Tonight Barack Obama gave a fantastic speech. But one part really stood out to me.
So don't ever forget that this election is not about me, or any candidate. Don't ever forget that this campaign is about you-- about your hopes, about your dreams, about your struggles, about securing your portion of the American Dream.
In the end that's really what this campaign is about. It's about us. Together. Together over 1,500,000 of us have taken ownership of this campaign and donated. We have made this campaign about us not about the special interests and there same old Washington games. Today the people of North Carolina and Indiana rejected the same old Washington distractions. They rejected the same old Washington gimmicks. They sent a strong message.
Now we need to send another huge message by showing our support by Obama. In other words, DONATING. We can start to wrap this nomination up and give us strong momentum going into the general election. We can send a message.
Ashwin Madia's parents came to America from India with $19 in cash and a dream that America would provide opportunities for their children. Now their child, Ashwin Madia is running for Congress in Minnesota's third congressional district as the Democratic Nominee to replace retiring Republican Jim Ramstad.
He is a Iraq War Vet who ran a grassroots campaign and defeated a better funded establishment candidate for the Democratic nomination. Now he is facing Erik Paulsen a state representative and extreme conservative (for example, he even voted against raising the minimum wage). This will be one of the most contested races in the country. It is targeted by both parties but it is a fantastic opportunity to send a great representative to Washington who will shake things up. That's why I'm proud to announce that Ashwin Madia is the latest Obamajority canidate and that he is joining us shortly (About 1 ET/ 12 CT) for a conversation about his campaign and the future of this country.
Follow me below the fold to learn more about Ashwin.
The results are still trickling in from Pennsylvania. The people have voted. We can't change how they voted.
But what we can do is keep fighting.
We still have Guam, Indiana, North Carolina, West Virgina, Kentucky, Oregon, Puerto Rico, South Dakota and Montana. All of them still need to vote and we still need to be working hard to win.
Last night I posted a call to action after one of the most unfair and uninformative debates ever. It got a overwhelming response and tons of donations poured in. But we can't just do that for one night. We have primaries to win still and we need to keep the focus on action up. We still need to be taking action. Calling voters in PA. Traveling to PA for GOTV. Donating to the campaign so they have the resources to win. Doing whatever you can. And so I bring you the third day of Obama Action Week.
Tonight we saw one of the biggest "gotcha politics" debates yet. The moderators seemed set on destroying Obama by using trivial matters to play "gotcha!" Tonight we also saw why Barack Obama is the right canidate for president. Tonight he showed why he is the right canidate to take on John McCain and the right canidate to turn around our country. Because he fought back by talking about what Americans care about. The issues.
It's the economy, stupid. That was the famous banner in Bill Clinton's Little Rock War Room.
Once again the economy is a major issue. So is Iraq. So is health care. So are a whole host of other issues.
But issues only matter if they can be communicated to the American people. And you can't get any kind of message across unless you have campaign funds, unless you have dedicated volunteers that pick up the phone and call voters, that go door to door and do all the other work that needs to be done.
Polls have zero effect on the election. Daily up and downs have almost no effect on the election.
Frankly if you want Barack Obama to win the only thing that matters is action. In other words. It's the action, stupid.
Last Monday I launched the Obamajority to give Barack Obama a strong progressive Congress that will enact his bold agenda. I started it out with three canidates, Rick Noriega, Darcy Burner and Patrick Murphy. I also asked for suggestions for who to endorse next.
The canidate that received the most support by far was Tom Perriello. I had already heard about his impressive run for Congress and so I am exited to announce that Tom is the latest canidate to be added to the Obamajority. So go and give him some change for change. In this essay I take a look at Tom and his campaign to bring much needed leadership to Virgina's 5th Congressional District.
Today Tom Hayden, Bill Fletcher, Jr., Barbara Ehrenreich and Danny Glover published aopen letter to American progressives urging them to join them and support Barack Obama. Why? Because Obama's campaign is a movement.
We intend to join and engage with our brothers and sisters in the vast rainbow of social movements to come together in support of Obama's unprecedented campaign and candidacy. Even though it is candidate-centered, there is no doubt that the campaign is a social movement, one greater than the candidate himself ever imagined
I think this is a very important letter and I'll take a deeper look at it in this essay.
There is still a lot more work to do if we want to get Barack Obama elected. But if we want to truly change this country we need to do more then that. We need to build strong Democratic majority in the House and Senate committed to passing Obama's agenda of change. In short we need an Obamajority.
So I e-mailed a few people who had helped out with the Obamathon and came up with the idea for a fundraising drive like the Obamathon but for congressional candidates who will help build a Obamajority. Using the amazing ActBlue we have set up a fundraising page to build The New Obamajority. To start out it features three great candidates. Rick Noriega, Darcy Burner and Patrick Murphy. More will be added as time goes on (suggestions are welcome at obamathon (AT) gmail (DOT) com) but for now let me introduce you to those three great candidates who will help build an Obamajority.
So I was just poking around kos, as I am wont to do when I have a few minutes. I ran across "obama-thon (2.0)" (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/3/21/19510/3700/247/481813) and clicked on it.
A 14-year-old passionate believer, with a huge number of links to resources on "what Obama will do," and why it's important to raise $100,000 for the Barack campaign. Charming, but it's much more than that.
8 weeks ago today in a blog on DailyKos and many other sites I posted a proposal for a Obamathon fundraising drive to help Barack Obama win in the first Super Tuesday (February 5th). Since then 896 people have donated $48,771 dollars via that page and Obama has gone from a underdog to a clear front runner within reach of the nomination.
But there is still work to do to get there. Obama has to run two campaigns at once. He still has to win the Democratic nomination and also he has to run against Senator McCain. He is facing a two front battle. It is still a uphill fight but it can be won.
So I'm relaunching the Obamathon as the Obamathon 2.0 (real original name I know) and setting a new goal of $100,000 by April 22, the day of the next primary.
Since I have came onto the little place we call the "netroots" I have written 63 blog posts. Many of them have been in favor of Barack Obama's candidacy for president. So I thought it would be fitting the day before most of the nation votes, to write a sort of closing case for Obama. I have thought about many different ways I could explain my support. I could offer a wrap up of all the diaries I have written for him, I could make a new case, I could attack the other canidate. There were lots of ways I was thinking of doing this. But then this morning I read a article that pretty much summed up why I believe Obama is a better choice, a better choice for our party, our nation and our world.
The article is entitled "The Year of the Organizer" and it appeared on the American Prospect's website. I'd like to explore that article and what it means to me.
Barack Obama raised a record setting $32 million dollars in January. That is impressive. But not as impressive as the fact that $28 million of it was raised online. To put it in context that is more money then Howard Dean raised online in his entire campaign. That's more then Ron Paul raised online. Ninety percent of the online donations were $100 or less; forty percent were $25 or less. In January, more than 10,000 people gave between $5 and $10 on the Internet.
kid oakland just wrote a great essay about GOTV and Obama. I'd like to add onto that with my personal experiences. But first I want to quote part of his diary.
I've done Democratic politics and GOTV for a long time, and I been thinking about how to convey the nature of this weekend in simple terms, and here's what I'd say. You want to be involved in this. This is Woodstock. This is Florida 2000. This is Ohio 2004. This is a singular moment like 1968. And with a record turnout and the participation of so many young volunteers, this is a chance to truly mosh the vote.
Unlike k/o I have not done GOTV before. I am years younger then him and will be doing GOTV for the first time. But like him and thousands of others I have the same urgency.
The Washington Post is normally what I consider a paper full of insider political crap. However today they ran a good article about the impressive ground game that Barack Obama is building in Super Tuesday states. The Obama campaign now reports over 75,000 "active volunteers" making telephone calls, knocking on doors and otherwise helping out. Not only that they have more than 500 paid staffers in the Feb. 5 states. That is unheard of. And that isn't cheap.
It seems like a lifetime. But it was only three days since I launched the Obamathon. Since then 245 people have donated $16,915 to help Obama to victory on Feburary 5th. We now have only a week until the day that the people start to vote and to steal something from our beloved president "The State of the Obamathon is Strong." Unlike Bush that is not complete crap. Still just as our union needs change so does our fundraising drive. Just a different kind of change.
