Yesterday, Blanche emails me to tell me that there will be an organizational meeting for Hoosiers for Hillary at 6:00 on Monday night. Regardless of the fact that it seems a bit disorganized to have a call for a meeting on the day of the meeting, we decide to get off our blog-hineys and actually go.
Blanche indicated that he was a bit apprehensive as to what we were getting ourselves into, and I told him that he didn't need to be. It was going to be a bunch of old women, and my main fear was that it was going to be a disorganized mess. Both of those things came to be true, but we are still going to do our best to help the cause.
When we arrived at the Steelworkers local shortly before 6, we were a bit underwhelmed by the location. I realize it is sometimes difficult for a campaign to get prime real estate for a short term lease, but to say that this location is in the armpit of Indianapolis, is like saying that Detroit is the garden spot of Michigan. It is not that it is an awful area, it is just very run down, and it doesn't exactly smack of confidence and renewal for America.
When we walked in we were greeted by a member of the Clinton campaign staff, though we didn't really know that until the meeting started, and as we walked into phone bank central, we were greeted by the aforementioned old women gathered around talking about Reverend Wright and how horrible MSNBC is to our girl. There was one other man there, sitting quietly off on the other side of the table. Both Blanche and I recognized him, so we're fairly certain he is a homosexual, but under the harsh lighting of a conference room, you never know if it is indeed someone you saw in the flattering lighting of the club.
We shuffled over to the other side of the table, and we tried to avoid eye contact with people so we would not be sucked into the conversation. It is not that they were not talking about important things, but they were talking the talk of people who do not read blogs as much as Blanche and I do. So, they are maybe about a week behind the news cycle. Plus, Blanche didn't want me getting into an argument over exactly why Evan Bayh will not be selected as Hillary's running mate.
The meeting started with introductions, and as you can imagine, it was a wide range of people. The head volunteer is actually a Republican for Hillary, who "came to Hillary" because she was the first candidate to actually explain why we needed universal health care in this country. I kept noticing in further conversations she kept harping on how fiscally conservative Hillary is, and I thought to myself that she might not be the best spokesperson for the cause. Of course, in this big red state, she might just be exactly what we need. There were actually two other Repubs there, too (one was a mid-twenties male!), which I think is something interesting to contemplate.
Outside of three girls in their 20s or 30s, most of the rest of the meeting was made up of women of a certain age, who kept coming back to the need for breaking the glass ceiling. While I will never begrudge anyone the validity of their support for a candidate, that being reason number one for supporting Hillary strikes me on the same level as someone voting for Obama just because he is black. There has to be more than that, and if these are the people who are going to door to door, they need to start with policy and end with the emotional need.
The meeting started to spin out of control when another gentleman, let's call him CO for community organizer, was wondering why the campaign wasn't talking about going into neighborhoods and attending or creating events to appeal to the electorate. CO was youngish, and I think he was taking umbrage to the overall old person bent of the discussions, which admittedly had been about going into nursing homes and getting the elderly to vote. His heart was in the right place, but the meeting, if it had been lead well, was mainly about getting people to man the phone bank, canvass door to door, and other odd jobs. He ended up getting in an argument with a Political Science professor (who oddly taught one of my classes in college) about not just making a push for the youth vote at colleges, because people like him have never nor never will step foot on a college campus (his words). Everyone was talking at once and over each other, and the staffer running the meeting looked like he was about to start cracking skulls.
The meeting finally reached the point of no return when a friend of CO spoke up. She was an African American woman in her 20s, and she admitted that she was still undecided over whether she was going to vote for Obama or Clinton, which made me wonder why she would come to a volunteer meeting for Clinton. Anyway, she wanted to know why she should choose Clinton, which caused more people to talk over each other. She then said something that set the feminist movement back 20 years, "I'm an emotional woman, and I can't imagine a president PMSing on the job." Blanche and I both thought it was time to jump for cover, until someone, thankfully, pointed out that PMS is probably not something Hillary, at her age, needs to worry about.
Let that sink in for a minute...
The meeting came to a close shortly after that. I can appreciate that the Clinton Campaign is trying to get the office up and running as quickly as possible, but I can't help but feel a little discouraged at just how disorganized it is. While I think they are doing an amazing job with Bill and Chelsea criss-crossing the state the past couple of days, to places like Logansport (my home town) that I am pretty sure haven't had a Presidential visit in a long time (if ever), they just seem to be a step behind on the ground game. When I offered some of my knowledge of Indiana and Indiana politics, I got the distinct impression that they plan on trucking in more campaign staff that really have no clue about Indiana and try to run a cookie cutter campaign. While I think your basic GOTV campaign can work to some extent here, I also know there are a lot of people like my parents, so disgruntled about telephone salespeople (even with a no-call list), if they do not recognize the number, they either don't answer it, or they will answer, then lay down the phone so the person is talking to dead air.
You need to be able to tread a line in Indiana. We're a lot more complex than the image of slack jawed yokels that most people have when they hear "Hoosiers." There is a lot of nuance in all the population, and if a campaign can harness that, they can win this state. I have high hopes that things will get on track here. There is certainly enough time, but come on, get your act together!
3 comments:
Oy. This does not bode well for Hillary, no?
Eh, hard to say. This was the first meeting, and we just got another email about one tomorrow. So, maybe things will get better after they get more staff in place. The problems with the meeting really went back to the skills of the person running it. So, it might not really be an indictment of their chances.
Of all the state's left, I think Indiana could be the one true toss up. You certainly have the working class that is in Hillary's camp, but you also have northern Indiana, which is much more a part of Chicagoland. I think it is going to be close, and Hillary is kicking Obama's butt in with the visits, which I think will actually do a lot more than your traditional phone and door-to-door stuff. Indiana IS sedentary, so the more TV exposer, the more it will look like they care about the state.
All I can say is that it will certainly be interesting for me :)
I think this is a fairly common state of affairs... politics is a messy, people based business, and Democrats, especially, I think, can come off disorganized and unfocused. Have faith, and do what you can. If you're serius... and if they're serious, any insight you can add will probably be a great help. Don't get too discouraged... but you probably have to rely a bit on your own enthusiasm and share it with others. People from the national/DC world don't just seem "fly-in" to you; even in New York City they can seem remarkably tone deaf (when I worked for my Congresswoman's campaign, I was struck by how oblivious her DC staff was, and how much of what worked was what our team of volunteers came up with mostly on our own.
All I can say is, stick with it. It's great exposure to the realities of our political system, and how being involved can make a difference. Go Hillary! :)
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