Another night of phone banking last night and another full house. Our township leadership team and their volunteers have had to move our twice-weekly phone bank to a new location in Ann Arbor due to an overwhelming response and, last night, we ran out of phones at the new location! People are just showing up to say, “what can I do to help?” And we’re putting them to work. Our team has been so successful, in fact, that we’re starting to run out of numbers to call and doors to knock on. So we’re going to start helping out other teams in our area. It’s going that well.
Michigan a swing state that might go red? Not on your life.
Campus Dems at the University of Michigan have registered upwards of 2,000 new voters in the past few weeks, more NEW voters than actually voted in the 2006 primaries in that area.
In Detroit, a massive voter registration effort is being tremendously effective. Senator Obama’s two recent visits attracted tens of thousands of people – 35,000+ at the Joe Louis Arena and over 20,000 at Hart Plaza a few weeks later (panoramic image HERE) – resulting in thousands of new registrations.
Likewise an appearance by both Senators Biden and Obama in Battle Creek drew over 17,000 supporters, another opportunity to reach unregistered voters.
By comparison, the McPalin visit to suburban (and very white) Sterling Heights drew less than 8,000 people (panoramic image HERE.)
In a state hit hard by the current economic downturn, Michigan Democrats are going to turn out in large numbers to stick their finger in the eye of the Republican Party that has run our country for the past eight years. Sure, we have lots of “hockey moms” here. But we also have a tremendous number of people who have lost their homes to foreclosure and lost their jobs to the shrinking economy. Our Democratic governor and “soccer mom”, Jennifer Granholm, wiped up the floor with her Republican opponent, Dick DeVos (by over 12 points), just two years ago and this one-time Clinton backer is now out in front in her support of the Obama/Biden ticket. Granholm is so out in front, in fact, that she’s filling in for the maverickymooseskinningwolfshootingearmarklovinghockeymomlipstickedpitbull, Sarah Palin, as Joe Biden prepares for the vice-presidential debate.
One more point: the same year Granholm handed DeVos his ass, the Dems also regained the State House of Representatives for the first time in eight years.
Michigan is decidedly NOT a Republican state. The polls showing it to be close betray the actual number of supporters, many of whom are new voters who are not being reached by the pollsters. And that’s just fine. A race that looks close will motivate Democrats here to work that much harder and will draw resources from the McPalin campaign that won’t get spent elsewhere.
On Election Day the Get-Out-The-Vote drive will be amazing. We will have people on the phones calling known Obama supporters. We will knock on EVERY SINGLE DOOR of known supporter UP TO THREE TIMES that day until we’re sure that they have voted. We will be driving people to the polls. We will have poll monitors in place to prevent the Republicans from disenfranchising people who have lost their homes to foreclosur. We will not rest until the polls are closed and Michigan is in the Obama/Biden column.
Michigan is fired up and ready to go for Senator Obama’s Campaign for Change and we will NOT allow this working class state to go red.
You can count on it.
I’m just sayin’…
