I left work Monday late at 5:45 p.m. and made it to one of Senator Obama's four Louisville offices about 6 p.m. That gave me about 75 minutes to help make phone calls. The people running the office were even younger than those running the Clinton office, college students not as well dressed as Clinton's staff, playing rap music softly in the background. I got to talk with a couple of other volunteers, including a Chicago Vietnam vet turned TV producer who had met Obama in Chicago and had flown in to help out Monday and Tuesday in Kentucky. Twice during my 75 minutes, hecklers of sorts confronted us. A man called ahead and swore that Senator Obama was Muslim - I think he was getting him confused from Minneapolis Congressman Keith Ellison, who is Muslim - and this was clearly reason enough not to vote for him. A man also came into the office and said that something seemed funny about Obama, as he engaged one of the staff people in discussion. Whereas the Clinton phone calls were all telemarketing automated, here I was actually dialing people whose names I had - although I felt old again as I could barely read the names and numbers. This was somewhat more like the calling I did in fall 2006 for now Congressman Baron Hill, the Obama endorser across the river. The people I was calling lived about a mile away in the Deer Park neighborhood, near Bellarmine University- mainly white liberals. There were a couple of African Americans volunteering in there - though no doubt more in the West side office - and an even number of men and women (unlike with Clinton - no blacks and more women). Younger group - more personalized (they were also going door to door to remind Obama supporters to vote, just as I was on the phone) with more volunteers, less high-tech (without the telemarketing system), facing some prejudice against the candidate.
(I had tried to find out about Michelle Obama's appearance at Kosair Children's Hospital, just eight blocks from my office, earlier in the day. Apparently this was an event for the patients and press more than the public, as I couldn't find a schedule. However, I did find out about conservatives jabbing her in "proud of America"-gate where she supposedly said she's now proud of America for the first time in her life. Conservatives also jabbed a media blackout on her thesis, until after the election. It appears that - like Lani Guanier - never confirmed then withdrawn as President Clinton's Justice Department Civil rights chief - she may have had the audacity to write that some whites are still prejudiced against and discriminate against African-Americans, something "post-racial" conservatives say is itself racist (to say that whites are racist), and an assertion that her husband and his campaign have been trying to avoid. No doubt Obama organizers in Kentucky - somewhat in Jefferson County but certainly elsewhere - got to feel some of that prejudice not only against African-Americans but also against Muslims, foreigners, middle Easterners, people not named John Smith. However, one of the volunteers I talked with - who has been volunteering at a downtown office near Kosair earlier in the day - told me that Michelle Obama and Congressman John Yarmuth (another Obama endorser) had stopped by and she got to hear Obama speak briefly and got to meet her. I was jealous.)
I left at 7:15 to meet Stephanie and Vincent to go to the Bill and Hillary Clinton get-out-the-vote raly at the fairgrounds. We got there half an hour late, but then had to wait for nearly two hours, as a late rally in Lexington and rain slowed there arrival. Lots of lower-middle-class whites and lots of women and people people my age and over (and a smattering of African Americans, Latinos, and Asians) were there. A band entertained us with 1970s and 1980s songs (high points: Joe Walsh's 1974 hit "Rocky Mountain Way" and "Tell Me Something Good," another 1974 hit by Rufus featuring Chaka Khan), giving away some of the generational situattion.
While waiting we talked with Stephanie's IUS colleague Magdalena, who we had scene at two previous rallies, who was there with her daughter, and who had made a brought a beautiful Hillary sign which she put up on the wall. For the second time since I moved to Louisville, at a public event I ran into a former New College (of Florida) student. This one - Ken Silverman - one of four students in my spring 2001 Sociology of Religion seminar - who had been a rare big fan of mine - and who was now a producer for Japanese Fuji TV in their NYC office (Ken is biracial/Japanese American and has lived in Japan). It was fun catching up, and he gave Stephanie some lines from a Japanese nursery rhyme to share with her Japanese students (she had been having trouble explaining to them what nursery rhymes - a topic of study, in English - are - the next day they recognized the nursery rhyme Ken dictated to Stephanie, and then Stephanie found a Web site with nursery rhymes from around the world - including audio for them). We also spoke with Fischer, one of two major candidates for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate, to win the right to run against Senate Minority Leader (and former Jefferson County Judge Executive) Mitch McConnell. On the night before the election, the man who went on to win 30 percent of the vote statewide spent five minutes talking to Stephanie (the one Kentucky voter among us) soliciting her vote (she got out of him that he is pro-abortion rights, and I called his office an hour before the end of election day to ask them his position on the proposed federal constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, which all three presidential candidates oppose). (She ended up voting for him the next day, I believe).
We had to wait a long time, and Stephanie's feet hurt, and Vincent was grumpy. The end was almost anti-climatic again. But Stephanie and Vincent got to see President Clinton for the first time. Early on we got to see former Miss America (and Kentuckian) Heather French Henry, now the Dean's milk and Kentucky AAA spokeperson, and her daughters. Clinton gave a shorter version of his Thursday afternoon speech, then Hillary came on and the hugged briefly (I missed the picture, though others got it). Then he exited stage (no Chelsea - not until the next night at the Marriott, when we stayed home), and Hillary gave an updated version of the stump speech we heard a month before at Manual High. I noticed, when President Clinton said that those people have good jobs, insurance - this time he referred to TV new talking heads, instead of (implicitly) to Obama supporters. The crowd was more sparse than at Manual, but less sparse than at Butler High, and more enthusiastic. Hillary vowed to keep running, though she said little negative about Obama. She did talk about specifics and asserted she would be ready to lead on day one. When she was done, President Clinton came out. Both of them were mobbed, though perhaps President Clinton more.
We went home quickly, me having now seen one or the other of the Clintons three times in the past month, making up for the 16-year drought before then.
To see an excerpt from Senator Obama's speech in Louisville a week ago tonight, click here:
And a month ago, Senator Clinton at Manual High School:
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