A note on this post: I am proudly supporting Barack Obama and I have been volunteering where I can. I want him to win and at this point I am allowing myself to believe that he will. But that doesn't change the fact that it will still be harder than it needs to. One big reason is the community group called ACORN, which right now I'm sorry to say is more trouble than they are worth. More tough love below the fold.
Because McCain and Palin can’t fix our economy, come up with a health care plan that doesn’t enrich insurance companies while shortchanging the sick and needy, or do anything but spout platitudes about global warming (sure McCain believes in it, but Palin would charge Mother Earth for a rape kit), because of all this they are attacking Obama increasingly over his previous representation of ACORN and giving Faux News plenty of ammo to hit Democrats.
First: community organizing is hard work and people who belittle it can screw themselves. I've done it, and it's rewarding but definitely not for everyone. But it needs to be done, and ACORN has long been the biggest.
But their serious work is becoming overshadowed by negative press in a way that is entirely fixable: more stories this year of registering a 7-year-old in Connecticut, a 14-year-old in North Carolina, and even dead people in Wisconsin.
Notwithstanding the important difference between voter fraud and voter registration fraud, this is ridiculous. ACORN has embarrassed Obama this election after doing so to Kerry in 2004 and embarrassing itself for the third straight election. It’s time for us to offer some tough love and demand they clean up the registration efforts.
I was reminded of this need when I flipped over for my occasional voyeuristic click to Faux News (advance apologies for the source material) where I saw interviewed this guy, a registered Democrat, who is trying to clean up ACORN:
A lot of us get queasy about criticizing our own, but I agree that we’ve gotten to a point where silence on ACORN’s activities allows the right wing to tar everyone and turn them into a much bigger issue than they should be.
So I suggest this as a game plan: Kick ass on election day, and on November 5 send a quiet note to ACORNs bosses telling them to clean it up! Impose some quality controls and not get called out over stupid registration irregularities. Let's make sure that we’re not dealing with the same B.S. in President Obama's re-election campaign.