The Washington Post just uploaded a nice article on the Obama campaign's efforts to expand the African-American vote.

This article resonates with me a whole lot.  I've been spending a lot of my time registering voters in central Virginia and I think the article does a fairly good job of depicting some of the challenges involved not just in registering African-American voters but in registering impoverished voters generally.  However, in this diary I want to mostly focus on impoverished African-Americans.

This isn't a post containing a point-by-point rundown of my preferred way to chastise or shame people into registering to vote when they are reluctant to do so.  

While I do try to persuade people to register, and will mention what I say in my attempts, I find there are times when the means by which I persuade shade into the disingenuous.  

I'm really curious if other people have any of these same sentiments as a result of their experiences.

John McCain's mind is stubborn, as is his sense of honor.  

But his honor is brittle stuff indeed.

Honor, which I understand to be an adherence to some perceived set of universal principles of righteous conduct whether by a person or a nation, has a deontological logic to it. But it is blind, as is McCain, to the perverse consequences of its application to policy.

This brittle honor allows McCain to insist we stay in Iraq, while sending more troops to Afghanistan, and at the same time suggesting that genocide should not be permitted by the United States.  This unthinking honor cannot acknowledge the resource constraints we face as a nation and the demands to choose amongst priorities.

The Washington Post editorial team, which loves to spend its column space sneering at Barack Obama, came out with a truly pathetic editorial today.

Read it here, if you can stomach it.  

I just wanted to note the incongruity of McCain giving an education speech on a day when Obama was delivering a major speech on national security.  

This is coming after a day in which the press was focused on the Afghanistan / Iraq back-and-forth, and on a day when that focus is unlikely to change.

I think McCain largely ceded Obama the narrative for the day, in which Obama made a powerful speech about the need to reorient our national security strategy toward defending against nuclear, biological, and information infrastructure threats to our society.

The more Obama gets to make big speeches with merely tart press releases in response from the McCain side, the more he will begin to close the gap on the Commander-in-Chief question.  

Its amazing to me how little commentary there has been on McCain's brief visit to Colombia.  

During the day of the visit people were trying to make sense of why McCain would go to Colombia, a country that rarely grasps the imagination or stokes the emotions of the American public, in the middle of the Presidential campaign in which the main issues have little to do with South American policy.

And then of course there ended up being a stunning hostage rescue operation that afternoon that transfixed Colombia and that was ready to be sold in a nice anti-terrorism package on American evening news with none other than John McCain in a guest-starring role.

What a coincidence!

As I have canvassed Virginia for the last several months, one of the things that I've discovered is how horrendously unjust the Commonwealth is regarding felon voting rights.  

I discussed this issue at length in a previous diary.  In Virginia, one felony and you never vote again. This in a state with a broken negligent defense system, where the dollar cutoff for felony larceny hasn't changed in decades, and where the number of felons has increased by an order of magnitude in a generation.

The upshot is that more than a quarter (more likely about a third) of adult African-American men are disenfranchised.

What did you get done for the Obama campaign today? My answer below.

I'm thinking that this question might be my regular weekend contribution to Daily Kos.

There's two motivations for this. The first is to share what we're doing with one another and be inspired by the contributions others are making to do different and creative things.

Second, and importantly, I would like to see more idea-sharing on dKos about what has been working in terms of ginning up registrations in different places.

I haven't seen this diaried yet, apologies if I missed it. What did Mr Ickes mean by this comment?

I rise in opposition, but I'll sit. ... We find it inexplicable that this body that is supposedly devoted to rules is going to fly in the face of, other than our affirmative action rules, the single most fundamental rule in the delegate selection process, that is fair reflection.

Is there much to say besides wtf?

Many have written diaries about the VI superdelegate, Kevin Rodriquez, who has now twice switched his endorsement, first from Clinton to Obama, and just yesterday in the other direction.

Could this have been orchestrated by the Clinton campaign as a way to justify continuing her campaign after the final primaries next week?

I'm just wondering if anyone has some defense of the Democratic candidates' support of the farm bill which recently passed the Senate 81-15?

I realize this is an overwhelming bipartisan majority, but that doesn't mean the bill is a good one.

A smart friend of mine just e-mailed with the subject "Save my Vote for Obama" and linked to today's David Brooks column.

My best response was that although both Democratic candidates, and really the Democratic caucus, have a disappointing position on the farm bill, its essentially all political. For McCain too, since he already will win most of the big farming states and is trying to get an issue to play maverick on. Update [2008-5-20 12:52:30 by creweeny]: This last sentence was nicely contradicted in the comments by bawbie. This could hurt McCain in OH, TX, WI, MN, IA

But that's a bit weak. Does anyone have a substantive defense?

Horrifying information about the Korean War is coming to light in the Western press. This is some really atrocious stuff.

Apparently during the early part of the Korean War tens if not hundreds of thousands of political prisoners and people who got caught up in the regime's grasp were brutally murdered by the South Korean government.

The US appears to have watched and done nothing.

I expect a lot of folks on DailyKos have done a lot of work the past few months for the Obama campaign.  We've learned a lot about the most effective ways to do things like register voters, persuade them about Senator Obama, and drag people to their polling sites.  

In the next few months, the key for the Obama campaign and Democrats in general is to turn the excitement about the historic candidacies of Senator Obama and Senator Clinton into increased ranks of registered voters. Since this website has a great ability to aggregate and disseminate knowledge, consider this thread an opportunity to share ideas about the best way to make this happen.  

A Virginia organizer for the Obama campaign asked the local volunteers in my community to help come up with ideas about how to best mobilize volunteers, so hopefully I will be able to distill some of the information and send it up the chain.

I was in WV last night and today canvassing for the Obama campaign.  I've seen Obama operations in five states (VA, OH, PA, NC, and WV) and been through election days in four of those five, excepting North Carolina. Until West Virginia I was thoroughly impressed. Today was not a disaster and there was a lot of good work done, but overall there is much to learn and in the future avoid based on what I saw today.

Update [2008-5-14 1:57:16 by creweeny]: Before you read the rest of this diary I want to respond to the good point made in comments about the remainder of the dairy being pile-on. Experienced canvassers I shared some of my frustrations with said that today's Obama effort was far better than other general election efforts they've seen. I did not lose my hope in this campaign at all, and neither should you. This campaign is not made weaker in my opinion by people saying where it has stumbled relative to its own past performance. Its made stronger. We saw that with the California delegate selection and I think this is another case. We're the Linux to Hillary's Microsoft, and we're the future baby.

I can't believe a diarist on this site seriously recommended launching an attack on the Burmese military regime.

Maybe we should expect that from Time magazine but not from Daily Kos.

I'm no expert on Southeast Asia, nor am I an expert on disaster relief. But it just does not seem credible that a military attack on the Burmese regime given the current situation would do anything but lead to countless more deaths. If you think the logistics for international NGOs are bad now, wait till we drop the first bomb.

Many commenters on the diary above have ably explained why the idea of invading Burma, or targeting the country's military rulers, is so preposterous. But I think there's a deeper point about how the disaster in Burma has been framed that helps explain why the situation has become so awful.

Bill Clinton set expectations for West Virginia today, saying that Hillary can win eighty percent of the vote there.  

[Update] This diary had some serious analytical flaws that I wrote in the heat of the moment.  Its still important, but I didn't prove what I thought I had. [\Update]

According to page 3 of CNN's Exits as of 7:10, almost 20% of the Democratic primary voters plan to vote for John McCain in November [Update] over Obama [\Update].

Hillary's margin among them is 87-12. So three quarters of that 20% of the vote is 15%. That means 15% of whatever margin she racks up tonight is voters [Update] who very well might not vote for her. [/Update]

[Updatex2] This is where I really messed up. Since some of those Hillary voters might order their preferences Clinton-McCain-Obama we can't really distinguish between Clinton voters who really dislike Obama and strategic voters among those 20%.[\Update]

This is a Hillary's hilarious response to Obama's ad criticizing her gas tax "plan."

What's amazing about this press release is that despite its bluster Hillary Clinton admits she's bull-shitting the American people on the gas tax.

Update [2008-5-4 15:17:32 by creweeny]: I apologize to those who might think the breaking tag is being abused here. I just hope people notice that even the Clinton camp realizes the gas tax prevarication for what it is.

I want to preface my comments here by pointing out that I am not trying to be discouraging in this post, just realistic. I am a very strong Obama supporter and am looking forward to working my butt off for him till November.

That said, one thing that I think is not getting any attention is that there is really no way Obama has the nomination in hand until the convention.  

[Update] I want to be clear that I am not concern trolling here. A Clinton nomination would not only break my heart, I think it would be devastating to the relationship between the Democratic Party and the African-American community, and rightfully so. I'm just hoping that Obama's strong supporters are girding themselves for a sumer of hard work. [\Update]