Post Election Void and on to Euphoria

Happy New Year to all my faithful blog readers. 

To fill the post-election void, Howard and I traveled to China and SE Asia. From the Great Wall

To the Beijing Opera:

To the Olympic Village Birdnest

It was a wonderful escape from USA politics plus an extraordinary "look" into our daughter and  son-in-law's Shanghai lifestyle (you may remember Rebecca and Aaron have been living and working in Shanghai since April, 2008). 

We visited Beiijin, Xian, Shanghai, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok. 

Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur

There is nothing like world travel to open your eyes to the bigness and smallness of the world! Once again, Happy New Year to all! 

The Victory and The Void

The MORNING AFTER

Surely everyone has witnessed not only Barack Obama's elegant victory and but also his exquisite victory speech. I didn't want him to stop talking. After 8 loooong years of you-know-who-it was heavenly to listen to an American leader sounding so smart and speaking with such grace, intellect and compassion.

The VOID

But today, while nursing my victory "hangover", I have to admit I feel a void. I have been 100% focused on this endless campaign: raising money, raising awareness, and of course, raising my voice for a new American policy direction.

What am I going to do? Will the TV Talking heads still hold my attention. Will I watch these TV shows everyday with with same intense attention? Will I surf the internet for the latest update? Will I now have to use my time for accomplishing long-overdue tasks like: cleaning my closet?! 

I suspect I'll do a few "catch-up" jobs but mostly, knowing me, I'll stay  in "worry mode". Before today, I worried about the election.

Now, I'll worry about:

Who is John Stewart and Stephen Colbert going to make of now?

Who is Chris Matthews, Keith Olberman and Rachel Maddow going to exhort?

What will Chuck Todd analyze?

And, most worrisome: how much more vitriol will be spewed from Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, and the other right winger radio/TV talkers.

Random thought:

Maybe it's time to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairness_Doctrine-abolished during Ronald Reagan's administration allowing all the partisan broadcasting we experience today. Maybe this reversal was not a good thing--For anyone. Some of the talking heads -on both sides-have been-and I fear will continue to be-brutal. 

THE NEW PRESIDENT 

Barack Obama is a unique candidate. Although all the talking heads and news journalists keep going on and on about Barack's blackness, President-Elect Obama is not a traditional "black candidate". His candidacy was not a "black grievance" campaign. Rather his campaign and now his presidency will be of "possibilities"...what we can achieve together; he wants us to be a team. I think he'll be able to count on us.

Obama appealed to the basic fabric of American life...what we all want for our families...and in the end, when people voted, people realized we are all in this big American boat TOGETHER. And when you're in leaky boat, it does not matter the captain's skin color, you want the captain to save the ship so all don't drown!

GIVING UP POWER

The most hard-to-win-cohort was the white male over 50 years. Since the founding of this country, the Older White Male has reigned supreme and no one likes to relinquish power. But the changing fabric of the American "melting pot" has brought a multitude of shades and beliefs to the political table. And while-in the end-this is a good thing-in the short term, it won't be easy.  There is no going back. This is a country based on merit and diversity is here to stay. And the broader the diversity, the better. 

GOBAMA!!

the vote, the desperate & the ditch

10 days till election and, here in Ohio, the ground forces are swelling. Beginning tomorrow, The National Democratic Committee staff is dispersing to the Battleground States--and OHIO is on the list. These folks, who depend on home hospitality, will work on get-out-the-vote (door-to-door campaigning), field office support and basically anything that needs doing will be done by the these folks. 

At 3pm on this wall-to-wall-sunshine day, I voted. I didn't give much thought to driving to our County Board of Elections (BOE) UNTIL I got to within about 8 blocks of my destination, and I began to encounter signs that read:

For those readers not that familiar with downtown Cleveland, let me say, it is mighty unusual to have a problem with parking let alone to ever need OVERFLOW parking!! 

 So, naturally, I continued on my way, ignoring the signs.

I kept on driving, cock-sure I could just park in the  BOE's adjacent lot.  As I approached the BOE building and, I see not only no parking in sight, but also that the police have the street blocked...and so, I keep on driving. Finally able to make a legal U-turn, I back tracked and proceeded to follow the parking signs! Now, I'm thinking, WOW! Voting is gonna be jammed! 

Wrong again!

Voting was a breeze. Dozens of very helpful workers and scores of Voting Booths:

Now that I have voted, I will be free to work for the campaign on November 4th. 

DESPERATE? A few days ago, Lisa, my daughter-in-law, sent this photo showing a pre-paid Federal Express envelope along with a pleaful letter from John McCain, written in the most urgent language-for donations to be sent ASAP-in the aforementioned FedEx envelope. FEDEX!!! Isn't that pretty expen$ive??? 

(full disclosure: The mailing was addressed to the former owner of Lisa and Wilton's home!) 

And finally, last week, when Bill Clinton was in Cleveland, he said, that Americans only vote for Democrats when "we're in a ditch". Ditch? Seems to me, we're in waaaay more than a ditch, maybe the Grand Canyon??  If that's the case, maybe we'll soon see the change we so desperately need.

GOBAMA

Ohio-the heart of it all

19 days till election day and OHIO is buzzing.

From Lake Erie to the Ohio River, Youngstown to Toledo (for those of you not familiar with geography, that means north to south, east to west),  the candidates and their surrogates are flooding Ohio looking for money and votes.

Ohioans are lately in the (not such good) news: Joe-the-Plumber is from Toledo.  Sarah Palin's rally in Strongsville where someone yelled: "Kill him". 

In the raising money department, today, I was in a Shaker Heights living room (albeit way in the back-see photo) with President 42: Bill Clinton. For those of you who have been in a

room with Bill, you know what I mean when I say: "He owns the crowd."

After 8 years of listening to you-know-who, it was refreshing to hear a leader who put dozens of sentences together and they all made sense! President Clinton was optimistic about Obama's winning the election however he cautioned against complacency and emphasized the importance of "get out the vote". 

As of this writing-in OHIO- McCain has pulled even with Obama. Hopefully, when you read this, that will not be the case. Here is one set of polls you can check: http://www.presidentpolls2008.com/polls/

However, the only poll that really matters is the one that occurs on Tuesday,  November 4, 2008.

Seen in the crowd: Ohio's Lieutenent Governor's son, Jason Fisher (producer /director of "Swing State" see blog: Random Musings) who, you may recall, is working with Katie Couric on her CBS webcast. Last week, Jason was with the CBS team in Nashville for Presidential Debate #2. Jason and Bob Schieffer (Moderator: Presidential Debate #3) were talking about possible questions Schieffer could ask. Jason suggested he ask about how the candidates felt about their Vice Presidential running mates and their fitness to assume the "job #1". And you know, Scheiffer asked that very question. If you saw the debate, you heard the candidates' answers. Obama described, in detail, Joe Biden's intellect and foreign policy experience. About the best McCain could say was that he was "proud" of Sarah Palin. "Proud?" of her? Come on, is she is daughter? What kind of qualification attends to McCain's "proudness"?

Musing #2. Received an email asking me to verify some of the smears circulating the internet. If you receive any one these wild accusations, please check for the truth at www.snopes.com 

or

http://fightthesmears.com

GObama.

Pizza & Talking Points

With the election only 28 days away, it is now time for each of us to become familiar with a couple of powerful talking points in order to be prepared to talk to-and persuade-those few undecided and on-the-fence voters among us.

During a recent pizza dinner (fyi Clevelanders: Mama Santas), I asked our server to whom she was giving her support in the Presidential election. Her interesting reply: "I'm trying to vote for Obama." "Trying," I asked? She went on that she was "pretty good" with McCain until his picked Palin as VP. It was then that she had begin to "try" to vote Obama. She said she was worried most specifically about healthcare. But the "trying" to vote for Obama indicated-to me-something a lot deeper.

We proceeded to eat our pizza all the while having a conversation with our server about issues in general but the two candidates' health care plans in particular. 

McCain: Tax credits. Tax on Health Benefits.

Obama: Keep your current plan w/choice of doctor, or participate in Federal Employee Plan and prevent insurance companies from locking you out for pre-existing condition. (Very simplified. But we're talking "talking points", here)

But more important, we incorporated these two talking points:

1) If the U.S. constitution guarantees to even the most egregious criminal a proper legal defense, should not every American child be guaranteed a physician?

and

2) If you needed a physician expert to cure a dreaded illness, would you ask the color of the physician's skin? If you're flying in an airplane, do you care the color of the pilot's skin?

The United States is a sick patient that needs a good physician to help with its cure.

The United States is a giant airplane filled with 300 million citizens. 

The United States needs a careful, thoughtful and serious pilot to navigate all 300 million of us into a safe and secure-in-every-way-future. 

We loved our pizza and our server "ate up" our analogies. We finished our pizza and as we left the restaurant, our server was nodding her head in agreement with us!

Now, you have to talk to your servers and any others you may meet who are "working on their vote". Good Luck and GObama!

Missing in Action

I am alerted that many of my subscribers are not receiving my blog due to a SPAM problem. Please send me an email when you read this: susanlevine1@mac.com indicating that you are still "in the loop". For those who do not respond, I will followup.

As we enter these crucial and, yes, exciting final days of this endless election year (it's only a year? Feels like forever!) I would not want any of "my people" to miss my next blog.

Misinformation

We read in the paper (The Vast Variety!) and on-line polls and hear from the TV talkers and pollsters that there is a not-so-soft whispering campaign against Barack Obama telling people-among other things- that Barack Obama is a Muslim.

First if all he isn't.

BUT, even if he were, isn't there something like The United States Bill of Rights-first amendment-"freedom of religion"? 

Ok. OK. I know that for some people, the Muslim thing immediately translates into "terrorist"--though I must say -- a mighty broad brush stroke....but that is a story for another day.

So here I am in Sarasota, Florida (You know-Florida is in the South!?) and while talking to a very nice businessman who seemed --from our conversation --to be supporting Obama who suddenly says to me: "The only thing is, he's a Muslin." 

Dear reader, don't worry, I set him straight. I mentioned the fact checker website www.snopes.com.

If you ever receive an email that doesn't "sound right", you should go to SNOPES and check it out.

If you are supporting Barack Obama, you have the responsibility to talk to people and dispel these myths. This kind of support doesn't cost you a dime. Only the time it takes to tell someone the FACTS.