This piece was originally published in The (Contra Costa College) Advocate today... I thought I'd share it with the Kossacks as well.
Despite uphill battle, Deaniacs keep fighting
Somewhere north of Fresno, a darkened Greyhound bus loaded with college students hurtles through the darkness. It's half past midnight on Monday. We've been on a bus for 13 hours and there are still three hours to go before we're home.
The mood onboard is upbeat despite the knowledge that classes start in just eight hours, and though sleep had been a hard commodity to come by in the last two days, few were napping. Instead, the talk was all politics -- we had just spent a day and a half blitzing Phoenix, knocking on doors, waving signs and telephoning Democrats, asking them to come out and vote for Howard Dean in the state's Feb. 3 primary election.
One has to ask, why would 40 college students pack on a bus to Arizona so they could spend their precious weekend walking through Phoenix, talking to voters about a presidential candidate, sleeping on couches and eating potluck in union halls? Who were these people?
Some were political neophytes, but many were campaign veterans of Democratic wars past -- including several whose baptism by fire came as members of Dean's Perfect Storm campaign in Iowa last month.
I'm proud to count myself as one of the latter -- I spent one week as a footsoldier at the Des Moines Firebase, doing canvassing, youth outreach and visibility. I waved signs at 7 a.m. in zero-degree weather, clashed with Young Republicans and, most rewardingly, talked politics with an Iowa family at its kitchen table one evening. We of the Perfect Storm thought ourselves invincible -- and had our illusions dispelled on a Monday night none of us will ever forget.
But the mark of a true Democrat is the great belief in "lost causes" -- we'll never stop fighting for what we believe in and we'll never say die until the last ballot is counted. No, it'll take more than a few defeats to stop the Howard Dean campaign, because his campaign isn't built on money, anger, fear or Internet addicts, to name a few of the things the media has called it.
The Dean campaign is built, rather, on people -- average Americans who are sick and tired of one party that lies and another party whose leaders believe those lies. We are hundreds of thousands of people who never got involved in politics because we never had a reason to -- and now we have one. Our collective voice has been found, and its name is Howard Dean.
That's why Jason Overman, Adam Borelli, Mayela Montenegro, myself and 35 other members of Howard Dean's youth campaign, Generation Dean, found ourselves on board the Southwest Victory Express on Friday, just one of three busloads of college students who made their way from California to Arizona and New Mexico to fight for Howard Dean, a candidate the punditry once hailed as the future of the Democratic Party and now calls finished, a has-been, a failure. We're giving our all to prove them wrong.
By the time this is published, the votes will be counted and the results of our work will be tallied in cold, hard numbers. But no matter what the results, we're determined now more than ever to change our party and our country for the better.
Yes, we are going to California and Texas and New York and then we're going to Washington, D.C. to take back the White House.
No, I'm not going to scream with joy like Howard did -- I think everyone's heard that one enough already. I know I have.
Travis Mason-Bushman is senior associate editor of The Advocate
No, we didn't win Arizona... but we gave our all trying and we won't back down. Win, lose or draw, I'm for Howard Dean - never say die. It's on to California...