I particularly liked JRE’s responses to the three questions. The first was about China, where he vowed to be tougher on trade, safety regulation of imports, environmental and labor standards in trade agreements, etc. The second was on education, where he argued that the federal government must level the playing field between local communities with different resource capacities and mentioned his proposal for a national teaching service academy. He said his daughter Emma Claire, in third grade in a public school, had suffered from the emphasis on standardized tests — he argued for individualized, teacher-centered assessment and against punishing low-performing schools. The final question was from a worker at a non-profit diverting surplus food to the hungry, and gave JRE the chance to return to the theme that first excited me about him in 2003. We cannot accept poverty and inequality in America, he said, and people like the questioner deserved not only praise but government support in ending poverty.
The canvassing, by the way, went well — I talked to several still-undecided voters and discovered several Edwards voters previously unknown to the campaign. One of the recent polls said that 49% of Democrats are undecided or leaning, which gives us some hope of outperforming the overall poll numbers. I ran into Obama, HRC, and McCain canvassers on the way, and drove by the Richardson event in Central Square (maybe 200 people). (I venture to predict that Richardson will do a lot better than his current statewide 4% in Keene — I’ve run into a fair bit of support for him as I’ve canvassed.
I’ll be back for Primary Day! (Then we will see what kind of campaign JRE can mount in my own Massachusetts…)
amberpaw says
I wish I could have been there. Is it your sense that the New Hampshire folk you spoke with are still interested in canvassers, or are some at least tired of it all?
davemb says
We work with lists that get pruned pretty quickly of the “I don’t want to talk to anyone” set, but there are still “no campaigning” signs on a fair number of doors that aren’t on our lists. Plenty of canvassees expressed some frustration at the level of attention they were getting, but there was a general appreciation of what we were doing at the same time. (And most of the people who didn’t want to talk to me were polite.)
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p>I would rather canvass than phonebank any day of the week, because calling someone on the phone strikes me as much more intrusive. (I agree with Miss Manners that using an answering machine to screen your calls is perfectly proper — it just restores that original situation where the caller is announced by a servant and acknowledged only if the callee chooses to be available.) I think we earn more respect by being there physically, and we seem to get it. The field director for JRE in Keene reports, though, that his NH volunteers greatly prefer to phonebank, while it’s the out-of-state carpetbaggers like me who canvass for him.
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p>I’m not sure how many extra votes, if any, my work has created for JRE, but it’s certainly been valuable for me…
noternie says
I phone banked friday night and canvassed saturday.
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p>Phone banking was predictable for this time of the campaign: lots of frustration with repeated calls. Lots of answering machines (screening and not home, I think), some abrupt hangups, some unpleasant responses. But also some polite folks that took the message for what it was.
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p>The doorknocking was better. Usually is. I don’t think it has anything to do with a phone call being more intrusive or appreciating people legging it out there. I just think people find it harder to be rude face to face.
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p>But most were nice enough, when they were home or answered the door. It’s always interesting to me how many people will tell you they’ve decided, but won’t tell you for whom. I understand it, but I still find it interesting.
bean-in-the-burbs says
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p>Where does a man who made a fortune as an attorney and wasn’t a noted champion of the underclass when he held a US Senate seat get off on claiming that Obama has less passion, when Obama worked for years as a community organizer, pushed voter registration, and as a legislator passed measures that would reduce poverty and inequality?
davemb says
The “implicit argument” (and bear in mind that it is only my inference — the only thing JRE said directly about BHO is that he truly represents change and thus those who voted for him want change) is targeted at the way BHO comes off now. He talks about abstractions such as hope and bipartisanship rather than realities like check-card union organizing and predatory lending, or in today’s case specific victims corporate medical malfeasance. The union stuff and the predatory lending were issues that JRE emphasized as a Senator, by the way. And he made his fortune on contingency fees on awards to victims.
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p>But yes, the implicit argument ignores the community organizing and state senate representation of an urban district. Ultimately, I think it has to be a subjective judgement which is more “passionate”, because they express their passion in different ways.
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p>Here’s a possibly interesting point. Although their childhood backgrounds were both modest and JRE is now presumably wealthier, at the point when both graduated from college it was BHO (a graduate of Columbia headed for Harvard Law) who had a higher social standing than JRE (with a degree in textile technology from NC State). I may be overlooking something, but doesn’t JRE have the least elite educational background of any candidate save Huckabee (Ouachita Bible College). And isn’t there a pretty strong correlation between media respect and educational background? (McCain was near the bottom of his class at the USNA, maybe not. Thompson went to the U. of North Alabama and transferred to Memphis State, where he did well enough to win scholarships to law school, in liberal arts rather than textile technology. Paul went to Gettysburg College and Duke med school.)
joeltpatterson says
Bush went to Yale AND Harvard, Gore went to Harvard, Kerry went to Yale, the Clintons to Yale Law (along with Holy Joe Lieberman), the list goes on. There’s tons of money for campaign donations in that network, too–although there are other networks with lots of dough, like the LDS Church.
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p>I think one reason the Washington Media dislikes Edwards is they don’t think people with textile technology degrees from state universities should be allowed to lead. If you start looking at the reporters for the New York Times and Washington Post, you find people like Anne Kornblut, who went to Columbia, and Patrick Healy, who went to Tufts. I would imagine East Coast private universities tend to keep their students in a culture that thinks, “you have an elite education, so you know better than those people at state schools.” At least, I went to an elite private school in Texas (Rice), and it was very common for people to denigrate state schools as stupid, and it definitely rubbed off on me, despite the definitely non-elite rural area I grew up in. I wasn’t really aware of my attitude until I saw a bumpersticker that read, “Dissing State Schools Is Class Warfare.” The bumpersticker was right. Not everybody is lucky enough to get admitted to private school with scholarships, and so they go to the university they can afford.
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p>Oh, and Huckabee went to Ouachita Baptist University. The word “university” in its name means it’s a step above a Bible College. Or that’s how the marketing works.
hubspoke says
you’ve given me one more reason to like John Edwards – he is not a beneficiary of the Ivy Track. From Wikipedia:
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p>The textile degree doesn’t surprise me. His family worked in mills and in his tender years he probably saw himself as becoming a manager where they were workers.
progressiveman says
…JRE thinks Obama is likeable enough.
sabutai says
Obama thinks Hillary is likeable enough. And the voters like Obama.
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p>Nobody likes Richardson.
leonidas says
Too bad the media will crown a presumptive nominee before Feb. 5