The Hillary Clinton Campaign

While volunteering on the Obama campaign I would still watch the Clinton website and I have to say that I did participate in just the interactive activities that they had such as writing to the Rutgers Basketball team, choosing a campaign song and other activities. Well I suppose this participation is what would eventually cause me to receive an invitation to a Clinton volunteer orientation session. Since I was not working on behalf of anyone at the time I decided to attend. When I arrived at the orientation I was appreciative of the fact that everything was extremely well organized. Noone had to wonder what was going on and "everyone" was friendly. I was reading a book at the time Joel Olsteens first book. The most shocking thing about this was that about 75% of the people I spoke to were on his second book. These were really nice people. As a potential volunteer I felt appreciated and was appreciative to receive a free button bumper sticker from the campaign for coming. I attended several meetings and what impressed me the most was that the campaign treated everyone the same. There was no special treatment of anyone and you did not have to be a VIP to be treated like a human being. While the Obama campaign touts their treatment for college students, they really don't know how to treat children. I took my son to an Obama pre-rally and I attempted to get my child one slice of Pizza and my self one slice and the volunteer started to scream at me not to take all of the pizza. It hurt me that my son had to go through this. My child has a very negative opinion of the Barack Obama campaign at this point. In contradiction I took my daughter to a Clinton event and everybody treated her so kindly that she put Hillary Clinton posters up all over the house. My daughter loves Hillary Clinton because of how Clinton supporters treated her. Trhough the campaign only the brief events she has met people from all walks of life from literal brain surgeons to waiters and waitresses and they were all kind to her. In addition Clinton is an excellent role model for my child and I don't have to justify why it's not OK to engage in negative behavior and then clean your life up. Clinton has always been clean in terms of leading a moral life and that's important to me.

I have to say that Clinton supporters handled moments better than Obama supporters. I remember attending a volunteer orientation for Barack Obama and being shocked as the audience laughed at an openly gay man answer a question, in my life I had never been in such a crowd of obviously homophobic adults. One gentleman even told him to tone his gayness down. In the Clinton audience there was an obvious gay man that asked a question and there were no laughs. While the behaviour of the audience has no bearing on the candidate it does indicate the type of people who support a candidate.

In any event I started out deciding to be deeply involved in the Clinton campaign but changed my mind because I was burnt out. At this point I have only casted a vote for Hillary Clinton by early voting. Finally not edited for content and grammar!

Words that Must be Said prior to February 5, 2008

I had a very exciting summer and spring of 08. I volunteered at the grass root level for two campaigns Obama first and Clinton second. I decided to volunteer or help the Obama campaign by giving and participating in events through the website. I worked very hard because I suppose I eventually hoped to get a job through the campaign and because I liked the way Obama looked. I suppose Obama had the types of looks that many can put their hopes and dreams in like an empty vessel. I suppose for many he is a cross between Mr. Rogers and Ash of Pokemon. However there are several reasons that I must share with you prior to the election on why I switched to Hillary Clinton. I can honestly say that Lately I have not felt like blogging or writing so I have very low expectations of the quality of this post but I will try to get my points out in no particular order and try to get them out as concisely as possible and remeber this blog has been hacked before and that's why I hardly ever blog here anymore but I am going to articulate my feelings mainly because the machines are trying to interfere with the election the Kennedy's, the Oprah's, the guy with the crazy wife who got the nomination the last time who I did not vote for but chose to vote for Bush rather than him. However due to these facts I am going to give you a volunteers perspective of both campaigns.

I volunteered witht he Obama campaign and I went through several layers of volunteering until I decided that Obama was just not going to get my vote. As I was going through the layers I was recieving input from various media outlets, research, ads etc that I ignored becuase I wanted to be an Obama supporter. My first layer of volunteering was after attending an Obama meeting and hooking up with grassroots organizers, through this organization and through the Obama campaign website I organized a bus trip to see Obama in Selma, various events, I think that struck me in this organization was the overall treatment that the white members received in this little grassroots organization, they were belittled by the black majority and ordered around. Unfortuanately since my nature is to be objective I found this quite off putting and since my career aptitude tests have pointed me in the direction of judge as a career this did not sit well with me so I eventually found myself doing white the white people did all the work with lots of flack from the blacks on the grass roots team. I eventually quit when this grassroots organization insisted on having meetings on Sundays in the middle of nowhere which made it impossible to have childcare, Sunday is the one day I don't have a baby sitter. I attempted to sit in on a conference but when I was somehow disconnected from a call, I quit this organization. I even wrote the campaign about these individuals but I never received a call, a response etc. I thought to myself that these people did not reflect the real campaign and since everyone else was starting their own grassroots organization and since it did not seem to be heard to do I started my own organization. I had numerous meetings and had at least 300 interested people and members in this organization. Unfortunately the other organization had taken my ideas and logos and kept them, if you ever see the words OBama on my mind know that it was my idea and I created it. In addition the log I created was pilfered by this group. I asked them not to use them and after they finished selling buttons with my log they stopped using it. IN any event the group t hat I was a part of was heavily into voter registration and we registered over three hundred voters in one weekend at a Jazz Festival and hundreds of voters at other events. I thought we were going along OK. Oh yeah I forgot to mention to you that while all this was going on a conservative organization started placing ads out about the real OBama of course I read it and I was shocked. One of my issues is that I am totally against abortion and though I knew that the democrats had the opposite view a little first term abortion I thought could be overlooked for a greater good. However when I read that Obama was a heavy supporter of third term abortion and that Michelle Obama had had a fundraiser for a legal defense fund to overturn the law banning partial birth abortion I was horrified and frankly at that point I decided to quit doing anything, however I was invited to come to a volunteer orientation for a rally so I decided to participate. I went to several prerally events that the campaign organized and the day before I attended a prerally event and because of these events I really cooled down m participation. As I was preparing to leave with signs a district captain cornered me and told me that the organization I had been with before this was the new campaign organization and they had flown down to the campaign organizations and used all of the events that I had organized "with no help' as their events. At that point I can say I was though with this campaign and I left and did not participate in the rally. At this point I d id not participate in the campaign until until the National campaign contacted me to be a ticket captain which I was not good at I admit. However I did pass on the message to the individuals who had participated in some of the events that I had organized on the grassroots level.

I think the ticket event was when my disgust with the campaign reached a new high. As I stated I emailed several individuals that the campaign was looking for people to sell tickets. Two ladies volunteered and said they would one was a high ranking government official and another was an accountant. I told them where the campaign said they would be and noone ever showed up. One lady said she called and called and called and no one ever showed up. I spoke to the campaign member and explained to them who one of the volunteers was and the person said you should have told me she was a VIP. If anyone ever questions that they did not show up I have names and numbers. At this point I said no no. However I did decide to test the waters one more time and volunteer at the rally where Obama would be at. I volunteered I go their early and of course I noticed that there were four white girls moving the riot bars to form a barrier between the audience and Obama. I went and helped but the mot shocking thing about this was that when the men finally did come no one made a ove to help us until of course I suggested it. For me personally this was filed away in my head as the reveres discrimination activity that was going on in the campaign at least in Atlanta from what I could observe. In any event I was excited to be there but there were things that disturbed me about being there, one was there were extremely old people there and there was no seating provide for them as they were waiting to get in which was at least an hour wait. I was really shocked when their was a secret stash of water pulled out and not all volunteers were offered water. I had been involved in several campaigns as an observer but always knew their would be water and seating and a basic concern for attendees. It was shocking to see this common disregard for peoples basic needs. But still I volunteered was excited to be there and continued. I suppose I was through when I wanted to shake Obama's hand and he refused to shake my had but went into a closed group with college students rather than shake my hand. The strange thing is that I had been asked to volunteer at fundraisers etc. but I chose not to because I'm not into stars but he gave such a great speech I finally wanted to shake his hand but he refused to shake my hand. This is all I have to say, it's like a mini insider post but I would like to revisit one recurrent theme of the campaign in Atlanta. There has been reverse discrimination here. I have spoken to one woman who said that she purchased two one thousand dollar tickets and was very disappointed to be put on the lawn of the fundraiser and was not even admitted into the house to use the bathroom. It is her joke that she sat on the lawn and watched a house full of black people in the home of the fundraiser she could not help but shake the feeling that the people in the house were laughing at her. It is my personal belief that in Atlanta reverse discrimination has been practiced in the Obama campaign. Finally it has been a toll on me to write this I will write the Hillary comments in a separate post, the next one. I have voted in early voting and I have voted for Hillary Clinton. I have much more I could write and want to write I just want to get enough out to inform people so I will let a lot of information go. I have not edited this post and probably will not I just hope it's coherent.