Good morning Kossacks and welcome to Morning Open Thread.
We're here every morning at 6:30 a.m Eastern time. Feel free to volunteer to take a day - permanent or just once in awhile. With the autopublish feature you can set it and forget it. Quite often the diarist de jour shows up much later (like me), that's the beauty of Open Thread...it carries on without you! Just let us know in the comments.
I'll get around to explaining the headline; bear with me. As I write, I'm sitting on my back porch in very pleasant 90-something weather, listening to the thunder, wind, and what I hope is approaching rain. I overslept so much I didn't get to tell y'all just how elated I was about the SCOTUS decision - YAY!!!!!!!!!!!
Anyway, I've been having an uphill battle starting my new endeavor which will get me out of my current job. Network marketing is not easy, but I wasn't expecting it to be. Introverts don't do all that well with these things, but I will be a success even if it takes me a lot longer than other people. (No, I haven't read the Susan Cain book yet - I'm too cheap to buy it and there are about 85 people on the list in front of me to check it out from the library.)
What I have to learn to do, and learn to love to do, is call people and get them to meet with me to show them my presentation. Some days it goes well, other days not so well. Today was one of those days. So, when it doesn't go well, I get out of the house and make attempts at (dreaded word) networking. Networking is not something that musicians learn to do, at least beyond the few contractors in town who do 99% of the hiring. So the first place I go, as suggested to me by the top guy on my team, is to a local coffee house to hang out. I needed to eat lunch anyway.
What I saw was a room full of people staring at laptop screens. Good God, doesn't anyone TALK to anyone anymore? I will admit, I had my iPad with me to download some books (thank you Norma, who gave me her old one when she got a new one!), so I read through the local weekly papers to try to find events to attend. Local metro council meeting tomorrow to shout down a waste facility in my area - bingo! Transportation meeting - Bingo! I probably will see people I know from when I worked on some neighborhood things after the tornado in 1998, so I can get reacquainted. But mostly, my attempt at coffee-house networking was a bust.
So, I remembered that someone had said that she saw an Obama 2012 office on the other side of town, and I've been meaning to volunteer. I tried to find the address, just to be sure, and for some reason it didn't show up on the main Obama website. The only office listed was in Chattanooga. Hmmm. Anyway, I drive over, and there it is. There was a very curious sign on the door, which said "Tennessee Democratic County Chairs Association." Hmmm.
When I walked in, there was an assortment of merchandise, and I needed a new bumper sticker anyway. A very nice woman named Julie greeted me, and when I said I wanted to volunteer, she explained to me what they did. It wasn't a campaign HQ, but a place where they sell Obama merchandise to raise money for the Democratic county headquarters all across the state.
At first this seemed a bit fishy to me, but as we talked over the next half hour or so, things began to crystallize. You see, I've always known, since I volunteered for the state party between 2004-2008, that our state Dems were a totally messed up, cluster*#@k of an organization. Apparently, it hasn't gotten any better. Julie told me that there were counties where the offices didn't even have computers. There is no central state data base of county chairs. They are constantly reinventing the wheel. Also, when I asked why the counties weren't funded, she told me that the state party won't help them, won't even share voter information with them. NO WONDER we are still a red state!
She continued to tell me things that were one face-palm moment after another. She told me that in 2008, there were some districts that went red by LESS THAN 100 VOTES. She told me about the voter registration drives in rural areas of the state - if we could register these people we could easily get another 200,000 left-leaning voters. She even estimated that in Davidson county alone (Nashville) there probably are at least 200,000 non-registered left-leaning possible voters. She was very credible, because she listed all the things she's been involved with for over 15 years.
What this means to me is that Tennessee does not have to be a red state. It's simply party disorganization that is preventing success here. So that's where the title comes in. When I expressed dismay that there was only one official Obama campaign HQ in the state, she said that it was because no money is being spent here, and the reason the one office is in Chattanooga is that it's close to North Carolina, where Obama has to win. They've written off the state. I can't say I'm surprised. But then we discussed how neither one of us had seen any Rmoney presence here either. After looking at his website, it doesn't seem that there is any presence in the entire state. I know this seems to be a safely red state, but when in the previous two POTUS campaigns, there were oodles of stickers for the Republicans. This year, not so much, in fact, NONE.
You know what that tells me? It tells me that since neither side is spending any money here, Obama CAN win! Yes, it might be an uphill battle, but Rmoney is NOT popular here, in spite of what Nate Silver has to say (98.1% chance of Rmoney win here). In any event, it will be closer than 2008, at least if Julie and her group at the Tennessee Democratic County Chairs Association have anything to do about it. So, if you feel like it, please visit their Facebook page, Tennesseans 4 Obama, and 'like' their page. That's all - no money necessary because they can't fundraise on their page. Just tell them hi.
That's all for now. Jibber jabber. It's funny, I can hear the rain falling, but the ground still isn't wet.