Biden visit

On the day after Stephanie's birthday - what turned out to be the last very hot day of the year (in the low 90s) - I ventured across the Ohio River to Jeffersonville, IN - where I get my hair cut and where I had already volunteered for the campaigns once - for a rally featuring Democratic vice presidential candidate Joe Biden. I had been wary with the Biden selection (see "Central narratives"), and by mid-September other Democrats were also worried that Senator McCain's selection of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin had been masterful and Sen. Obama's selection of Biden not so masterful. But earlier that week the financial meltdown began in earnest. Biden later said he was late to Jeffersonville because he was on the phone with Obama, whose campaign had been on the phone with the McCain campaign trying to hammer out some joint principles to apply to any financial bailout. Biden in fact read a joint statement that it later turned out McCain never agreed to - until late that day when a very terse one-paragraph (and pretty content-less) joint statement came out. Both Obama and McCain jockeyed for the claim of who called who first. McCain ultimately suspended his campaign (again) - until late Friday he agreed to go ahead and appear in the first debate. Ultimately, it turned out that this week - with the meltdown and McCain "erratic" response - plus his statement that "the fundamentals of the economy are sound" comment - proved to be the McCain campaign's undoing. But none of this was entirely obvious that sunny Wednesday afternoon in Southern IN.

(Our friend Nancy, a leader in the Clark County Democratic Party, whose e-mails we received every day from the week pictured until Election Day, had been a fan of the Biden selectoin. Biden was a Catholic Democrat, like many Southern IN Democratic elected officials and party leaders - and, although I didn't think Biden would play that well in the South, he still sounded less elite than Senator Kerry had.)

Biden did not attract the 10,000 that Obama had attracted back in May over in Louisville, but several thousand - partly white working class Southern IN folks - people showed up and many appreciated what they heard. There was a reasonably long line (pictured above) - with free bottles of water - waiting to get into the event in front of the Clark County Courthouse - and - you can't see this - a rock concert-style line of people hawking Obama-Biden T-shirts and memorabilia - I bought my colleague Ida's husband a black T-shirt with Obama and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on it. Below is some of the crowd in front of the courthouse before Biden arrived.

Pictured below is one of the two Obama-Biden staffers who the campaign sent to work in the Jeffersonville office (Will). There was also a "Campaign for Change" office in the neighboring (Floyd Co.) office, in New Albany, where Stephanie works. All in all, the campaign opened several dozen IN offices, far outspending and outworking the McCain-Palin campaign, both in the "ground game" and on TV. I stopped by the Jeff office a couple of times, but I volunteered in the IN Democratic Party office, making calls that mentioned Obama, Congressman Baron Hill (for whom I had volunteered two years before), and IN Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jill Long Thompson. One Saturday I also volunteered over in the black middle class Louisville suburb of Newburgh, for Obama but also for our freshman Democratic Congressman, John Yarmuth, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell opponent Bruce Lunsford.

A very effective part of this rally was the use - harkening back to the half an hour before Senator Obama spoke in Mile High Stadium in Denver - when regular people told their stories and why they were supporting Obama (ending with "Washington ought to be paying less attention to Smith Barney and more attention to me, Barney Smith" - from IN no less) - of a regular person to introduce Biden. Juanita told about getting laid off from the Colgate plant across Interstate 65 from the courthouse and how this was happening to too many people (in the economic argument that Obama and Biden seamlessly stole from the Clintons). Juanita (pictured below) was not just a regular person in Jeff - in fact, she had been a leader of the union at Colgate - but she came off as authentic and troubled.

The crowd below braved the hot sun and was reasonably enthusiastic.

Biden came on as Juanita finished, and the two embraced below.

Biden made some relatively off the cuff remarks about the financial meltdown and negotiations betwen the two campaigns (though a couple of times - to get it right - he read somethings), before launching into a well practiced attack on Bush-McCain, the economy, and hope for the future (which nevertheless fit reasonably well with the meltdown discussion).

I had to get back to work and on to Children's Fellowship before it was all over, but I saw few others leaving, as Biden continued to warm up - on this hot down - Southern IN to the Obama-Biden. We now know that a Democratic presidential-vice presidential ticket won IN for the first time since 1964 and Obama-Biden carried Clark County (a county that President Bush won easily in 2004 - contributing to Baron Hill's Congressoinal loss that year - and one of the reasons why Hill is rated the third most conservative Democrat in the U.S. House right now).

-- Perry