First, in the style of what I did this summer as a communications intern at the progressive think tank and advocacy organization NDN, I wanted to do a short blog-related press rundown. There is plenty of activity to report!
– The Boston Globe, with wisdom from Peter Levine of CIRCLE at the Tisch College, addresses the phenomenon of “choice voting” in which college students vote where their vote is more competitive. (09/28/08)
– Using similar arguments as appear here on the blog, Mike defends House Republicans in a Daily op-ed.(09/28/08)
– Kieth Colella at BU’s Daily Free Press quotes yours truly in a reflection about UMASS’s policy not to award academic credit to interns at political campaigns. (09/29/08)
– Mike and I contributed to a discussion of Obama and McCain on the college issues in the Tufts Daily. Carrie Battan also covers Obama’s +27% margin among our generation. Appearances by Mike and I. (10/02/08)
– During a Tufts Dems voter registration orientation for dorm storming Tuesday night, freshman Chelsea Ongaro was surprised by the idiosyncrasies and difficulties of the voter registration process. I told her she should write an op-ed about it. She did – and its great! It made my week! (10/02/08)
Boys, let me know if I missed anything.
Second, my awesome week for politics here at Tufts. Subtext: I’m finding it really hard to get any work done when there’s so much to follow and so much going on. I think this is a good thing. I hope my GPA agrees.
On Tuesday night, Tufts Dems dorm stormed Hodgdon Hall in under and hour and filled about a dozen voter registration and absentee ballot requests. Yesterday a panel of experts – Harold Kaplan (Republican media strategist), Dorie Clark (Howard Dean’s NH Communications Director), Mark Tomizawa (President of SMASH Advertising), and Professor Jeff Berry – reflected on the role of campaign commercials in the ’08 race in an event sponsored by the Communications and Media Studies department. (Daily coverage is here.) Throughout the panel, I couldn’t help but think of increasing irrelevance of television advertising. Cable advertising, because of its narrow audience, tends to be more effective but network advertising is very expensive and with little results. Despite these criticisms, I was pretty stoked when my friend and I saw dueling ads for the NH-Sen race between Gov. Jeanne Shaheen and Sen. John Sununu when were watching some Law & Order during dinner last night. Proximity to NH for the win; it means that you don’t always have to watch political ads on YouTube…
Today is really the clincher. Lunchtime was the continuation of Professor Alan Solomont’s Decision ’08 speaker series. I thought last week’s visit by Dick Gephardt would be hard to top but oh man Betsy Myers really blew me out of the water. After working in the Clinton White House as director of President Clinton’s Office of Women’s Initiatives and as a high official in the Small Business Administration, Myers left the Clinton flock and joined the Obama campaign. In her earliest capacity, Myers was the Chief Operating Officer for Obama for America. She has since served as Chairwoman of Women for Obama, headed up the Clinton unity project, and she now is a senior adviser to the Obama transition team. For someone who loves politics as much as I do, this kind of window into the nuts and bolts of the campaign was incredible – especially because the Obama campaign, by all standards, has been such an efficiently run machine. Myers, in particular, was so compelling because her background was in leadership studies. Her insights into Senator Obama’s management of his campaign team were firsthand and her reflections on the discipline with which his staff has complied with the campaign’s three rules – run the campaign with respect, build it from the bottom up, and no drama – were just incredible. The best thing about these lunches has been the factoids and anecdotes that you just don’t expect to hear. Betsy Myers told us that Obama’s Chicago campaign office really began running on the backs of her and three stay-at-home moms. She told us about how the memory of Governor Dean’s idle and orange-hatted Iowa volunteers essentially inspired the creation of the My.BarackObama grassroots volunteer interface. She told us about the decision to focus on small donors and the surprising linkages between field and finance at the Obama camp. Having worked on a campaign, I can assure you that field and finance are very rarely feel like they are in the same office, nevermind that they work together. In a very real way, I really didn’t want that hour and a half to end.
Later, three young Tufts alumni who have worked in politics stopped by for a Dems discussion of life after Walnut Hill on their way up to campaign for Senator Obama in NH. Aaron, who works at the anti-poverty ONE Campaign, and Mickey of lobbying firm the PLM Group are two examples of the great network of Tufts alumni in DC. They gave us frank career and life advice while sharing hilarious stories and making me remember why I miss Mickey, who was the VP of Tufts Dems my freshman year, so much. Just one example: Luke told us of a time when Susan Sarandon was making yard signs for John Edwards at one in the morning. Then we had a debate watching party in the lounge in the Campus Center. The room was packed. …even more packed than this picture from last Friday’s debate:
Hotung Cafe Lounge
Some quick thoughts on the debate…
Both candidates did what they needed to do tonight. For Governor Palin, that was traversing the low bar that had been set for her. She stuck too much to talking points, yes, but it meant that she did a great job staying on message. She clearly pushed the maverick and outsider narratives as was expected of her in this change election. In the first quarter of the debate, she very keenly shifted every question to the issue of energy, an area in which she is more experienced and confident. She was shakier on foreign policy, especially compared to the knowledgeable Senator Biden, but actually did worst on the simple question of her role as Vice-President. Did you see her look down at her notes on that one? Palin was Palin: She got in two winks and a “Say it ain’t so, Joe” for good measure. My fellow Democrats can mock her idioms all they want but professorial Obama has been having a tough time making his economic message stick because he can’t seem to get it into Wasilla Main Street terms; I’m not going to belittle her outright for it. I still don’t feel at all convinced that she’s ready to be Commander in Chief (it’s McKiernan, not McClellan) but, like many Americans, I was mollified somewhat by not having to witness a repeat of the stumbles on the Bush Doctrine, newspapers, and SCOTUS.
Biden did well but he was no slam dunk. Most importantly, he passed the test of his capacity of not seeming demeaning to Palin whose femininity requires extra scruples. However, while Biden’s first 20 minutes proved that he knew the facts and figures, no one really needed to hear all of that if he wasn’t adequately communicating the sum of their parts. I think discipline is still an issue for him. When asked about humanitarian interventions, he started unprovokedly defending his Senate record. Why was he talking about it anyway? Unlike Brian, I thought he did fall into wordy traps a bit too much. However, he had some amazing moments: “Come into my neighborhood,” his trips to the Home Depot, and his tragic personal story of being a single dad all demonstrated that he could empathize with middle class Americans. In an election so dominated by economic uncertainty, that personal middle class connection both veep candidates strove for all night will be essential. Biden also killed it when he railed on VP Cheney and when he said
The issue is how different is John McCain’s policy going to be than George Bush’s,” Mr. Biden said. “I haven’t heard how his policy is going to be different on Iran than George Bush’s. I haven’t heard how his policy is going to be different with Israel than George Bush’s. I haven’t heard how his policy in Afghanistan is going to be different than George Bush’s. I haven’t heard how his policy in Pakistan is going to be different than George Bush’s. It may be, but so far it is the same as George Bush’s.
I just wish he had hit his substantively best line – “He’s not been a maverick on virtually anything that generally affects the things that people really talk about.” – harder throughout the debate.
Overall notes: Although I wasn’t thrilled with her as moderator, I loved Gwen Ifill’s question demanding reflection about whether a nuclear Iran was a bigger threat than an unstable Pakistan. I think – by which I mean that I worry – about that question a lot. Kids around me were keeping track of the Palinisms, which was the best part of watching in a group. I hate playing the winner/loser game so I’ll just say that things are trending well for Obama right now and it’s quite clear that this debate was not a game changer; the win, then, goes to the candidate with momentum.
Finally, after being teased about it at Hotung tonight, I wanted to write about my favorite coverage points for live-blogging during the debates.
– Chris Cilizza AKA The Fix at The Washington Post (WaPo) provides great live-blogging tweets. (Yeah, Twitter, I know. I’m almost embarrassed to admit it. Almost.)
– Marc Ambinder from The Atlantic is legit sauce.
– My boss from this summer and Tufts alumnae extraordinaire Simon Rosenberg live blogs at the NDN blog and makes me wish it were still summer in DC so I could hear it in person.
– Finally, I admit it, I ctrl-R WaPo’s Fact Checker blog like a lame-o playing trivial pursuit with myself – which is a pretty accurate description.
Finally finally (I promise), I hope you enjoy this picture of Brian and Sarah at the first Dems meeting as much as I do:
Have a great weekend! I’ll be in CT-02 canvassing for Representative (and Tufts alumnae) Joe Courtney.
Red, Brown, and Blue 
Wow. Great Post.