Vote for me!!!

Addendum to my previous post about taking the campaign out of the girl: my depravity has reached new heights. I entered this contest and am relying on my GOTV ability to carry me through.

Please click this link to vote for me and then make sure to confirm your vote by clicking the link in your email.

Help feed my unquenchable desire for GOTV and for candles!

Thank You!!!
-Nancy

Check Out this AWESOME non-profit

"Would you be able to advocate for yourself and your family? What if you never had the chance to learn skills for focusing on decisions or asking questions? How would that affect you? And, in a democracy, what if a large portion of the citizenry is not focusing on key decisions made by elected officials? What if they are not asking questions about the reasons behind the decisions, the processes for making those decisions and the role they could play in the decision-making processes? Oh, maybe these are not hypothetical questions."

- From the Educational Strategy Page of the Right Question Project's website.

My belief that people should advocate from where they stand recently caused my roommate to accuse me of being his "most conservative friend," which is kind of like calling me the tannest person at an albino convention. Of course, I explained, it's not simple. To advocate for yourself you have to be empowered to do so. You have to believe you can make change and understand the issues affecting you and your community. Behold The Right Question Project.

I randomly came across the office of The Right Question Project while killing time before my doctor's appointment, and boy am I glad I did. More so than any other organization, including the Democratic Party, this one's mission of creating microdemocracy encapsulates up my world view.

"'Microdemocracy,' defined as individuals using essential democratic skills to participate in decisions made in their ordinary encounters with public institutions such as their children's school, the job training program, the welfare office and Medicaid-funded health services. Those encounters are often the endpoint of engagement with the public sector. They can become, instead, the first step up the ladder of democratic action."

I don't really think there is anything I can add to that, except that I plan to call them tomorrow, and that you should check 'em out.

Organizer Store-Part 3

My roommate alerted me to this alarm clock that donates money to causes you hate every time you hit the snooze button.

Kind of gives a whole new meaning to "when you're not working the other side is. "Also please note the "hateable" organization highlighted in the picture, it's like they were begging to be featured in the organizer store. As the product name suggests, you snooze you lose...literally.

You can take the girl out of the campaign...

...but you can't take the campaign out of the girl!

The more I say the sentence "I used to work on political campaigns," the more campaignsick I become. Still there are some organizer behaviors so ingrained that whether they make sense in my new life or not, they will be with me for a long time to come. All of these things have happened to me in the last month.

You know you used to be an organizer when...

1) You see a For Lease sign on your way to the gym and you think "that would be a great space for a campaign office."

2) You don't have enough forks for your apartment and rather than buy some flatware you get your friends to bring over a box of plastic forks and then slowly steal real ones from restaurants.

3) With every piece of breaking news your first thought is "I wonder how this will impact the 2012 elections."

4) You annoy your friends by stopping for every Greenpeace street canvasser and taking every fundraising call from your alma mater.

5) You're looking for your friend's new apartment on a street where the buildings aren't clearly numbered and you think "man this neighborhood would be a bitch to canvass."

6) You scowl when you see that they have a "No Soliciting" sign.

7) Mid-makeout with a new love interest you realize you don't know whom he voted for in the 2008 primary...and you stop to ask him.

8) You make confirmation calls for your dinner party...from the google rsvp spreadsheet you had previously created.

9) When aforementioned love interest says he'll see you soon, you have to fight every instinct in your body not to say "can I lock you in for a specific date and time?"

11) You freeze up and find an excuse to leave when asked a question by a reporter...even though it's a "man on the street" interview about a new bar opening.

12) You offer to steal toilet paper from the gym before your roommate says "or...I could just buy some."

13) You're on a conference call about transportation for your college reunion and you keep thinking "what do we need the VAN for?"

14) You don't understand until 1/2 hour later how "I have to work tomorrow" was an answer to "Do you wanna grab a beer?"

15) Your friend is bitching about his girlfriend, your other friend is bitching about her job and you keep thinking to yourself "I can think of the perfect West Wing clip for that."

I miss you already!

Love,
Nancy

The Chicken and the Eh-gg

One of my many qualms with the way our elections are covered is that in an attempt to report public opinion, news outlets inevitably contribute to shaping that opinion. A candidate X sends out a press release that he has received over a 1,000 grassroots donations, a paper reports that candidate X has a swell of grassroots support and in response, others donate to X's campaign, perceiving him as the grassroots candidate. Soon we're left with the question of the chicken and the egg. Although I can't find a working link, last week Jon Stewart pointed out very this phenomenon vis-a-vis Donald Trump's 2012 candidacy.

To me, one of the most frustrating examples the exit poll. Research suggests that "exit polls appear to cause small declines in voting in areas where the polls close late for those elections where the exit polls predict a clear winner when previously a race had been considered close." Although this situation is relatively infrequent and, of course, reporters have a right and a duty to provide as much information as possible, my stomach knots up any time anyone sends a message about voting that boils down to "don't bother." Imagine a population where students and the working class, by necessity of their vocations, vote markedly later in the day than the elderly or wealthy, and the potential of such reports to skew voting becomes clearer.

I'm not the only one who feels this way, and Elections Canada is taking it to the extreme by banning Canadians from posting election results to their facebook and twitter accounts in the upcoming May 2nd election, even to personal pages. As this article points out "Presumably Canada’s policy disallows early release of vote tallies, rather than posts about an individual’s vote, but if the organization doesn’t formally clarify the policy means a person can’t post who they voted for or are rooting for, Canadians might as well avoid all social media on May 2."

This has me thinking. Where do we draw the line between preserving the sanctity of elections and preserving our right to disseminate and receive information about them?

What do you think?

You mean it's not just spreadsheets?

Fun fact: According to this article in Cosmo (yes, I know it's Cosmo...at least it's not Politico, BURN!) red states look at more porn when Republicans win and blue states look at more porn when Democrats win. President Obama, of course, says there aren't red states and blue states. I guess we feel the need to substitute with porn when we don't feel like we're getting screwed.

That's what she said?

Long time, no blog!

However, President Obama launched his 2012 campaign earlier this month. (Campaign website and Kickoff video here.) so it seemed like a good time to resume practices. I mean, how could I resist when I woke up two weeks ago to several of my facebook friends asking me "Are you in yet?" How did you know I said that last...oh...I get it. For those of you who don't have 70+ Democratic campaign operatives as facebook friends, barackobama.com has a new tool where you can post on your friends' pages asking if they are "in" for the campaign.

For the record, yes, of course, I am. Followers of my blog/facebook friends/anyone within shouting distance know that I am no Obama apologist, but pragmatist and loyal Democrat I am. I'm glad that our country has made progress on some of the issues that are the most important to me like healthcare and civil liberties, even if the leadership was debatable and the progress is too little too late. All in all I am more excited to support President Obama than I was when I worked for him three years ago. Although I won't be taking any jets out to Iowa, I would welcome any invitations to soothe my campaign sickness on the predictive dialer. And friends, if I am in to support a man whose voice I could barely stand a couple of years ago, then I think you should be too.

So I ask you, Are You In Yet?