haynes johnson, reporter with the washington post and author of a handful of books, stopped by thursday night to talk to the kids.  i know that sarina and julia both talked to haynes, specifically about their having a "divided household" where at least one of their parents supported hillary and their own efforts to elect barack.  these two have been the stalwarts of our high school efforts, and both had participated in weekend canvassing as well as our high school night events.  i hadn't actually realized that either one of their parents were hillary supporters, especially since both prized the "hope" posters they had received.  i can only wonder what i would have thought had my kid supported someone who stood in the way of my candidate in the most crucial presidential primary in a very critical year.

friday began early for me, since we were to break down the office and re-arrange everything in order to organize our canvass efforts and phone bank efforts in a more efficient manner.  in the end, we had to perform three major tasks on friday: prepare for the event by both flyering the neighborhood and train stations and make thousands of phone calls about tomorrow's event; start the preparations for monday's gotv canvass; and otherwise get ready for the weekend, including a community meeting to that effect.

by mid-morning, our phone bank was running at full force.  our big emphasis friday morning was saturday's whistle stop in wynnewood.  people have been asking, "when is barack coming?" for weeks, and now he was coming here.  our response was phenomenal.  people were very excited, even people who were thinking of voting for hillary.  one woman told her child, "when do you get the chance to see the next president of the united states?"  i asked her if she was supporting barack, but she told me she was leaning towards hillary.  "it's historical," was her explanation.  i have no idea what she meant, but i suppose it's been awhile since one of the major presidential candidates stopped in wynnewood.

at noon, we sent out everybody in the office (well, basically) to the streets to pass out flyers about the event.  interestingly, hillary was also in the area, at haverford on thursday and at radnor yesterday.  both of hillary's local events were considerably smaller than michelle's event at haverford.  but they were also intentionally so.  hillary's event at haverford was apparently packed, although the room itself held 300 people.  an attendee also speculated that there were another 100 people trying to listen in outside the room.  michelle had more than four times that.

the volunteers that were sent out to suburban square, an old-time shopping area, ran into a number of hillary supporters.  they had lined hillary's route to radnor, with visibility swarms at several major intersections.  regardless, our volunteers had no trouble passing out their flyers, even though they ran into a number of hillary supporters who were there to stand on the corner for hillary's visibility event.  it seemed almost characteristic -- hillary's supporters gathering to wave signs at passing cars (including her's) and our supporters talking to voters, trying to tell them about another opportunity to se barack in their neighborhood.  

many of the young people involved in our youth efforts were to gather at the office at 2 to go with laura and hannah downtown to support the philadelphia.  this included several of the people out on the streets flyering.  while i don't know what time they actually left as i was busy, i do know that a big group from our office went downtown in order to volunteer at the event.

i made a couple of trips to the printers in order to get additional copies of the flyers we were distributing.  we had printed out a significant number of flyers on our own printer, but apparently a supporter or volunteer stepped up to pay for mass copying of the flyer.  i hadn't even heard of the person who kinko's had the order under.  barack's support is so broad in this area of montgomery county that there was no way to keep up with everyone who volunteers or offers to help out.  

at the height of the day, our own little call center was packed.  it was just at that time that the jim lehrer hour cameras arrived.  are we lucky or what?  the phones were manned and probably twice as many people were using their cell phones to make calls into the neighborhood.  apparently, gwen ifel was there as well (i didn't see her).  coverage of our little corner of pennsylvania is supposed to appear on pbs ("the news hour") on monday.  the upper and lower merion office was making a name for itself.  people were paying attention.  it will be interesting to see if they also stopped into the local hillary headquarters, as it seems to be rarely open (although it was this morning).

about 5:30 or so, i headed down to philadelphia for barack's speech.  the train i was on was packed like sardines with people attending the event.  interestingly -- and for reasons unknown to me -- about half of them got off at the suburban stop (i think it was called) and the other half got off with me at the market east stop.  in my continual twist of geographical irony, several people from pennsylvania asked me where i (the florida boy) was getting off the r-5.  the ever intrepid andy had told me to get off at market east and that's what i said i was doing.  i had no idea what i would do once i got there.

market east actually let us off underneath a mall (hmmm, market east -- you'd think i'd have a clue, but i remained clueless).  after exiting the train -- an electric train, although quite different than the metra electric we have on the southside of chicago -- we went up two stories before we were at ground level.  i just followed the other passengers to the street.  but once i was at street level, my previous visits to philly let me know where i was and where i needed to go.  i scurried down to independence mall.

when i first got there, i went around the block where the visitors center and constitution center was located to get a feel for the event.  i checked into the press area but left afterward to get "man on the street" footage.  so who did i run into?  first isabel and then adam and julia, dana and ben from the office.  julia asked me about why i didn't include the flickr url when i write the diaries.  well, i hadn't thought of it and i've been slow to add all the good photos i've taken (the bad ones i delete).  but it's a good idea, so there you go!  i also throw in a dozen or so into the barack obama "2008" flickr group when i remember.  it's a good resource for following the campaign across the country -- at least i've enjoyed it.

there were a lot of unique characters at the mall on friday night.  i loved meeting and talking to the two women who had the "no more drama" shirts.  i saw more than a few "end the drama, vote obama" buttons on people, and i believe several vendors were selling them on the streets downtown.  one of the reasons i wanted to get around outside the event itself was because i had been told that there was to be a "counter demonstration" of hillary supporters across the street from the mall itself.  while i found the gathering place just as it was described to me (a series of yard signs on several street light posts across the street, i never actually found the counter demonstration.  perhaps it was just a rumor, or perhaps it was a brief swarm, or perhaps it happened during barack's speech itself, but my efforts were for naught.

when i finally made my way back to the press area, i again ran into julia and adam, ben and dana.  they had set themselves up at the perfect location for photographs, so i joined them.  then we saw isabel, who had made her way into the "priority viewing" area.  this is definitely someone who has figured things out!  right before that, though, some of the staff started handing out the "change we can believe in" signs to people in the preferred viewing area.  i went over to one of the staffers i knew from another state and asked that she give change signs to the four volunteers i was with.  "they've been off immense help to us," i told her.  thankfully, she obliged.

barack himself did not show up on stage at the appointed hour as it were.  but dana (i think) asked me, "what are boilermakers?"  i looked over, and there was one of the volunteers who had helped load up my car with yard sign frames wearing a "boilermakers for obama" shirt.  i told her it was a drink and the mascot of purdue university.  "what is someone from indiana doing here," she asked.  he (and his two friends) also had press passes, so i asked him about that.  "we've been helping since yesterday," he told me.  when i asked about his shirt, he said it was neither of my explanations, but a union.  he had gotten it from a boilermaker who had left his cell phone during set-up.  his reward was a shirt in purdue colors!

when barack came out, the place went wild.  it seemed like every staff person from eastern pennsylvania was there -- although we learned later that the campaign had run short of volunteer credential badges so they had given staff credentials to volunteers in order to identify them as helping out at the event.  this fact would be remembered later that night.  

barack gave a short but sweet speech linking his campaign to the founding fathers who meet with the same kind of rhetorical resistance as he has.  all they had to offer was "just words," hope and various communities self-organized around the tenet of over-turning a system gone bad.  they, too, were called elists.  and they also offered a strong contrast for the people to choose: the politics of the past vs the politics of hope and change and the future.  barack's speech hit all these notes, far more eloquently than i.

In four days, you get the chance to help bring about the change that we need right now.  Here in the city and the state that gave birth to our democracy, we can declare our independence from the politics that has shut us out, and let us down, and told us to settle.

We can declare our independence from the politics that's put the oil companies, and the drug companies, and the insurance companies in charge of the decisions that impact our lives and our children's lives.

We can declare independence from the say-anything, do-anything politics that's all about how to win and not why we should; that politics that exploits our differences instead of speaking to our common concerns and our common destinies as Americans.

We can do all these things, but only if we declare our independence from the cynicism and the doubt that tells us that change can't happen.

as barack was speaking, i heard from behind me, "he looks presidential."  that's a big part of these kinds of events, to put the candidate in position so that people can actually imagine him (or her) as president (or governor, senator, etc).  again, this is why hillary always begins with a huge margin in her favor and why barack continually chips away at that margin.  voters can image him as their president -- and they are comfortable with that fact.  hillary's campaign contrasts significantly with barack's approach here.  we had a woman who visited both local headquarters and she told us that the hillary worker she talked to said that she would rather vote for mccain than barack if he were the nominee.  this was supposed to be her closing argument to convince this undecided voter to vote for hillary.  but it offended this voter.  pennsylvania nice, remember?

i take at face value those of hillary's supporters who argue that she's closer to john mccain than to barack obama.  she's certainly closer in ideology and approach to joe lieberman than barack, and lieberman is one of mccain's biggest boosters.  so we have to accept the fact that there are conditional democrats out there.  hillary's frame that she was inevitable didn't help, either. hillary has not only disappointed her supporters by her failed campaign, but her failure has clearly left many of them bitter.  but the battle over the future and soul of the democratic party is a good thing, a necessary thing.  the clintons may have figured out how to get power for themselves, but their record of electing democrats is abysmal.  there was no gingrich revolution, there was just a failure to harness the power and potential of the democratic party by a democratic president.  power must be dispersed, not concentrated.  the clintons are all about concentrating power in their own hands.

I don't believe we can bring about change if we don't declare our independence from the politics that exploits our differences and inflames the divisions in our country; the politics that feeds on fake controversy, and distraction, where you keep track of how many points you score on your opponent instead of how many problems you solve for the American people.  That may make for good headlines and good television, but it doesn't make for good government - it doesn't bring down the price of your gas or your premiums; it doesn't help you pay for college or bring your loved one home from Iraq any faster.

it is hillary and her campaign who have set up this frame that she is closer to mccain than barack.  and her supporters are falling on that sword.  it may be the single greatest act of political self-destruction in my lifetime.  hillary will survive, we know that.  it is the democratic party whose future is in question.  while hillary and her supporters seem eager to gamble with its future, barack is our only hope.  this comes across when you find comments like this:

"I am a Christian, my husband is a Christian, and my husband owns guns," the woman told him. "We are not bitter about your statement. However, we are bitter about how your opponent is spinning your statement."

gonna be some changes made.

you can still help barack win pennsylvania.  donate here to reunite the democratic party behind a strong nominee who can beat mccain; you can help barack win in pennsylvania and across the country by making phone calls now.  with the pennsylvania democratic party intervening in the democratic process, anything you can do to compensate for their interference would be welcome!