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Musings From the Campaign Trail

I first noticed Barack Obama on the campaign trail for the New Hampshire primary. He annoyed the shit out of me. Granted, I was dispatched there by my union to campaign for Hillary Clinton. Neither of them would ever get my vote, but at least Hillary had a track record. You knew what you were getting with her. With Obama, a very eloquent and inspiring (to everyone but me) speaker, he was so vague that it seemed supporters projected onto him what they wanted to hear. After all, what does “Change” mean? Reagan was a change from Carter. Lenin was a change from the czar. The Good and Fruities with the jelly bean center were a change from the Good and Fruities with the licorice center.

Obama’s zombie teenage hordes of supporters really annoyed me. Were they excited about politics that looked like a Hollywood movie? It’s one thing to work like hell for his election once he was the Democratic nominee, but what made him so special in a pack of candidates who all essentially stood for the same issues? Was it that he had not been in politics long enough to disappoint yet?

Like any good organizer, I got competitive. I lustily counter-booed the Obama kids who made a fiasco out of the NH Dems’ annual dinner by booing Hillary during her speech and rushing the stage during Obama’s speech like there was a mosh pit up there or something. I’m not sure what that proved except that Obama’s campaign bought more tickets to the ball than the other candidates (and that Hillary should have followed John Edwards’ lead by boycotting the event). I cheerfully teased the inexperienced Obama canvassers and tore down every door hanger I found. (The rental agency where I returned the car must have been confused by the trunk full of Hillary lawn signs and the back seat full of crumpled Obama flyers.) Of course, Hillary won, forcing the protracted primary fight between her and Obama. She simply had the better ground operation (if I do say so myself).

After New Hampshire, I got a break from campaigning until the final two months of the general election. Up until the last minute, I expected the Democrats to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory as usual, and didn’t breath a sigh of relief until around 10:30 on Election night. In the final estimation, the Obama campaign was a modern marvel. It was an extraordinarily well-run campaign with almost no missteps or gaffes, that consistently put together a powerful ground operation, that really harnessed the power of the internet for spreading talking points, recruiting volunteers and, obviously, impressive fundraising.

The McCain campaign, on the other hand, was inept in ways that I thought were impossible in the modern political era. Like, aren’t Vice Presidential candidates supposed to undergo deep background searches? Shouldn’t a campaign worker check out “an average voter” before the candidate name checks him in a debate? In its own odd way, the McCain is an inspiration. The office politics and back-biting, the hare-brained schemes, poor communications and lousy marketing. This was a campaign staff that reminds all of us of the ridiculous offices where we have worked. Where the Obama campaign reinforces that hoary old notion that anyone can grow up to be President, the McCain campaign encourages us that truly anyone can run for President.

But this week belongs to the American people in a way that politics rarely does. If we had a real socialist movement in this country, the Obama campaign is what we would have called a real popular front-type of campaign. We were organizing across broad swaths of the public, from the center to the left, from the labor movement, to the pro-choice and civil rights movement to the peace movement to defeat the extreme reaction of the modern Republican party to elect our first black president. The spontaneous celebrations that broke out across the country and the very real and deserved pride of African-Americans is an inspiration. We are in a unique historical moment. Socialists should respect this moment, and we should respect Obama for what he currently represents, even if we suspect he will ultimately be a disappointment. We need a November 5th movement in this country to keep pressure on the President to pursue a more progressive agenda. But we should take care to be a loyal opposition for the time being.

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Spoiled Ballots

I cast my absentee ballot today, and, yes, I voted for Nader just to be contradictory. I had the odd timing of being at the Board of Elections at the exact time they were running a public demonstration of new voting machines. In New York, we’ve been voting on the same machines that sent Kennedy to the White House. New machines have been long promised (or threatened, depending on your perspective). Apparently fearing voter backlash, the New York City Board of Elections shied away from a full-on computerized ballot. Instead, the Ballot Marking Device is a clunky touch screen and computer ballot that looks like a 1970’s version of the “future.”

The paper ballot never entirely leaves your hand. You feed it in to the machine, like a Scantron test sheet from when you were in school. A nigh-on unresponsive touch screen runs you through the various contests and prompts you to mash your thumb closest to the candidate you hope to vote for. You might miss and pick the other guy, but, don’t worry, the clerk advised me. You’ll have three chances to get it right. Review your choices, press “done” and the machine will print little black bubbles next to the candidates you selected on the paper ballot. Unless it misses, or runs out of ink.

Sample Ballot

A switch to any new voting machine after 50 years is likely to produce voter confusion and long lines. These cheap and clunky “Ballot Marking Devices” only makes things worse. Look for them to really break down that special election on term limits we might have.

Should we have a special election on term limits? No! We had that election. Twice. Truth be told, I am against term limits in principle, and, in fact, I voted in favor of extending our limits to three terms in 1996. But I was outvoted. The people spoke. Move on. It is the absolute height of hypocrisy for Mayor Bloomberg and the current City Council to attempt an end-run around the people’s will. It is, however, disingenuous for the Working Families Party and others to narrow our protest to making sure that any vote on term limits is done by referendum. With the past votes in favor of term limits so recent and so overwhelming, why should we waste taxpayers’ dollars on another plebiscite that will produce the same predictable results? That money could be better spent on other things, like, say, new voting machines that work.

Finally, let’s just come out and say what we really mean: Mike Bloomberg should go away. We don’t need a billionaire to protect us from the big bad recession. Any asshole in a three piece suit could raise property taxes and slash services, which is all he’s going to do anyway. The very idea of a billionaire mayor, with his $1 a day salary, private jet and “financial independence” is corrosive to our democracy. Allowing ourselves to be conned into begging him to stay would be the nail in the coffin. Mayor Bloomberg has to go, even if we have to vote twice to make it happen.

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A Real Hat

After a morning that saw me put a bid in on a spacious two bedroom apartment with a formal dining room in Bay Ridge – $10,000 down with 75% financing and a very adult activity, if ever I engaged in one – I decided to go shopping for a new hat. I’ve been wearing hats for a little over a year now: a straw hat followed by a light felt black fedora. Fashionable as it might otherwise be, a black hat clashes with the navy blazer I’ve taken to wearing lately. This is another dubious sign of maturity. As the Clash song goes, “You grow up and you calm down / You start wearing blue and brown.” A grey hat seemed in order, so I made my way to Bencraft Hatters.

Bencraft has two locations in Brooklyn. The original is located in Williamsburg, not far from where my paternal grandfather lived when he married my grandmother. It’s probably where he purchased (or, more likely, rented) the top hat he wore on their wedding day. The other, which I frequent, is in Borough Park. Inside of Bencraft, you will find the kind of intense debates, measurements and arguments over hats that made most American men heave a sigh of relief when J.F.K. attended his inauguration bare-headed. Being a Sunday, I found a dozen Jewish men (customers and salesmen) engaging in heated debates over coloring, brim size and the ever-ephemeral quality of “quality.”

A family – two older brothers and their father – fretted over the difference of a quarter of an inch of brim for the youngest of their clan. A 10-year-old girl rejected her father’s new hat as “not as good” as his last one, and chastised him for losing his yarmulke inside of a display hat and thus exposing his chrome dome to Yahweh. At the sales counter, an agitated little man complained of a barely detectable “bump” in the crown of his new hat. “I wouldn’t complain, except that this is the fourth hat I purchased from you this week,” he explained. The salesman countered, “In every hat in this store, could I find an imperfection? These are handmade hats, they will never be 100%” Finally, though, the salesman agreed to steam the hat in an attempt to work out the bump, although, he complained, Sunday was a bad day for it. He gestured to the long line of Hassidic men waiting to have their hats steamed and cleaned.

As for me, I meekly requested a grey hat in the same cheapo style as the “lite felt” fedora I was already wearing. None in my size, the salesman apologized. He did find a slightly-more-expensive Stefano. “It’s a real hat,” he explained, “as we say in the business.” Almost thirty, a real home and a real hat. How could I refuse?

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Woody Allen’s Later, Darker Ones

“Vicky Christina Barcelona” is the most thoroughly enjoyable hour and a half you could spend at the movies this season. At what point does Woody Allen’s “comeback” (as each of his last few movies have been hailed by critics) get to stick? Liberated from the upscale Manhattan locations that his characters could no longer afford, as well as from the crutch of casting himself or a famous impersonator as the romantic lead, Allen’s films have been consistently thoughtful, sober and darker than his proverbial “early, funny ones.”

Bankrolled by the Spanish tourism industry, the film is set in a clearly booming Barcelona (note the construction cranes that dot the skyline), which gets top billing along with the two American tourists (played by Scarlett Johansson and Rebecca Hall) whose summer in the city fuels the plot-line. Vicky and Christina are propositioned by painter Juan Antonio for a weekend of art, wine and sex. Javier Bardem is charming as the oddly well-rounded and soulful lothario (particularly for a Woody Allen film). Hall’s Vicky opens her mouth and Woody incredulously rejects Bardem’s proposition (though she thankfully spares us an impersonation). Johansson’s Christina, however, is intrigued and accepts. Johansson is a very spotty actress, but she usually acquits herself in roles such as this, that are basically variations on the 20-something ingenue set adrift that she played in “Lost In Translation.” Like all mid-summer night’s sex comedies, everyone eventually sleeps together. This includes a refreshingly non-judgmental open relationship between Bardem, Johansson and Bardem’s tempestuous unstable ex-wife, Penelope Cruz (who’s a wicked delight every moment she’s on the screen).

Ultimately, every winds up alone with a little less faith in perfect love. This is a consistent theme in Allen’s movies. Remember, his best-loved romantic comedy is wistfully narrated after his break-up with Annie Hall. Love rarely lasts in Allen’s movies. And lust, particularly lust for a passionate but unstable lover, usually ends badly – either in murder (“Match Point,” “Crimes and Misdemeanors”) or institutionalization (“Stardust Memories”). Here, Penelope Cruz stabs and shoots at Javier Bardem. This is a comedy, mind you, and a very funny one.