“Today we’re launching a website that will keep track of all the attacks Senator Clinton has launched since she said she wasn’t interested in attacking other Democrats at the Jefferson-Jackson Dinner on November 10,” campaign manager David Plouffe wrote in a Monday-morning blog entry. “We’re asking all of you to be vigilant and notify us immediately of any attacks from Senator Clinton or her supporters as soon as you see them, so that we can respond with the truth swiftly and forcefully…. These attacks could be phone calls, literature drops,  mail pieces as well as radio and TV ads. Some could even be anonymous or designed to be.”

Did I read ‘blog posts?”

Wow, wouldn’t it be great if the campaign could do the grunt work involved in tracing the disinformation spewed by Hillary ‘plants’ on some to-be-left unnamed progressive blogs!

I continue my research on the tactics being employed to champion Hillary by overkill use of right-wing diversion tactics (which, of course, Obama supporters or anyone who levels ANY criticism of Sen. Clinton are accused of employing as a way to shut off discourse and shame the poster).

The strategy as I’ve observed it has been employed since August, a date which coincidentally coincides with the creation of Hillarysbloggers. But whatever. Here’s a fictitious example of the kind of stuff that goes down in the name of informed political discourse

New Post:

It’s All Hillary!

8:45 H1 publishes a diary in which 3 pages of poll results showing Hillary’s lead are cut and pasted into a blog entry.

8:46: H1 posts a tip jar.

8:47 H2:  Recd.  “Thanks for this great diary! Hillary is going to make such a wonderful president. When are these conspiracy nuts here going to get with it? She is such a perfect candidate. She will change America. VOTE HILLARY 08!”

8:48 EdwardsA: Everyone knows these early polls are all about recognition factor.”

8:49 H2: There you go again, sore loser. Too bad your guy f…ed up the debate last night. Must’ve bought Russert a few beers before time, huh? Well, it didn’t fluster our girl. She can hang in there with the best of them! HILLARY RULES!”

8:49 O1: Hillary is running in the wrong election, guys. She hasn’t won the nomination yet. Obama rocked!”

8:50 H2: Are YOU a MORON?  He flubbed the driver’s licencse q! Daaaaaa …..HILLARY RULES!

8:51UND1: Hillary never takes a stand on anything. It’s all doubletalk.

8:52 H1: TR

8:53 O1: Why is that a TR? He was just expressing his pov. Isn’t that allowed here?

Hillary3: We’re sick of you RW tinfoil hat sock puppets hijacking. IM A HILLARY GIRL

Edw1:  We’re gonna woop Clinton in Iowa.

Hillary2:  Got a link for that? HILLARY RULES

Obama2: Here

Hill1: Official chart, please. You expect us to accept any right wing media garbage story?

Hill2: TR you, Obama2.

Obama1: WTF?

Hill2: Disinformation. Right out of Rove’s playbook.

Edw1: Really uncool, Hill2. Im recommending!

H1: Get lost. You need another haircut!!!

Anon: Can we please get back on topic? Absinthe is really good at that.

Hill1: Yeah, I really like Absinthe. She knows how to handle these guys.

Obama2: Well, the polls you just posted here are all from last month. Kinda misleading. Clinton’s on her way down.

H2: Sock puppet? WTF? Why are you guys always spewing such shit about Hillary? Why do you hate her so much? Jees, you’re gonna hand this election to the rethugs. Get lost!

Smelt: I just replayed Hillary’s talk after the hostage crisis for the third time. She is so sincere, such a natural leader. She handled that entire day so brilliantly.
H1: Yeah, Smelt. Our next prez is one helluva strong woman. Too bad the O campaign has reneged on its politics of hope. Mudslingers.
O3: what do  u work for, Wolfson?
Anon: troll
H1: I’m gonna put you on my list, O3.
Smlet: You’re an ass, O3. Go suck up with Rove.
<hidden conv.>
H2: Go troll rate O3s comments from earlier. Lets get him kicked off here.HILLARY RULES
Smelt: Gotchya
H3: Beat you to it. HA>
E1: Why are you supporting Hillary? Give one good reason.
Smelt: She’s got a lot of experience. She will be ready to do the job from day one.
H3: Yeah
H2: She knows how to deal with the republicans. Watch Obama melt.
Absinthe: Great diary, H1. Recd.
H1. Thx, A. Usual shit going down.

E2: Hillary never gets asked any real questions. Softballs.Media always favors her. Admit it.

H2: Dipshit asshole. You’re soft in the head. Get dunked.

Smelt: THIS IS A reality-based community, we check out facts and there is no room here for tinfoil hat conspiracy hypocratic hyperbolists. We’ll snear at you, slap you upside the head until your brains (oops, no brains) your dead brain cells fall out, blow your pants off and make you slink away and wish you were dead@

E3 Now that rates a TR.

Smelt: One back at you.

H2: Second that. HILLARY RULES

O1: Here are the latest poll results. Clinton is down 9 pts.

Absinthe: Don’t cherry pick, O1. She’s ahead by 22 in Pew.

Anon: Cmon guys, u have to admit she’s having a rough spell

Smelt: Right wing media hates her, they’ve turned on her. Obama gets all the press.he’s their darling.

O2: You mean Barack Hussein Obama, the muslim who grew up on a madrassa and whose name is sometimes Barack Osama? Right.

H2: Hit a sore point there, O2? Your guy is all dazzle, no substance.

Anon. Now wait a minute. what about that foreign policy panel? That was amazing.

H1. Read Krugman.

H2 Yeah, read Krugman HILLARY RULES

Smelt: Yeah read Krugman

Olemis: Hillary is a beautiful person. She will get health coverage for everyone. She will bring our troops home. She will fix our schools and support gay rights and she will do everything for everyone. We will be so happy. Its inevitable. Why don’t you just face the facts?

H2. They’re dingbats. HILLARY RULES.

11:24 me: oh girl i have been worried cause i haven’t seen ur greenlight on
have you been okay?
i spent the entire f’ing day working on the polling ‘book’ i swear
11:26 PM yesterday at hdqtrs was ok, but <delete personal info>
11:28 PM OS: mercy that polling book is becoming just that, eh? it’s always the hardest job to trim down a report with so much funk to reveal
me: sshit
that tns
so how are you?
11:35 PM OS: exhausted, tabled yesterday, phonebanked 2day, phoning for the 14th rally
<delete personal info>
me: no no no
we have big things coming soon
11:44 PM this obama win is going to change our lives forever, girl
11:45 PM there is going to be so much vital work to do and its gonna be like a frenzy of activity every which where and we’ll be getting our hands dirty and kids’ll be doing real learning in school and moms ‘ll be having all this OJT and making good money
and the air will be cleaner within 6 months
11:46 PM OS: ha ha and ex-felons will learn to read and get diplomas then degrees and become professionals and entire communities will be transformed
me: and all the supermarkets will stop selling processed food and the car companies will stop the assembly lines and we’ll have buggies back on the streets
and villages will be lit by candles at night and we’ll have community dinners
OS: we’ll be free of persian gulf oil and have local produce only and no more damn nukes
11:47 PM oh won’t the stars look beautiful again!
me: every night of the week, like big soup kitchens and community gardens
oh and NASA will stop weaponizing the skies and no more chem trails
OS: i’m watering the food bank’s new garden every sunday, i’m so proud. it re-opens after getting a bigger new trailer, tomorrow! I can’t wait, they’ve got good clean food!
11:48 PM me: and Michele will start a school in the white house and all these kids from poor Washington nborhoods will come like when Jackie was there (but they weren’t poor kids) ad they’ll all have lunch every day with barack and his cabinet and offer their ideas on foreign policy
OS: girllll, talk about chem trails, fuggetaboutit, i was walking, saw this gigantic eye-shaped thing w/neon lights all around it, no words, what a weird blimp at night heading for oakland!
11:49 PM it’ll be great. i was hollerin’ at the blimp to come get me, but, let’s stick around to see history made
me: and all the veterans are healed immediately
i saw the blimp too
11:50 PM OS: lol i wish, don’t even joke, we’ve got some serious blowback coming there, again.
so did kucinich!
me: and all the ceos will have to donate profits to iraq and let them rebuild their county and every fucking us troop will come home
11:51 PM OS: oh let it be, don’t let us lose heart and wimp out before it’s over. that’s usually my mo, won’t let it be this time, no matter what my bod does, but, better save these hands for tomorrow or i’m just spoutin’.
11:52 PM me: you do that girl. i gotta save my feet cause ive been working on my knees again to save my ass from hemorrhoids!
talk to you tomorrow
and ive almost wimped out a few times but held on and im so glad
11:53 PM OS: oh god, i just choked, you fucking nut! lol poor baby, i worked on my knees the last year to spare my hip/spine. you hold on, we’ll keep dragging each other back into the ring lol. get that book done, i want to read it and rave!
me: night

Note: Identities and <some>personal information deleted for anonymity.

The beginning of research on how international public research firms are being hired to tell Americans who they want as the next POTUS.

Part I: TNS, Walt Disney, ABC & You

All this talk of the Obama ‘meta’ camapign and his antsy financial supporters, pundits contractually paralyzed by corporate glut and politically funded polls. Awah in the rising spector of an historic dual presidency, a Mr. & Mrs. America team emboldened enough to feign parallels to the reign of Franklin & Eleanor.Give me a break.

It’s time for ‘downward dog,’ Senator Obama. Tout de suite! On your hands and knees. Lift your buttocks to the sky. Stretch your chest through your arms. Tuck you pelvis. Pull in those hips. Maintain that lumbar curve. And breathe. Maintain position until stretched just beyond endurance. Then bend your knees slightly and without sacrificing any of the integrity of your pose, straigthen them by rotating your thigh bones in and stretching your sitz bones further apart. Now breathe.

The ‘meta’ message of this admittedly amateur mini Iyengar Yoga session is, in essence, just when you think you’ve reached the breaking point, a slight adjustment provides accesss to parts of yourself which can be utlized to add more strength and longevity to the pose.

In short, the key to victory in the Obama campaign might not be ‘turning the page’ back to engage Washington-style politics. No, rather it might just call for even more radical adhesion and commitment to the postion.

I’d suggest downward dog and a touch of game theory, an unmilitary application of the principles of fourth generation warfare.

To win this thing, Obama must be prepared to lose everything by striking at the most powerful symbol of his opponent’s arrogant, self-agrandizing infrastructure: The Polls.

Let’s have a go at it.

Without a doubt, the Illinois Senator’s campaign would be history were he to suggest the possiblity of poll manipulation. No, Obama ’08 is burnt toast if they call into account the inherent conflict of interest associated with pollsters affiliated with mainstream media, which is in turn beholden to stockholders and board members who’ve got billions riding on the craps table. The payback? Pandemic profits from ongoing privitization of government, continuous war, and free ‘unfair’ trade.

Imagine the outroar were he to casually mention that CNN’s chief pollster admitted to rigging poll results for Bill to portray an American public still strongly behind their man. Or to refer to Angus Reid’s reference to the ‘dirtiest secret in the polling industry” the 10,000 calls involved in gleaning a participant base of 1,000, hardly reflective of a clear demographic.

Go up against Republican Scott Rasmussen? Forget it. This is the guy whose revolutionary automated polling process so closely parallelled the results of the ’04 election his credibility jetissoned into the ionosphere.

How do you do battle with the behemouth corporatocracy currently catapulting Clinton into our collective consciousness?

Picture this!

Chicago, IL. Oct. 23: Talk show diva Oprah Winfrey announced early this morning the first ever live polling TV event, a week long campaign to actively engage Americans in conducting an independent survey to determine who’s currently ahead in the race for the Presidency.
Oprah has extended invitations to people across America to participate in a “revolutionary power grab to ’show just how fraudulent the traditional polling process has become in our country and to provide live ongoing coverage of Democracy in action.”
“I’m tired of hearing that American’s just don’t care enough, aren’t educated enough, and basically have given up on their chance to effect change,” she said. “My viewers don’t fit that profile and they deserve the chance to become active in this process. The Oprah Poll will be totally legit, covered live and results will be telecast live as they come in.”
The show plans to offer free transportation, lodging and food to participants as well as to pay any monies pollsters might loose for taking time off work.
“I think political polling should become just like jury duty, compulsory. We’re going to be involved in this entire process, from designing the poll to ensuring we are actually going to solicit real information … no trick questions. We are going to engage in door to door polling and setting up phone banks with 800 numbers to receive calls from potential voters. We’re launching a national outreach to cell phone users as well.”
The Oprah Poll, scheduled for November 11-16, begins with a team of academic experts who will conduct mini live seminars on statistics, determining demographics, calculating margins of error and writing polling questions which are straight-forward and capable of soliciting real information.

More details of the weeklong event will be announced during next week, when Winfrey begins discussion of the validity current polling methods.

Oh, I forgot to mention. Tanatmount to the success of this unconventional maneuveur? Hourly yoga lessons, free to all participants and viewers.

Streaming live coast to coast. Five days watching typical, everyday Americans, armed with abacus and perfecting downward dog.

Breathe.

What d’ya think, Oprah?

Read the rest of this entry »

Here is my attempt to create a ‘holding pen’ for comments from canvassers in an attempt to begin centralizing ‘our’ findings from working on the ground. I have also included an extremely rough potential canvassing tool we might use to try to come up with some sort of statistics.

Please add your stories below until such time as I am possibly directed to discontinue this attempt.

I have attached a draft of sample questions we could consider using as part of an unofficial grassroots canvassing sheet (a veritable paper trail). Anyone who has any type of information on compiling something like this?
Canvassing Unofficial

From lance:

This weekend our group of five volunteers on Sunday knocked on about 100 doors, spoke to sixteen people, got three signed pledge cards, found everyone else we spoke to undecided.

I know of another group of two people that did about the same numbers, also with only undecideds beyond their three Obama pledge cards. They spoke to 18 people.

In Nevada about a month ago, I also canvassed and personally got three pledge cards from undecided voters. Spoke to maybe 200 undecided Democrats.

To this date, I have never gone to a single door and found one solid Hillary supporter. I find most people barely starting to pay attention to the race or else already in line with Obama

Lance again:

When I canvassed in Nevada I talked to at least 200 Democrats, a few Obama supporters signed cards and the rest undecided. Not ONE Hillary Supporter. The other volunteers had similiar experiences. This weekend I canvassed Sunday in my local Monrovia neighborhood. We spoke to maybe 20 people. Again, not ONE solid Hillary supporter. This time, we got three Obama pledge cards and every other single person said they hadn’t looked into it enough to make a decision. It was a theme echoed by the other volunteers here as well.

I also had a similiar experience at a local Community Foothills Democrat meeting. 30 people in attendance. At the end, people got up to say whom they supported. 2 Obama supporters, 1 Edwards supporter. And the rest of the room, mostly middle aged or older women, were still undecided, except the secretary of the club, who was a Hillary supporter.
If you actually read that NH poll that had Hillary 30 points ahead, you can see that 80 percent of the voters polled, out of a group of like 400, remain undecided or leaning only in a “soft”way toward a candidate. What that translates to is that people already know about Hillary but they’re not convinced by her. She’s a known commodity and if you like her, you already do. As time passes, more will investigate Obama. There is a massive media blitz underway to make Hillary seem unstoppable. It’s the only tool she has at her disposal. The corporate media knows that if she’s the nominee, the race will be close and the congress will remain divided due to down balloting, when Republicans check every Republican on the ballot. She may win and they can check her, or more likely she will lose to Guiliani because she will motivate the Repub base. This is why Murdock supports her, as he knows she is the most pro big business of likely winners and won’t change the corporate laws the way Obama surely will to enact some fairness in media. The bias in media is exactly what will elect Hillary if anything will.

from Murphy:

this exactly mirrors my experience Saturday in Monrovia, which is a more GOP-leaning town (of course, we were only canvassing the Dems and DTSes). Only one person was strong Hillary; several strong Obamas and no one mentioned Edwards. Most (90%?) were still undecided and glad of the literature and wbsite to educate themselves more.

BTW, I heard a great (short) story from one woman: Her daughter goes to preschool with a child whose mom went to Elementary School with Barack in Indonesia (wow!) and that mom raves about him, can’t say enough great things about him. She said she could tell even back then that there was something special about him.

I’m hoping I get to knock on that woman’s door!!

From Nikki:

For info on northeastern Nevada contact Roger Low at rlow@barackobama.com. He is the field director there. I did the “Drive for Change” there on October 6^th. Theo and I worked on a precinct that was less developed for the campaign than others. We ran into a lot of undecideds. They were easily swayed away from Hillary even if they were leaning towards her at first. We did more to get people to take a closer look at Obama and to start paying attention to the race early because all the dates are getting pushed up. It hasn’t sunk into a lot of people’s heads that their votes will count in a huge way in terms the momentum in the race. They are very much a working class community and warmed up to the idea of empowerment by this process.

Canvassing in CD6

Corte Madera, CA. October 13. It is 2pm on a sun-drenched Saturday afternoon and CD 6 coordinator Lance Iuoye is sitting at a picnic table in the town park, checking over canvassing forms with the last returning teams of Barack Obama volunteers. “Turn the Page on Iraq,” a national canvassing day, is drawing to a close.

But this local Obama team was obviously thinking big when they chose this locale to host their event. Since 10 am, their launch pad, highly visible under a festive white canopy and a colorful cache of Blue & White Obama signs, has been set up mid-center on the grass alongside the town’s main parking lot; and thus it has attracted heavy foot traffic and garnered huge interest throughout the day: ongoing soccer games on the adjacent fields, at all-day Open House at the Firehouse next door, and just down the block a community fair chocked full of hundreds of attendees.

Amidst the music and balloons, the Saturday bikers and the family dogs, this pint-sized Obama camp seems a perfectly synchronized slice of a vroomed-up, vitalized community.

Lance is really excited about talking to the team who inspired a teenager he had just registered to drive down and sign up.

“That’s just amazing,” he says. “What did you say to get him to do it?”

“He said Barack Obama was his man but that he was only 17,” says volunteer Sandy Grant “But then his mom walked into the room and said “No, your 18, You can register right now.’ She must have taken him down here. “

Indeed she did, says Lance (big smile). “She said some very nice ladies told him where to go to register right now and after they left he said ‘lets do it.”

Sandy, a busy Mill Valley physician who doesn’t have much spare time for hobbies, is so determined to elect Barack Obama she’s become active in politics for the first time.

“I can’t believe I’m so excited about one kid when there are millions of people all over the country …” her voice trails off. “Next week I’m going to start canvassing in my neighborhood.”

CD6 is reportedly one of the best organized districts in the California campaign, with 56 registered volunteers and a schedule that includes regularly weekly tabling, phone calling, outreach to high schools and colleges and a growing voter registration drive. Volunteers are encouraged to ‘think out of the box’ and meld their personal skills and talents with the campaign’s mission.

The efficiency of today’s volunteer team coordinators rivals the proficiency of any professionally designed event. Before setting out in seven teams, with assignments in three towns, participants are guided through a short tutorial on the do’s and don’t of canvassing (don’t knock on a door more than once, don’t force campaign literature on someone who’s clearly not interested, leave flyers tucked under outdoor mats so they’re not too visible from the street, and be prepared to tell your own story about why you support Obama). Folders are distributed with maps and print outs of the 50 families on each teams’ itinerary, along with clear instructions on how to fill in data on each location. A ‘cheat sheet,’ explaining the goal of the day’s event is provided as an example of how to introduce yourself. Each team receives handfuls of official campaign “Turn the Page in Iraq” handouts and small yellow flyers offering tips to new recruits on how they can become involved in the Obama campaign NOW.

“There are more canvassing events happening here in California today than in any other state,” says Canvassing Coordinator Ben Ludke, a student at College of Marin. “We’re the first campaign to be canvassing in California. This is just the beginning.”

Conversation around the table shifts as Lance asks volunteers for feedback. What can we improve upon next time?

“I didn’t feel that I was informed enough about all the issues,” says Sandy. “I was really nervous someone would ask me something that I couldn’t answer. We need talking points next time.”

“Right now you are your own talking points,” says Lance,“ acknowledging that talking point memos are in the works and should be available by the next canvas.

For every issue mentioned in this discussion, however, (“I’m not sure on his stand on education …. on immigration … on Blackwater … on tax breaks … “) someone in the group has a well researched answer and can offer resources: listen to his speeches, read the blogs, visit the website, join the listservs.

By all accounts, Marin County’s first official Obama canvassing event succeeded in much more than registering another Democrat to vote in the Feb. 5 Primary. Over 500 homes were contacted, resulting in conversations with over 140 local democrats about Obama’s position on ending the war in Iraq and whether or not they had made a decision on which candidate they were leaning towards.

Currently, based on this narrow sampling, it appears that most people in the section of County are still undecided; with 21% strongly supporting Barack Obama, 38% undecided, and less than 10% committed to another candidate.

Undoubtedly, the most encouraging outcome was the unanimous consent among participants that people are just aching to talk about what’s happened to America and discuss how Obama can set things straight.

“It was strange,” says one volunteer. “You’d knock on someone’s door, feeling really apologetic about interrupting them, but when they saw who you were they were just so happy to have a chance to talk about things. It was like they’ve felt so isolated for so long and now all of the sudden here was somebody on their porch inviting them to talk about it.

From another: “I didn’t meet anyone who wasn’t willing to listen to me, who didn’t want to know why I was backing Barack. Everybody seems really ready for change, really ready to believe in someone again.”

One volunteer recounts a story of a conversation she had with a woman who opened her front door with a huge bottle of Tropicana orange juice in her hand and a tense ‘why are you bothering me now?’ look on her face.

“Right away, you knew how busy she was. You could see right through the house to the backyard where three or four little girls were sitting down for lunch under this big striped umbrella. It was really bad timing. But when she saw my Obama hat and heard why we were there, she forgot everything else. She said she wasn’t ‘plugged in yet” but she wanted us to tell her why we were supporting Obama. She asked questions. We must have talked to her for ten minutes. If she was leaning towards Hillary when we arrived, I don’t think she was when we left. You could just feel how hungry she was to talk about things: Iraq and Iran, Healthcare, education, the war. The need for big change in America. Wow, that was an amazing experience.”

In this small corner of Marin, at least, the battle is strictly between Obama and his main rival, New York Senator Hillary Clinton. But, say volunteers, people who were leaning toward Hillary said they are just now starting to do their research. Hillary is what they know; Obama is who they what to discover.

“People still think it’s really early in the campaign,” says Ludke. “A lot of Californians don’t realize yet that the Democrat’s Primary is Feb. 5. That’s why now is the ideal time for us to start canvassing. Hillary hasn’t started yet. We’re the only campaign actively canvassing in California right now.”

A conversation ensues between Ludke and a couple of volunteers about the ‘grassroots’ organization of the campaign, with Ludke drawing a flow chart outlining the chain of command.

“But that’s not grassroots,” someone says. “That’s a traditional hierarchical business model. We want people organizing right where they live, working out of their cars. People should have access to Obama materials so they can just hand things out.

“But they can,” says Ludke. “They can just download things off the internet. They can purchase supplies online at the Obama store. You’ve got to understand that California right now has only one paid employee. We can’t afford to supply everyone with free materials.”

Jasper Goldberg, a student at nearby Branson high school and a member of Students for Barack Obama saunters over to the table.

“I have boxes of Obama stickers I can give you,” he says, approaching a group of women who are discussing investing in a stockpile of gear for CD6 volunteers. “How many do you want now?”

He plops a plastic bag of stickers on the table. Wallets emerge. None of these Obama supporters want something for nothing. They all want the same thing: something promoting Obama to give away for nothing. Goldberg shrugs, accepts proffered donations. Says he’ll use the money to purchase more Obama gear.

It’s after three and everybody’s tired, has places to go, but seems reticent to leave. Opinions start flying on Obama’s best speech.

Riverside Church. The Foreign Policy address at Des Moines. Selma. New York (Washington Square Park). Springfield.  San Francisco, last month when he introduced what instataneously became the infectious rallying cry of the campaign, “Fired up, Ready to Go.”

But as is always the case in these talks, someone always brings up where it all began, for most of us. And this time it’s Ludke who reminds us.

“For me it’s still the 2004 convention. I watched that speech and said ‘That man’s my president.”

(crossposted in BaracktheYouthVote)

(Cross posted at baracktheyouthvote.com)

Is it just me? An illusion? Or are some of you also sensing an ever so slight shift in the political current; dare I suggest detecting a miniscule tear in the tightly constructed, intricately oiled veneer of the sheer perfection of the Hillary Clinton roll out?

Have you noticed anything? Tidbits here, there, trickling  into media where just a few weeks back there was naught.

Am I the only observor who detected a  hint of distaste over Clinton key-strategist Mark Penn’s association with Blackwater? A slightly rised eyebrow over the influx of cash from Billy’s buddies at his nonprofit Global Initiative? An illusion to impropriety over that nefaroius Hsu’s  $850,000 bundle? What about the near comic reappearance of the rabidly robotic Hill&Co. attack dogs, frothing and  straining at the bit when questions surfaced over Clinton’s judgement in supporting  the Kyle Lieberman amendment.

Then all that flack about ‘the pin!’  At last,they had him! Obama, squirming against the wall. Yet what ensured was  an open discussion of the post-911-world partisan-ization of patriotism, with informed sources noting the frequency with which Mrs. Clinton substitutes haute couture accessories for the red, white and blue emblem on her suit ensembles.  Color coordination, you know.

I mean, like overnight, the doubting Thomases among Obama supporters were barely recovering their footing when MSM pundits began questioning the veracity of the latest WaPo/AP poll giving Clinton a massive lead. (Whoa now. Methinks they went a little too far with that one.) Suddenly, pundits were asking the right questions. “What about what’s happening on the ground?  How DO you account for this groundswell of support for Obama?”

Well, I have a suggestion. I think perhaps we are witnessing the re-emergence of  dormant patterns of communication, a type of low frequency vibration which is slipping under the radar of corporate media watchdogs and their enmeshed special interest groups. Somehow, despite MSMs prediliction to play down information on when and where Senator Obama plans to speak, to distort or ignore his message, news of the Obama phenomena is spreading like a rumor of the next iPod release.

Perhaps the first inklings of a potential sea change emerged back in California last month when, just days before the Petraus hearings. Kos predicted the Senator from Illinois had missed his opportunity to launch a pre-emptive strike on the truthfulness of the General’s upcoming testimony.  He called yet another set for our former first lady. Well, the outcry was near immediate. We knew beter.  No way our team was going to let this opp slide by. (The Obama team was planning something extraordinary on Petraeus,and  a knock out punch came that Tusday in the form of a foriegn policy speech outlining a daring and innovative evolutionary approach to America’s role in theaters of conflict abroad. Chaulk a big one up for our side.)

This was also the weekend which will forever be remembered for the launch of the infectious  “Fired up, Ready to Go”  mantra, a rallying cry already as potent as  “Lets Go Mets” in their miraculous ’69 season.

But then there was Obama in New York City. Ten days of preparation. Phone banks coast to coast. 24,000 in Washington Square Park. Now as I’ve said before, 24,000 people gathering in any spot at one time in NYC is in itself news.  But MSM, in its sheer audacity, strategically downplayed the event. I think that decision backfired.

It appears to me as if little by little since that evening, the stuffing seems to be leaking from the mannequin. Mind you, right now only recalcitrant threads are visible but nonetheless, the pattern is not rock steady.

After NY, it appears as if the surefire policies of message control are becoming less effective. Barely perceptible glitches are appearing in standard playbook protocol. It’s kinda like watching a run of Bill Walsh-Joe Montana 2 minute dream drills just falling short of the finish  because a new, unexpected variable has everybody a tad offcenter. Doing X no longer necessarily means that Y will follow. Now Joe and Bill aren’t even mindful enough to recognize anything’s gone asunder, so they’re continuing with the same drill; maybe they sense they’ve lost flow but damned if it matters anyway. It’s no contest.

What I’m suggesting is that more and more of us are no longer sitting speechless in the stands observing The Champions making mincemeat of the underdogs. We’re starting to question the calls, to doubt the tally on the scoreboard. America is beginning to pause and say “Now wait a minute. Something’s just not kosher here.” In essence, we are no longer counting on the refs or instant replay. We’re starting to throw down our own flags.

In and of itself, this variable, the deviation is so inconseqential that it is not perceivable as a factor. But the factor, nonetheless, is there. And it is multiplying.

To take the football analogy a tad farther, lets revisit the Kyle Lieberman amendment. Hillary emerges from the huddle and makes the call “We’re voting yes on this one.”  But in the stands, people are asking “What’d she do that for?   Why’d  she call for that play again? Makes no sense, unless she’s not aiming for the same goal we are.”

Do they really want to trust this lady with the football?

Now it’s not like the Hillary campaign is actually aware of this but I think a growing number of us are aware of the vast disparity between what our eyes and ears and intuition are telling us and what’s being force fed to us. No, the Hillary Team right now is just too busy snipping stray threads off the manequin to even consider the pattern might just be fatally flawed.

There is a limit to how long you can contain the facts on the ground, but ignoring 12,000 in Oakland, 15,000 in Phoenix and  20,000 in Austin doesn’t quite match up to deeming as a nonevent 24,000 New Yorkers jammed into an historic small Greenwich Village park to see and listen to a candidate for the 20008 Democratic Presidential Nomination.

No, that particular crowd  created an energy so intense it surpassed the need for media coverage. It ‘outed’ them, gave them the opportunity to show their true colors.

In this new inter-connected world of jet travel and blogs and text messaging and youtube videos, something like this happening in New York is viral; it’s all over facebook and flick’r and youtube and myspace and twitter and technorati. Somebody tells somebody else on a bus or a subway or a commuter flight and then they’re telling their friend who is tellng their friend whose friend saw Obama at a rally in New Hampshire. And felt the same way. Then the news is flowing back down the chain. Fired up and Ready to go.

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From today’s NYT Caucus:

By Jeff Zeleny

WASHINGTON, Iowa – By now, the stump speeches delivered by presidential candidates have become routine, at least to many of the politically inclined voters of Iowa and New Hampshire. So the most interesting moments at campaign appearances often are inspired from those seated in the audience.

Near the end of a stop here today, Senator Barack Obama was asked this question from a man seated in the crowd at the Washington County fairgrounds: “What would you say is the most painful and character-building experience of your life that puts you in a position to make important decisions of life and death and the well being of our country?”

For a moment or two, Mr. Obama paused. It was far different from the string of questions posed on policies and issues. Finally, he said: “It’s a terrific question.”

And here, in its entirety, is his answer:

“I would say the fact that I grew up without a father in the home. What that meant was that I had to learn very early on to figure out what was important and what wasn’t, and exercise my own judgment and in some ways to raise myself.

My mother was wonderful and was a foundation of love for me, but as a young man growing up, I didn’t have a lot of role models and I made a lot of mistakes, but I learned to figure out that there are certain values that were important to me that I had to be true to.

Nobody was going to force me to be honest. Nobody was going to force me to work hard. Nobody was going to force me to have drive and ambition. Nobody was going to force me to have empathy for other people. But if I really thought those values were important, I had to live them out.

That’s why it’s so important for me now, both as a United States senator and as a president candidate, but also as a father and a husband to wake up every morning and ask myself, am I living up to those values that I say are important? Because if I’m not, then I shouldn’t be president.”

It’s countdown plus 6 hours for the Hillary Clinton rally in downtown Oakland and already 14th street is blocked off by police barricades. Big staging companies are hefting huge platforms to erect the elevated stage. Five or six spotlight-trucks are already in standby mode. Bleachers are assembled. Secret Service have secured the area.

A battalion of young co-eds, clad in brown t’s with green “Hillary’ logos (her autumn line, assumedly), are assembled, awaiting marching orders. A young, dark suited George Stephanopolus clone, oozing arrogance and authority, clutches his clipboard and calls out to a young man setting up his display of “Obama Love” caps on the other side of the divide.

“Hey, you’re in the wrong place. Your event is down there. Two blocks.”

The grand opening of Barack Obama’s first West Coast headquarters marks the first time a major presidential candidate has set up shop in the City of Oakland, where Obama last March drew an unprecedented early campaign crowd of 12,000.

But today on the last day of September, it is Ground Zero for the Clinton campaign.

Further up 14th, with less than three hours to go before 1 pm kickoff, The Balloon Lady truck is busy pumping out product outside Obama headquarters. Afternoon events include local political supports, including San Francisco DA Kamala Harris and performances by hip-hoppers Blackalicious and R&B star D’wayne Wiggins.

The pint-sized lobby of the historical building is near overflow with scores of humongous red, white and blue bouquets. Upstairs in the third story offices, volunteers stream in, grab an assignment, and head back down in the elevator carrying tables, chairs, boxes of Obama gear. A small crew assembles some rope, masking tape, scissors and a slew of Obama signs and leaves to cordon off the street in front of the building. Someone sweeps the floor, clears away clutter.

By 11:15, everybody’s outside, pitching in to unload the stage from a delivery truck. By 12, it’s up and ready and a tad further down the street, the kid’s jump house rises from the pavement.

From up above, someone shouts out for help as a huge Obama ’08 banner is lowered and hung level from the 3rd floor windows. A small cheer.

Operating procedures are clear: if you’ve done an Obama event before, you’re the expert. Mentor the newcomers. And by opening time, everything’s syncopated and copacetic; store stocked, information tables manned and equipped, loudspeakers checked, balloon bouquets positioned.

Standing behind the merchandise table, UCB student Christina Milton chats with Natalie Rojos, California Coordinator of Students for Barack Obama.

“Everyone is so pumped up and so involved”says Rojos, “I worked for the Kerry campaign, and students were really excited then. But it was more about ‘Anybody but Bush.’ Now it’s about Barack. People are inspired by him. They’re talking real politics, they’re really engaged.”

Rojos, a student at University of Santa Cruz, tucks the latest campaign tee under her arm (white bearing a large impression of Obama) and says she’s already student leaders are already working not only on country-wide campus registration rallies but also on ensuring there are enough voting machines available on election day.

“We don’t want a repeat of ‘04, when students had to wait on line for 2 or 3 hours,” she says.

Milton is one of two UCB students selling Obama swag. Veterans of three events each, they know to push their products by telling potential customers all purchases are 100% donations to the campaign. It’s a major incentive today, the last day of the 3rd quarter.

An older woman and her sister almost purchased cheaper shirts from a rouge vendor but wanted to make sure their money went directly to the campaign.

“Barack isn’t accepting any money from lobbyists so it’s up to us. I’m not yet maxed out on my contribution so I’m shopping,” she says. She purchases shirts for herself and her two grandchildren, a couple of bumper stickers and a handful of Obama signs to distribute in her neighborhood.

By 2pm, the Obama celebration is 500 strong, the usual diverse group, a veritable melting pot of staunch supporters, the curious, and a smattering of Hillary folks arriving early for her mega-event.

Two blocks away, the streets are eerily empty and subdued. Secret Service men stand on perimeter rooftops, gazing out over the city through high powered binoculars.

Now even the sidewalks are off limits and from the fortififed rooftops a sentry trains his binoculars straight on a woman approaching in an Obama ‘08 cap and teeshirt carrying a large “Go Barack Go” sign.

“I’m parked down there,” she says to one of the Hillary co-eds behind the barricade.

“Nobody’s allowed in here.”

The Obama lady doesn’t budge. And for just a moment there’s a slight hesitation, the coed looks as if she’s thinking about saving the Obama lady the inconvenience of walking two blocks out of her way.

“It’s not up to us,” another girl says. “We’re just following orders.”