Blog de Ford

The Doves — There Goes the Fear

Fucking wonderful in a Joy-Division-never-suffered kind of way. The Manchester sound lives through the Doves!

When I heard that Clinton said this:

“You know, there was just an AP article posted that found how Senator Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans is weakening again and how the whites in both states (Indiana and North Carolina) who had not completed college were supporting me and in independents, I was running even with him and doing even better with Democratic-leaning independents. I have a much broader base to build a winning coaltion on.”

I was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. Both Clinton and Obama are tired, so sometimes they say things they don’t mean.

But Joe Conason brings up some good points:

Bur this time she violated the rhetorical rules, no doubt by mistake. It was her offhand reference to “working, hard-working Americans, white Americans” that raises the specter of old Dixie demagogues like Wallace and Lester Maddox. Was she dog-whistling to the voters of Kentucky and West Virginia?

While I still cannot believe she actually intended any such nefarious meaning, she seemed to be equating “hard-working Americans” with “white Americans.” Which is precisely what Wallace and his cohort used to do with their drawling refrain about welfare and affirmative action. This is the grating sound of Richard Nixon’s Southern strategy, even though Tricky Dick would never quite stoop to saying such things in public.

Hard-working, white Americans. Geez. Hillary, are you trying use a Nixonian Southern-strategy to increase the bigot vote in WV and KY to give you an even larger win in those primaries, Was that some kind a dog whistle being blown at Appalachian lower-income people that it’s better to vote for a white woman who supports hard-working white Americans rather than the lazy Black people and people who were fortunate  enough to make the effort to get through college?

Oh, and Hillary, you won Indiana by two points on an election day that came on the heels of the Rev. Wright scandal. Limbaugh told his minions to vote for you, and it seems that might have had an effect in Indiana since 17 percent of GOPers who voted for Clinton in the Hoosier primary said that they would vote for McCain if Obama is the Democratic nominee.

Hillary, it’s just sad that if you win the nomination, it’s unlikely that African Americans or those horrible well-educated people will support you in great numbers.

We don’t like being insulted.

Virgin Mary sitings are always fun:

Marc Lipton scraped his kneecap after he lost control of his motorcycle at an intersection in Monterey, California.

After posting a photograph of his scraped knee on a motorcycle forum, one of the members of his church said the wound looked like the Virgin Mary. Upon a second glance, Lipton started recognizing similarities between his scar and the Virgin Mary.

Lipton believes the Virgin Mary was protecting him from further injury when the motorcycle slid out from underneath him.

There is no word on whether the diocese of Monterey will investigate Lipton’s leg as a legitimate apparition of the Virgin Mary.

If I look at that wound in a certain way and from a certain agnle, I can see how someone might think it looks like a silhouette of the Virgin of Guadalupe.

But geez… Might it just be a case of a nasty wound and it comforts him to think it’s the Virgin Mary?

She appears on tortillas, doors, scabs, and where ever people want to see her.

I guess people should find whatever comforts them whenever they can.

From Yahoo!:

Children cry while staying at a temporary shelter with displaced families in the cyclone-hit area of Dedaye township near Yangon. The international community pleaded with Myanmar’s military rulers to let foreign aid workers and desperately needed relief supplies into the cyclone-crushed country

This one puts things in perspective. While we’re obsessed with Barack and Hillary, the typhoon in Burma (Myanmar, if you prefer) has killed hundreds of thousands and there is very little we can do to help if the Burmese government won’t allow much international aid.

If anything good can possibly happen from this situation, maybe it can help bring down that military junta in Burma that seems to care much more about retaining power than helping its people.

Jeff Greenfield:

Just watch the whole thing, a Greenfield report from tonight’s CBS news.

Pardon me for linking to Fox:

In an e-mail entitled “The Limbaugh Effect in Indiana = 7 percent,” Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton wrote: “According to the latest exit polling data, 17 percent of voters in the Indiana primary today said they would vote for John McCain in a Clinton/McCain match-up. Forty-one percent of that number is constituted by people who voted Clinton in the primary but also indicated they will vote for McCain in the general election. That comes out to just under 7 percent of the primary electorate the number that may be attributed to a Limbaugh Effect.”

I don’t know what role Limbaugh’s minions played in determining the Indiana results, but I was shocked yesterday to see the number of voters in my heavily Republican precinct who were given blue cards (indicating they were voting on the Democratic ballot) before entering the voting booth. It’s hard to imagine that all those Republicans were voting in the Democratic primarybecause they favored Clinton or Obama over McCain.

Obama’s huge margin in North Carolina was impressive; those who worked on his campaign there ought to be really proud of what they did.

In Indiana, I think we also should be proud of Obama’s performance, though he came up a couple points short.

From the beginning, I thought that Obama could win in this state pretty easily. It’s in Illinois’ back yard and there never seemed to be a whole lot of love for the Clintons here. Back in February, he had a seven point lead, but 21 percent of those polled were undecided.

Then Rev. Wright came. And then Bittergate. And then Rev. Wright came back. Those mini-scandals didn’t play well among conservative Hoosiers and about a week ago, things were looking bleak for Obama in the Hoosier state - I remember thinking that I would have been happy with a five-point loss.

But then something happened, and I’m not sure what it was. There seemed to be a change in momentum in Obama’s favor, perhaps due to the Wright affair quieting down. Or maybe it was as thousands of volunteers across the state went into action and to pound the pavement,  knock on doors, and call their neighbors. When I canvassed on Saturday, I felt like a shift was taking place.

On Tuesday we voted, and those who were able knocked on more doors, made more calls and drove people to the polls. Indiana voted in unprecedented numbers.

Though the result was a little disappointing, we did what we needed to do and that was to lose by a narrow enough margin that would change the media narrative. And that’s exactly what we did.

Kudos to Obama volunteers and voters in North Carolina! This thing is over.

I’ll tell you about my experience today while Obamando.

The first part of my day was spent giving rides to people in Marion county. I drove to neighborhoods I didn’t know existed to give three people rides to the polls. It was a blast for me.

In the early afternoon, I ran into my friend Tamaki, a wonderful woman from Japan who I know from my studies at IUPUI. She linked me to a couple of volunteers, one from Cleveland and the other from New York who lives in Indy but will return to NY soon.

We had a great time canvassing a struggling neighborhood in Indy where each voter we met had already voted for Obama.

I REALLY loved Tamaki’s energy and enthusiasm. She has been working hard for Obama because she believes in the promise of this country. It was a delight to canvass with her.

We ended the afternoon with a dinner at Sakura, a Japanese restaurant in Indy that I have always loved, but Tamaki led to to a menu choice that was delicious and very Japanese.

It was a great day.

Even if Obama doesn’t win Indiana, I’m proud of our efforts and volunteers from all over the city, state, and country.

21,000 people enduring the rain to rally for Obama in Indianapolis.

This evening in Indianapolis, 21,000 people filled the American Legion Mall while enduring rain and a late start time to rally for Barack Obama (unfortunately, my camera’s battery died early in the evening so I don’t have any decent photos of my own).  If you’re familiar with Indianapolis, you know that kind of a turnout is unprecedented  for any candidate, much less a Democrat.

When I got to work this morning, I was surprised to learn that most of the office was going to the rally. People were really excited, which is odd, as it’s usually difficult to excite Hoosiers about much of anything. After work, we met for a couple of drinks and headed toward the rally.

When we got to its site of the rally, we had to go to the end of the line. So we walked. And walked. I’m not sure how long the line actually was, since we were lucky to run into some friends on about the 7th block of the line who welcomed us into their section of the line. But even with that advantage, we waited in line for over two hours.

When the rally finally started, Stevie Wonder played a short set of some of his classics and then Barack spoke for about an hour to fire up the crowd. It was pretty much a standard stump speech, but it was stirring.

From the speech:

This campaign is about you. This about your voice, your dreams, your struggles and your aspirations. And when this country is focused on its hopes and its aspirations instead of its fears, then thats when we are going to be able to deliver on change for every American.

Let’s GOTV!