Email from a friend of a friend

A friend of a friend, describing one encounter with an undecided voter while canvassing in Indiana:

An edgy-looking, heavily tattooed, 30ish white man who was sitting in a lawn chair in front of his apartment in what appeared to be a low-income housing project.  He'd been watching me as I knocked on some of the doors in neighboring apartments.  He wasn't on my list and did not look friendly, but I decided to approach him anyway.  When I told him why I was there, he said in an agitated tone: "I don't know who I'm voting for."  Then, before I could respond, he continued:  "I WAS voting for McCain until a couple of weeks ago until he started this smear campaign, and I'm pissed that he would waste our time with that bullsh*t"   I told him what had motivated me to drive from Chicago to talk to him and listened to him vent for a few more minutes before I moved on.  I think he will vote for Obama, though I'm not sure, but, either way, it made me feel good to see that the very type of person the cynical and destructive Ayers campaign was designed to manipulate appeared to be having the opposite effect.

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Begin forwarded message:

From: "collinanderson62@hotmail.com" <collinanderson62@hotmail.com>

Date: October 19, 2008 9:13:35 AM PDT

To: undisclosed-recipients:;

Subject: Quick report on Michigan City; Colin Powell vs Michelle Bachmann

Hi All-

I spent last Saturday in Michigan City, Indiana knocking on doors for the Obama campaign.  Our goal was to get likely Obama supporters to vote early.  As in Gary, there were tons of volunteers of all types and tremendous enthusiasm.  Michigan City is a small town on Lake Michigan, just south of Indiana's border with Michigan.  It's much more racially and economically diverse than Gary, probably pretty representative of America as a whole.  I joined a woman named Julie, a lawyer from Hyde Park, in canvassing a neighborhood on the edge of town.  I want to highlight three interactions I had that could not have been more different from each other:

1.  A 60ish white woman who was having a yard sale in front of her house.  I barely got the words "Obama campaign" out of my mouth before she angrily told me she'd been a Republican committeewoman for twenty years and she despised "that man".  When I told her that I have many lifelong Republican friends who are supporting Obama, she said: "Well, I'm also a Christian, and he's not!"  I said, "Maam, he is a Christian, and, even if he isn't, why should it even matter?"  She blustered something illogical about Reverend Wright (who may not be a great American but is by all accounts a Christian), and I moved on.

2.  An edgy-looking, heavily tattooed, 30ish white man who was sitting in a lawn chair in front of his apartment in what appeared to be a low-income housing project.  He'd been watching me as I knocked on some of the doors in neighboring apartments.  He wasn't on my list and did not look friendly, but I decided to approach him anyway.  When I told him why I was there, he said in an agitated tone: "I don't know who I'm voting for."  Then, before I could respond, he continued:  "I WAS voting for McCain until a couple of weeks ago until he started this smear campaign, and I'm pissed that he would waste our time with that bullsh*t"   I told him what had motivated me to drive from Chicago to talk to him and listened to him vent for a few more minutes before I moved on.  I think he will vote for Obama, though I'm not sure, but, either way, it made me feel good to see that the very type of person the cynical and destructive Ayers campaign was designed to manipulate appeared to be having the opposite effect.

3.  After I finished canvassing, I went to an Obama-sponsored barbecue where I spent fifteen minutes or so talking with two 60ish African American men, one is a semi-retired college sociology professor, the other a truck stop manager.  We were chatting about our lives, Chicago, sports, and how well the election appeared to be going when the truck stop manager suddenly paused,  smiled, looked at the professor, shook his head and said with wonder in his voice:  "I never thought this would happen in my life time..." 

Wow!  He was, of course, referring to the fact that a Black person was a very serious candidate for the Presidency.  If any of you are reading about the McCain campaign's attacks against ACORN and imagining hordes of angry black people trying to steal the election so they can stick it to "whitey", conversations like this, along with what I observe every day in Chicago and experienced for two Saturdays in Gary (either of which would be ground zero if any of this were true), let me set your mind at ease.  Win or lose, the Obama campaign has been one of THE most positive forces for national unity in the history of this republic.

                                                                               _______________________________________

On a separate topic, if you haven't already heard, General Colin Powell, a symbol of what can still be right with the Republican party and one of the most universally respected Americans of the past twenty years, has just endorsed Barack Obama.

Powell, a retired U.S. general and a Republican, was once seen as a possible presidential candidate himself.  He has also been a top advisor to the past three Republican Presidents.  Aside from their shared history as Republican military men, Powell's endorsement is significant due to the fact that McCain has repeatedly singled him out for lavish praise. In a July New York Times interview, McCain described the former secretary of state and Joint Chiefs chairman as "a man who I admire as much as any man in the world, person in the world" when answering a question in which Powell was not brought up. Meanwhile, near the same time as that interview, McCain was reportedly considering Powell as a potential running mate.


Please take a few minutes to watch his announcement, because his reasons for this endorsement are as important as the endorsement, itself, and an illustration of what is right with America.  Toward the end, he describes a photo of a mother kneeling on her son's grave at Arlington National Cemetery that is as powerful as it gets.  Colin (if you're reading this), you make me proud to share a name with you, not to mention a species and a nationality (even if your mom did deny you the luxury of a second 'L').  Mr. Powell's announcement on "Meet the Press" can be found here:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/19/colin-powell-endorses-oba_n_135895.html


Now, for a perfect contrast to Powell and a perfect illustration of the type of thinking a McCain victory would represent, please watch the following. 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/10/17/gop-rep-channels-mccarthy_n_135735.html


Folks, this is evil personified and (in the words of Edmund Burke): "the only thing necessary for evil to flourish is for good men [and women] to do nothing. I hope I made Old Edmund proud because, after watching this, I reached for my credit card and made another contribution to the Obama campaign (my tenth or so) and another to Michelle Bachmann's opponent.  I truly hope this woman and this type of thinking are crushed in this election for the good of the country and even for the good of the Republican party, which still contains a lot of great people (including some of you) but has been hijacked by it's right wing for the past eight years or so.

There are now 16 days left until the most important election of our lifetime.  Obama is up in the polls, but do not believe for a second that this thing is over.  The Rove-led McCain campaign is getting nastier by the minute, and the Republican party is falsely accusing the Democrats of voter fraud in an effort to disenfranchise likely Obama voters.  The possibility that we will wake up on November 5 looking at four to eight years of a McCain-Palin presidency may be shrinking, but it still remains.  If so, will you be asking yourself if you could have done more?  Feel free to forward this message, and you can go here to make a donation or to find out how you can volunteer to help at any level that fits your schedule.

http://www.barackobama.com/index.php


I wish you all the best.

Collin