There were plenty of reasons for me to head south when we were done cleaning out the HQ in Dubois, PA. My mother and my paternal grandmother grew up in North Carolina and my brother-in-law lives between the tallest peak east of the Rockies and Sugar Mountain. I won't have the option of pushing this hard when my wife is in her third trimester so I headed the opposite direction from where the campaign was desperate for canvassers. A volunteer and a true believer in the 50 state strategy, I want to follow that philosophy to the county, to the neighborhood, to the block, to the individual. People will stop worrying about who others won't support when we demonstrate how important the support of every individual is.

I'm old enough to still lump up at black-and-white pictures of "Robert, Martin, and John," and I think, for good reason.  I've been involved in enough campaigns to think I'm beyond starry-eyed idealism, and tilting at windmills (without, I hope, hopelessly compromising the ideals of my peacenik and bleeding-heart youth, with utterly pragmatic realism).  That is not to say that life does not still surprise and delight me in all kinds of ways, including politics.

Tonight was just such a night, and for reasons that have nothing (okay, unexpectedly little) to do with whether Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama carried California on this Super Tuesday.  Although I had perhaps one or two too many glasses of wine at our Wasco County (Oregon) Democrats' Super Tuesday Party, I want to share my experience of the evening, and hope you will join me across the fold.