we've had a curious turn of events this weekend wrt yard signs.  one volunteer, who has canvassed for us several times, has been insistent about the visibility aspect of yard signs.  we sort of hear this all the time.  hillary's campaign has focused primarily on visibility -- they've been very good at creating a swarm whenever hillary is around -- and obama supporters have expressed concern about the sudden emergence of yard signs.

you may recall that i had previously observed only one actual yard where i had seen a hillary yard sign.  i had seen plenty of hillary signs that were placed in the public way, just not in people's yards on the routes i take around the area.  this is no longer true.  the lower merion and narbeth democrats met this weekend, and suddenly, there is a plethora of hillary signs in people's yards.  of course, the local party is officially neutral.  it's just a coincidence that the signs suddenly appeared the morning after the party meeting.  yeah, right.  but one of the streets that i travel at times now has a suddenly strong presence of hillary signs in front of their estates.  they weren't there last week.  they weren't there saturday.  they just appeared after the local democratic party function.  hmm.

but i have failed to mention that we got a shipment last week of yard signs from texas.  these signs, we were told by the person who delivered them, had been in california and texas, and maybe a few other states.  they were traveling from state to state it seems.  one of our volunteers (rob, i think) had heard about this, but he never forwarded the link.  the signs are obviously used, and the white signs (which i'd never seen before) have the url at the bottom of the sign cut out of it.  so we put them out in front of the office.  since the signs that were put out in front of our building before had been moved (from our space to someone's yard), we've been trying to bring the signs in each night.  but the demand for yard signs is rather high.  we are trying to preserve these signs so they can go to indiana.

taryn, our regional field director, decided to move into our office.  although i don't know why, i'm sure she's a bit tired of working out of her car.  it could also be our close proximity to philly, given that we are on "the famous mainline" (according to mrs bored).  but this decision put us in a curious quandry, given that we are in an old bank building and it's not exactly designed for offices.  we've been using the teller counter for phone banking, the lobby for volunteers, the customer service area for computers and phone banking, the single office space for our two field organizers and the kitchen is where our college organizers are working.

the only thing left was the vault, which isn't exactly prime work space.  for one thing, the security needs of a vault make it, well, rather echo-ey when having conversations.  and the staff spends a lot of time on the phone.  regardless, taryn (our most valuable possession) moved into the vault -- although i think she's a little freaked out by it.  her "door" is a heavy, think vault door that i don't think anyone wants to shut, because we have no clue what will happen if we do.

meanwhile, all day long, we have a steady stream of people calling and coming in to get tickets for the event.  we have more than half the tickets available and the emails and phone calls generate a slew of calls.  at 9am or thereabouts, someone calls in asking if we still had tickets.  those who had arrived before i got to work also seemed to think that they would go that fast.  i guess michelle is a big star in her own right.  seems strange when compared to 2004, when we would barely see her and i can't remember her ever out on the campaign trail like this.

the decision to keep the tickets outside, which seemed a little risky (it might have rained) on sunday night, turned out to be a good one.  the lobby (our primary volunteer work space) would have been jammed at various points in the day, and the commotion combined with the phone calls of people asking -- in contradistinction to the explicit instructions included in communications -- to have tickets reserved early in the morning would have been insane.  well, i would have gone insane (stop snickering).

two young women came in from chicago this afternoon to volunteer.  one of them had gone to elementary school with barack in hawaii.  the other woman's husband used to be principal (iirc) of a school here on the mainline.  like other out-of-state volunteers, they got the run-down from hy and then were thrown into the fire.  andy, another one of our committed local volunteers, yelled over to me, "your relief is here.  now you can go home!"

i think they just want to get rid of me.  andy is convinced my wife is a saint for having put up with me.  i don't know too many people who would disagree with him.  otoh, she probably appreciates the calm and quiet of my absence.

the campaign decided to leverage our success in high school night make signs and recruit volunteers for the michelle event.  so sarina and isabel (probably others) sent out the word through facebook and their other social networks that we were changing high school night to monday and we'd be making signs instead of phone calls.  the ever intrepid robin was recruited to help design the hand-made signs and then every one was put to work drawing in between the lines.  isabel mentioned that she could silk-screen her shirt design (barack the vote) on a poster, but it looks too professional.  and too professional doesn't look grassroots.  it's an odd irony, a real grassroots success story, isabel's shirts, bags and perhaps posters are too professional looking and people watching on tv might not understand their meaning.  they might think we had to get a printer or something.

but making the signs was a group effort.  to be honest, more guys showed up than i expected.  i suppose i'm not artsy, but i was surprised.  when you watch the brief footage on television, know that the hand made signs were hand made by our high school volunteers.  they are truly barack stars!

while i was in the midst of my data obsession, and our new high school night day was happening, i was asked to go talk to the regional field coordinator.  "she has a special project for you, i don't know what it is."  this was only a couple of hours after they had asked me the correct spelling of my last name, so i was thinking that the field organizers had set me up.  i'm not that fond of surprises, or even public recognition.  you might even say that i'm bored by it.  winning is it's own reward.

instead, i was asked to go help the advance team set up for the michelle event.  "you've done it before," i was told.  which i have -- a long time ago.  generally, this advance team sets up an event as a three man team, but one of its members was doing an event.  advance really is simply preparing a space so that it looks good on tv, maintains good traffic flow and meets the various needs of different constituencies (like security) very, very quickly.  ivan, one of the advance men setting up this event, said he told his parents that he was like a glorified wedding planner when trying to explain his job.  that's a bit much.  i told him what i learned, when i did this a very long time ago, is that the people who i'd run into and swap war stories with were the arena concert promoters, who also would take over a big space and in a very short time have to do the same thing.

politics is entertainment, too, even if it isn't american idol.  all the world's a stage -- or a 24-hour news cycle.

but this whole campaign has come a long way from barack's announcement outside on a cold day in springfield, illinois.  and this afternoon, michelle obama will be speaking to several thousand people at haverford college in the space that the clinton campaign is trying to arrange an event for hillary later in the week.  i found that news kind of interesting when the college kids told me.  "i'd go," i told them.  might be the only time you ever get to see her.  it's not like she's going to be the president.  how often will regular people get to see the senator from new york?

"i'd feel disloyal," one young woman replied.  that's the sad part.  it also shows just how divided this primary has split democrats.  but what else can hillary do?  she ran a shitty campaign and the only thing she can do is destroy the likely nominee in order to have a shot.  it's hard to see how the democratic party benefits, but obviously the clinton legacy is more important than the party.  since i watched them do the same thing to the democratic party in florida -- basically destroy the democratic party there in order to win the state -- i can express no surprise.  the clintons are only loyal to themselves.  they don't care a wit about all the damage they leave in their wake.  so we expect a lot more damage to come from hillary and her campaign, in her shermanesque quest to burn down all that stands in her way.

in the end, pennsylvania gets to decide whether it prefers the bitter, divisive politics of the past or the hopeful tones of the politics of the future.  in every way, this is a state that fits hillary, given the massive political machine that supports her, not only through back-room deals (given her penchant for secrecy) and the bare knuckle brawling that pennsylvania politics has endured.  and yet hope springs eternal.  hillary, governor rendell and all those who cling to the past like a lifevest are going to be surprised.  hillary's shermanesque tactics are increasingly being rejected by voters across the country, to the extent that head-to-head matchups show that she loses to mccain in a landslide.  given her historical highs in her negatives, this can be no surprise.  hillary was always going to lose, it was just a matter of to whom.  it was inevitable simply because she unites the right and divides democrats.  and that was before her resort to shermanesque slash and burn.

hope is coming to pennsylvania.  we don't know yet how many voters will reach out and grab it, but we know it's coming.  today, the mainline gets a glimpse.  in a week, hopefully, it will vote it's dreams and not it's fears.  and we've had that for seven years. time to move away from the bush age and into a new age of hope...

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