job, so we all need her where she is.

The other two are traveling the country, the swing states really, putting on concerts and registering voters.  Here are a couple of reports from the road:

Willa Brown:

It's 8.20am, and we're awake again.  The staff of the Rock the Vote Road Trip is bleary-eyed and confused, standing in the lobby of the Holiday Inn Express, Clearview, an hour outside State College, PA, home of Penn State.

Two hours ago, we arrived in State College -- a town charmingly honest in its name.  We parked our bus, a sixty-foot whopper equipped with four voter registration booths, two merchandise counters and a small, dingy lounge.  Our motel is 50 miles from State College, which is why we only got two-hours sleep before heading out to register voters at a 10am tailgate before the big game.  The big game, it should be noted, is really big.  My U.S. college had 2,400 students, so this is new for me.  My brother went to a real, live University, but it was still nothing like this. The 100,000-seat stadium was packed.

This is what we do now, my brother and I, along with a handful of other underpaid, over-motivated staffers.  We drive town to town — mostly in our old Volvo or the rented mini-van that chases the Rock The Vote bus.  Both cars tailgate the tour bus, trying to get close enough to pick up its weak wireless reception, so we can register voters.  We don't honestly care whom they vote for.  Seventy to eighty percent of young people vote Democratic, but as far as Rock the Vote is concerned, we’re non-partisan.

Thirteen million 18-29 year-olds are without health insurance, and well over a million of us have fought in Iraq or Afghanistan.  It's not hard to understand why these issues are discussed without reference to us -- the 18-29 year-olds, the 1/5 of the electorate who fall into the category of "youths." Traditionally, campaigns don’t focus on us, because politicians think we don't vote.  The thing is, they are wrong.  In 2004, according to the US Census Bureau, 81.6% of registered 18-29 year-olds voted.  81.6%!

This year, Rock the Vote has registered over 1.6 million young voters.  These are first-time voters.  For many of these voters, the concept of voting is alien.  For the first time, they are involved.

So we rolled out of bed two hours after arriving and drove to Penn State, exhausted and half asleep.  Because among the thousands of students that are thronging to the game, a little tipsy and a lot tired, there are some who have never thought of voting, some who have never considered filling out a form, some who believe that politicians will never listen to them anyway.  But we are 1/5 of the electorate, and in ten years we will be 1/4.  It's time for us to be heard.  Right now it’s time for ten sleep-deprived, un-showered, unshaven weirdoes to get more of us registered and that's just what we'll do.   
 
Nicholas Brown:
 
9:45pm – Driving into Pittsburgh can throw a cynic for a loop.  We think of this mountain city as an industrial wasteland driven by coal and steel.  It may well have been, but when you come through the tunnel and catch the sunset glinting off the bridges of the spired city below, you can’t help but think of Oz or Atlantis.  That is, unless, you are Gary, our bus driver.
 
“I hate this city,” he announced.
 
Gary’s hatred comes from a long-ago football injury that some irate Pittsburgh Steeler fan inflicted on a Cincinnati quarterback.  It’s a grossly unfair way to judge an entire city, but after four hours in traffic on the randomly reconstructed streets of Pittsburgh, you have to sympathize a bit with Gary.  While I did not keep an exact tally, it seems that we took somewhere between four-and-five-hundred detours in a long and frustrating attempt to get back onto the highway before we finally moved through the city and reached our hotel.
 
Yesterday, we made two forays into the city itself: the first to the Pittsburgh Pirates home field to register the Sunday afternoon masses at PNC park and the second to host a concert at Pittsburgh University.  The concert in question was headlined by local hip-hop artist (hip-hartist) Wiz Khalifa with performances from Trevor Menear, and Donora.
 
The concerts were lovely.  And we did good work.  Voters registered: check.  Concert performed: check.  But the real highlight of yesterday was the certain knowledge that today was a rest day.  Today was a day of rest and we are thankful for it.  Tomorrow we head to Akron.
            

I spent most of the morning voting about a thousand times in the PBS “Is Sarah Palin qualified?” poll and she’s still ahead.  So how accurate can it be?  It does irritate me that there are right wing idiots out there with even less to do than I who waste their days in this sort of pursuit when they should be teaching abstinence at their shooting ranges, but I suppose there’s quite a bit of time to adjust their sights before polar bear season begins.

The New York Observer’s Simon Doonan was certain there’d be a run on eyewear after the Republican convention, so he checked it out at his local LensCrafters.  Not only was no one buying, but the ophthalmologist told him that magnification of Palin’s glasses seemed to show they were plain glass.  Apparently they are just a school marm fashion statement or as the British tabloids say: her ‘sexy secretary’ style.  My English friend, Andrew Beaumont, says, “At least we’d heard of Dmitri Medvedev before Putin put him ‘in charge’ of Russia.  If you’re going to elect someone mad, bad and dangerous, try Karl Rove.  I’m pretty sure he’s free, Fox interviews notwithstanding.  A lot of us are counting on you, America.”

If you have three minutes, this should amuse you:

http://www.imvotingrepublican.com/

The Obama campaign is unlike any other I’ve been in involved in.  It really is a grass roots campaign.  In all our years in politics, my husband and I have never seen a ground campaign like this one. I am reminded of the movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.  At one point when they were being relentlessly pursued, one asks, “Who are these guys?” and the other responds, "These guys are good."

Thank God, because what it’s going to come down to is registering voters and getting out the vote.  We’ve only got six weeks.

Here’s one thing you can do if you can spare the time to go to Ohio.  Click on this link: http://www.actblue.com/page/votetodayohio

Read through the site.  Go to Ohio for Golden Week and/or sponsor a van.  If fully funded, the campaign expects to bank 10,000 early votes for Obama in Ohio.  We need each and every one of them.  These votes won’t be lost to bad weather, bad machines or questionable Election Day practices.

The following is a site where anyone in the country can find out how to get an absentee ballot.  Students may be at colleges and universities in states other than where they are registered.  THEY MUST GET THEIR ABSENTEE BALLOTS.  Please send this to every student you know and ask them to do the same.  Send it out as far and wide as you can.

http://www.voteforchange.com/index_obama.php?source=091008emailR

Central and northern Minnesota is so flat it’s almost concave. I grew up in Nebraska, so I know flat. It’s not surprising that someone dreamed up the notion that the lakes up north are puddles created by Paul Bunyan’s footsteps.  I was musing on this flatness as I sat checking my email and waiting for my non-fat extra-foam latte at Brewed Awakenings coffee shop in Grand Rapids when I overheard the conversation of two women in their mid to late thirties.
 
“I really like Palin,” said the one who continued to chew her gum while eating a muffin.  “It’s awesome what she did for her town, getting all that money”.
 
“Yeah.  It’d be cool if Rapids could get a new Rec center like that,” said the other, who was wearing pajama bottoms and storm-trooper boots.  “Jeez, how’d she manage to get all that money anyway?”
 
They sat down at the table next to me.
 
“It’s called 'pork',” I said.
 
People in Minnesota are so nice and polite, they don’t mind it when you insert yourself into their private conversations — or at least they don’t tell you if they do.
 
“Where I come from, we call that sort of money ‘pork’,” I said and then I showed them the following web site, which had just been forwarded to me:
 
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/215645.php
 
They indulged me with a laugh, so I had the courage to intrude some more.
 
“What do you think about Palin in general?” I asked.
 
“She’s really neat,” said pajama bottoms.  “I hate the way they’re all talking about her Down’s syndrome child and it’s not fair to talk about her pregnant daughter either.  That’s private and it’s nobody’s business.”
 
“Who is ‘they’?” I asked.
 
“You know, everybody -- on the internet and everywhere,” she continued.  “It’s not right.”
 
 “I think she’s cool,” said gum-chewer.  “I mean I could know her.  She’s just a regular sort of person.”
 
“Yeah,” I thought, “If you’re a tundra-eating, abstinence-only teaching, condescending, irritatingly self-confident moose-hunting, creationist, liar.” I bit my tongue.  The caffeine was getting to me.
 
“Right,” I said, breathing deeply and trying to recall the Buddhist chant I learned over the summer.
 
“She’s got a great nose – sort of like Samantha’s in Bewitched,” muffin woman added.  They returned to talking to each other.
 
Something perverse in me needed to hear more.  I ordered another coffee, decaf this time.  I listened to some talk about their church and the local museum.  Grand Rapids is the birthplace of Judy Garland and the town has a museum dedicated to her even though they pretty much ran her and her family out of town in the 1930s when they suspected her father of being homosexual.
 
After a decent interval, I interrupted again. “Forgive me, but I’m not from around here and I’m really interested in the local politics.  I was wondering how you think the people in this area will vote.  Would you mind telling me how you think your friends and family are likely to vote?”
 
“Oh, Obama for sure.  Everybody we know is for Obama.  We’re sick of the economy and the war and he’s against the war.  It’s time for change and he’s all about change.”
 
Go figure.
 
Last week Real Clear Politics, which averages all the national polls, had McCain ahead by almost 3%.  That was the bump from the Republican Convention.  Not only was McCain up, Obama was down.  Today Obama is back up by an average of 1.7%.  The chart line has a nice upward tilt.
 

Come on.  Cheer Up!  This, thanks from my friend David Mixner:



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3ijYVyhnn0

It looks to me like the Republicans are doing their best to follow the Arab world -- breezily rejecting science, embracing fundamentalist religion, and glorifying self-absorption. COUNTRY FIRST!  We’ll ruin the rest of the world later.  Teach your kids it is weak and wrong to care about anything but America. 

My favorite quote of the day is Jonathan Martin’s on Politic.com:
Mrs. Palin needs to be reminded that Jesus Christ was a community organizer and Pontius Pilate was a governor.

More people watched an African American man give a speech alone on a stage than watched the opening of the Olympics.  Thrilling!  A new CNN poll yesterday had Obama at 49% and McCain at 48%.  Chilling!
 
In the face of hurricane Gustav, a post convention report seems a bit frivolous. Since I want to be taken somewhat seriously, I’ll give most of this posting over to my son Nicholas who couldn't care less.  Also, to be honest, I’m still recovering.  Not wanting to miss anything, I had to be the first up and the last to bed. The daily credentials were given out early, but more important, that’s when the trading began; two Arena passes for one invitation to the CNN Bar or the Pelosi tea, and so on. Burning the candle at both ends is not as easy -- or attractive -- as it once was.  Nonetheless, I missed very little with the exception of the final blowout -- the Vanity Fair/Google party where the lines were blocks long and I had failed to secure printed tickets.  Instead, I roamed through the bowels of Invesco late Thursday night.  The candidate had long since departed having stopped at a staff party and then a National Finance Committee event.  Wandering through the complex system of underground tunnels was like navigating an ant farm.  The security was awesome.  Agents, cops and soldiers were everywhere, relaxing and smoking now that their jobs were over.   

 
We left Denver and headed for Aspen and a Dylan concert.  The concert was a disappointment partially because the enormous projection screens never zoomed in close enough to identify who was actually singing.  It was as if they were trying to show you what it would look like if you were even further away from the stage. And the music itself was indecipherable, he may well have sung “Like A Rolling Stone” or “Blowin’ In The Wind” but only he would know, whoever “he” was. Personally I believe it was a Dylan impersonator who didn’t know a word of English.
 
We had hoped the concert would be the perfect end to the week and, in a way it was.  It certainly reaffirmed the need for change.
 
Now Nicholas:
 
Saturday, August 30th
 
4:45 pm MST - My fellow Americans, I hereby nominate Susie Blaser for the position of my vice president to the United States. Never heard of Susie? Well, she's just like you, Ms. swing voter. She owns a KFC franchise, so she has executive experience. She is one sixth Hispanic, one sixth black, likes America...
 
And so on. I retreated, post convention, to the Aspen valley with a number of strong dems with strong views and thus immediately got to arguing about mlle Palin, a nominee chosen, it would seem, almost entirely based on demographics.
 
Politically speaking, it might be a smart move. My understanding is that whole chunks of voters find her likeable, attractive, and female. It's easy to say that she has no experience, comes off as a bit of a ditz, and likely can't locate South Ossetia on a map, but - political stump speeches notwithstanding - the American voters aren't all that bright. Al Gore kisses his wife in 2000 and 4% more of us think he is qualified for the presidency, or Bush comes off as folksy and we somehow equate that with ability to lead. Most Americans assume, I think, that the White House staff will pretty much run itself in times of crises. Still, it's disappointing to see someone pick a candidate for utterly political considerations. You want whoever is holding the nuclear football to at least have some vague notion of where and where not to bomb.
 
After a bit too much wine and speculation, I have formed my own crazy conspiracy theory: maybe she won't accept the nomination. There was, after all, two weeks of news coverage about whether or not Hillary's delegates would vote for her at the Dem convention that turned into a surprise way to show party unity. Maybe McCain and his cronies have adapted to the unspoken rule of new media: anything that is a surprise will get coverage. They run with this lady through Wednesday night and have a newer, better, more efficient also-a-woman VP nominee hiding in the wings. Margaret Thatcher maybe.
 
Sunday, August 31st
10:29 CST -- You wind your way down out of the mountains and suddenly the whole perspective shifts and you are surrounded by flatlands and tightlipped American Gothic midwesterners, rather than the freakishly tall beautiful Ur-people of the Colorado mountains. Nine hundred miles and fourteen hours from Aspen, we are in Des Moines, Iowa, the opening gate for this whole presidential mess.
 
I caffeinated myself absurdly this morning because we were out late watching Bob Dylan play for the Aspen Jazz festival last night. It was not so much a concert as a weird spectacle of age and celebrity gone wrong. He sounds like a man singing with a mouth full of live goldfish. I sat with a small crew of locals and played a drinking game where we took a sip every time Dylan sang a single discernible word and ended the concert disappointingly sober.
 
There is a sad metaphor in there somewhere: an icon of the idealist sixties when hundreds of thousands of young, reform-minded freaks swarmed the streets bellowing for change who has now turned into a depressing elderly gentleman who may or may not have any teeth. A good poet with some time on her hands could use that image to convey failed hopes or collapsed idealism or maybe just the ultimate triumph of substance over style on the left: The reform-minded freaks of my generation don't really exist with any force. They have donned suits and classy haircuts. It's tough to get a job otherwise.
 
When we got in tonight the news wires were abuzz with hurricane Gustav and its impact on the Republican convention. Given the many many meaningless pseudo-events that tend to hijack campaigns, it's refreshing to see the news networks actually compel the candidates to act like decent people during a crisis. Obama is watching the gulf coast from afar rather than disrupting the local emergency workers and McCain is going to do a quick trip down to the scene prompting this extraordinarily civilized response from Obama:
 
"A big storm like this raises bipartisan concerns and I think for John to want to find out what's going on is fine."
 
Now McCain just needs to say something nice to Obama and we'll have a bizarre violation of the usual election-year September viciousness. Look what a national disaster can do for our civility! And the RNC has been all but canceled, so we could all be in for a little bipartisan kindness for a full week. Or, more likely, someone will say something really hateful while I am writing this, destroying  that theory.