rssObama on Election Day: We Can Win Indiana
Tuesday, November 04, 2008 at 1:41 pm
- 2 Comments
Sen. Barack Obama hit one swing state on Election Day, skipping across the Illinois-Indiana border to a union hall in Indianapolis. Indiana was a George W. Bush state that Republicans never expected to be competitive in October.
Obama backstage with David Axelrod at a Florida election rally on election eve. (Credit: Obama Flickr.)
“Think you can win Indiana?,” a Wall Street Journal reporter asked Obama at the event.
“I think we can win Indiana, otherwise I wouldn’t be in Indiana,” he replied. That sounds fair, though the state had the makings of a good Election Day trip even if Obama was not competitive.
The Illinois senator chatted with supporters and voters at the hall, according to the pool report: “Barack Obama stopped in at the UAW Local 550 Union Hall in Indianapolis. The room was set up with Obama posters and calling stations. About a dozen volunteers were making calls from their cellphones. Obama talked to at least 10 voters.”
Then the report details some of those conversations:
“Michael, this is Barack. How are you?” “I’d like to get your vote. Don’t be discouraged if there are some long lines.”
The same dialogue continued with a voter named Cindy. “Hi Cindy … I’m in Indiana trying to gear up and make sure everyone is going to vote.” “OK,” he said. “Grab some of those folks who haven’t voted yet.”
One of the volunteers asked Obama to call his wife, and he said he would call wives if there were any “mixed marriages.” “I’ll call your wife if she needs persuasion,” Obama said.
Volunteers were vying for Obama’s attention. “I’ve got one!” someone yelled out, meaning he had a live voter on the phone. “OK, I’ll be over there in a second,” Obama said working the room.
“Hello, Richard, are you going to vote? … OK, you’ve got to make sure to get everyone out.” He told a voter named Pam, “We just think right now what this country needs is some change, especially on the economy.”
He talked to another voter about his plan to make college more affordable. A volunteer said he had a voter named Michelle on the phone. “Michelle? I’m used to talking to girls named Michelle.” “Michelle, I hope I can count on your vote,” he said.
This is all symbolic campaigning, of course. The candidate is not actually trying to persuade individual voters by talking about changing the economy.
Instead, the conversation is a simulacra created and presented to reach other voters — a symbolic representation of voter interaction designed to affect TV audiences elsewhere.
It’s probably bad luck to quote Baudrillard on Election Day, but these “b-roll” photo ops are one of those times when the simluation of reality trumps the actual reality. ”The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth — it is the truth which conceals that there is none.” It’s true, even if you won’t find that in a pool report.
2 Comments
Comment posted November 4, 2008 @ 10:51 am
On this the eve of the election, I'd like to capture my thoughts before America either elects a president who its first 26 presidents could have legally owned, or brazenly subverts the very ideals it was founded upon by manipulating numbers in a final embarrassingly overt goosestep towards corporate totalitarianism.
I am nervous. And not night-before-the-swim-test nervous or even night-you-lose-your-virginity nervous, it's a low rumbling primal panic which I can only liken to Star Wars panic. Disney panic. The edge-of-your-seat-terror that makes you wonder if Skywalker's doomed after he refuses to join Darth Vader and drops down into the abyss, if the wicked octopus or grand vizier or steroid-pumping-village-misogynist is going to wed/kill/skin the dashing prince and then evil people in dark funny costumes are going to take over the world… if it wasn't a movie of course.
And tonight it's not. It's not a movie and yet I feel like Obama might as well be wearing an American flag cape while a decaying McCain, in a high-tech robotic spider wheelchair wearing an eyepatch and stroking an evil cat, gives orders to a sexy scheming Palin who marches back and forth through their sub-terranian campaign lair in four inch thigh-highs and full-body black leather catsuit bossing around the evangelical ants with a loooooong whip… umm… is this just me?
Anyway, the point is that things feel weird folks. I have friends who have peed in waterbottles to keep from interrupting a Halo-playing marathon who got off their asses/couches to volunteer for the Obama campaign not once, but many times. Friends so cheap their body content is at least 1/3 Ramen Noodle who donated a good deal of their hard-earned cash to the campaign. People have registered to vote in record numbers, and yet, something just doesn't feel right. I think we should stop congratulating ourselves for just voting. To vote is a privilege which people have died for, and I think there's a whole lot more to be done for the country than to simply help win an election every 4 years.
Hundreds of millions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of man-hours spent on both sides by good-intentioned people who want to make a difference in an historic election, so many resources and voices and energies devoted to a single day. After tomorrow, half of that is going to have been a waste. And I can't help but wonder what could have happened if all that muscle had been put towards something else, and what will happen to its momentum after the election has come and gone. Shouldn't we be donating our money to good causes whenever we can? Helping people who don't have? Dedicating some of our time to contribute to making the country which provides for us a better place? Of course a power shift is a hugely significant step on the path to great reform, but worrying about this election has been a wakeup call for me:
Even if Obama wins, we have not “won.” This isn't a movie and we can't toss every greedy lobbyist oil fatcat bigot down a reactor shaft. I think if we dedicate ourselves to the ongoing welfare of the country as much as we have to the outcome of this election, we'll have a much better shot at coming closer to the overwhelming good the liberals hope Obama will usher in, but which no mere mortal could fully realize alone.
Which brings me to the other side. I've heard a lot of people claim that if McCain wins, they're leaving. I heard the same thing about Bush's reelection, and his unelection before that, and nobody seems to be leaving. And that's fine. Because as much as I complain about certain political happenings, atrocities, etc., I really do like it here and I suspect most other people do too. We have New York and Hollywood, purple mountain's majesty and sea to shining sea, we created jazz and country music and baseball and cars and lightbulbs and computers and that movie with hundreds of animated singing Chihuahuas! I mean who among the shivering Plymouth pilgrims ever imagined ordering hundreds of animated singing chihuahuas onto a magical box from an invisible information superweb?
The point being, if things don't turn out the way I want tomorrow, I feel compelled, as a college-graduated adultish-type-person, to take a stand. And if I'm going to leave I'm going to leave. But if I'm going to stay I'm not going to sit around whining like I have for the past 8 years. It's like when I don't clean my room because it's dirty and then I blame the dirt. So in my very indecisive way, before you and your screen, I'm declaring my intention to make some kind of stand in the event of -(Ican'tevensayit)-, and encouraging you to consider making one too…
Jump the ship or grab a bucket?
-Sigh-
Wasn't everything so much easier back when the worst possible affront to your values was a PB&J sandwich cut diagonally with crust?
Anyways, I guess what I'm saying is that if we're going to stay on board, we should probably be generous with our time and resources when times are tough even more than when the hero saves the day. Because what if he doesn't? And what if he can't?
Comment posted January 31, 2009 @ 4:15 pm
nice article! nice site. you're in my rss feed now ;-)
keep it up
RSS feed for comments on this post.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
