I worked the Democrat’s booth at the county fair yesterday, and from that I’ve determined nothing.
I didn’t meet the hordes of enraged voters major media told me to expect, but I did encounter lots of worried Democrats who swore up and down they’re all voting, and two principled conservatives.
One appeared suddenly while I was talking to someone else, leaned in way too close, pointed at the giant, Dear Leaderish portrait of Obama, and hissed something unintelligible. I didn’t hear what she said, so didn’t respond, but the person-of-few-words who worked the booth with me said, simply, “scram” and she hustled away.
“Scram” is a great cartoon-y word and I’m going to start using it.
The other rifled through the campaign lit and told me she’s not a Democrat or a Republican, she is a conservative, and has always voted for small government and low, low taxes.
She’s coming out in November to defeat Marcy Kaptur, which will be difficult for her to do, since she lives in Ohio 5 (like me) and is represented by Bob Latta , not Marcy Kaptur, but I assume she has cable and is watching campaign ads from outside the district.
Latta replaced her long-time former representative, Paul Gilmor, who keeled over in a rather dramatic fashion, so it’s surprising she missed all that, engaged citizen that she is.
I told her “good luck!” and I meant it.
Scott
“Scram” is indeed an excellent word. I’ve actually got my delivery of it refined to a thoroughly venomous snarl, which would be a lot more impressive if I ever remembered to say it to anyone other than pigeons preparing to poop on my car… :/
aimai
Kay,
All that was needed was for your friend to say “Scram…sister!” out of the corner of her mouth. Perfect image. You are an inspiration to me. My friends have begun calling me asking who they should vote for tomorrow and it is, indeed, hard for people to keep the various local primaries and national issues separate. Its a pity, really–people get worked up and want to express themselves politically and then discover that in their own neck of the woods the campaign is already over, or totally irrelevant, or between two identical campaigns, or whatever. Its really dispiriting to people.
I’ve been starting to think that the Dems/we ought to be giving people stuff do to all year ’round instead of trying to activate them at the last minute. But that was the teabagger strategy and, as the woman you saw who didn’t realize she wouldn’t get to vote against Kaptur indicates, they may have blown their wad too early.
Anyways, thanks for the frontline report. Good work! Very inspirational.
aimai
russell
For the full Warner Brothers Brooklynesque Bugs Bunny treatment, the correct locution is “am-scray!”.
LanceThruster
You can also use “Blow!” and if you’re overheard or videotaped you can claim you were being friendly and offering them drugs, or “Beat it!” and claim your were promoting safe sex masturbation like former Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders (easily believed liberal memes).
LanceThruster
@russell: Of course followed by the audibly whispered observation, “What a maroon!”
NonyNony
What’s awesome is that here in Columbus Ohio our cable company has been running campaign ads for some tool running for the House of Representatives in Florida for most of the summer.
I can’t figure out if his campaign bought some kind of nationwide ad buy with Time-Warner, or with WOW cable, or if they’ve worked out some strategy to target Florida snowbirds registered in Florida but living in Ohio for the summer. Whatever it is, every time that commercial comes on it makes me laugh.
joe from Lowell
I’m with you – let’s bring back “scram.”
Then, once that’s taken root, “am-scray.”
Betsy
Love it. Good for you for going out and doing the hard work of local organizing.
Tax Analyst
“Principled Conservatives”? Why is it that everyone who says they are “not a Democrat or Republican” but a “small government conservative” never votes for a Democrat? Sounds a lot like some sort of closet Republican to me. Are they feeling the shame of what they are supporting but too weak to break the chains?
Anyway, this was a Scram-tastic post.
Violet
@aimai:
This has been a discussion point in other threads here. Many felt that OFA kind of dropped the ball by not keeping all the very engaged volunteers involved after the election. Then once it wanted them to participate again, it was hard to get the energy level up again.
I wonder if keeping the Democrats involved could be done somehow differently. Like maybe having a monthly “Democrats Day of Service” or something, where the people who worked hard on the campaign come together to volunteer in some way. It would be helping people, bringing volunteers together physically where they’d no doubt talk about campaign issues, and show a good face to the community.
Just an idea.
Kay
@aimai:
Last year my friend Michelle said “fuck off” to a rude Republican so we’re getting smoother and more professional, don’t you think? She’s a fundraiser at the local college, so that was great.
It’s an easy call for me to work these events because these are people I would spend time with anyway, and do spend time with anyway, politics aside. We have about 15 liberals. It’s a small circle.
I don’t know if it’s a wave election. It feels instead like a weird election.
Ash Can
@NonyNony: The snowbird angle is entirely plausible, especially if there’s a decent-sized older population in your district. There’s a not-insignificant number of Ohioans along the Gulf Coast (as well as snowbirds from Michigan, Illinois, and Ontario). That could very well be what’s going on.
MattR
@Tax Analyst: Gotta disagree with you on this one. If you reverse the terms, I think there are plenty of progressives who would not call themselves Democrats yet will always voter for the Democrat over the Republican.
mikefromArlington
Too funny.
quaint irene
But, but Boehner says there’s a major upheaval in this country! Maybe he’s gotten too much sun out on the golf course.
ellie
I live in Kaptur’s district and Rich Iott is running against her. Iott, who ran Foodtown, a much beloved local supermarket, into the ground. Who is running campaign ads that say he has created jobs, after thousands lost theirs when Foodtown closed. The disconnect is insane. I haven’t seen any polls, but hopefully Kaptur wins because Iott is a fuckhead something fierce.
Kay
@quaint irene:
It might be that fair. It’s a little down at the heels. Not one of the better county fairs. Lots of trinket booths, and wandering carnies. Attendees are sort of drained and exhausted.
It was fun to watch little kids respond to Giant Obama Portrait, though. They did that thing little kids do where they point when they know the name of someone or something?
They all point and say “OH bama”, as they go by in the stroller. If Obama were the President of the under-five set, exclusively, he’d be at 100% approval.
Martin
@Tax Analyst: This is the point I’m trying to work through with my mom. She’s a self-described ‘small government conservative’. She’s actively pro-choice, gay marriage agnostic, thinks we should be out of our wars, is in favor of reasonable immigration reform, and so on. She looks a lot more like a progressive than a conservative, but she’s a reliable Republican voter.
What I’ve managed to sort out so far over the last 4 years is that she’s captive to Fox News and similar conservative outlets, which is particularly key. She’s gotten it in her head that corporate authority is better than government authority, that the latter cannot be trusted while the former can. I’ve cleared away enough of the distractions that we’re now down to that fundamental point and are exploring it. Our current discussions center around how corporations do/don’t allow more democratic input (oversight/approval) than government does (I’m still stunned that this discussion even needs to happen), and why profits are a more acceptable means of extracting citizens income and generating services than taxes are.
I think what I’ve worked this down to is that the Fox News/NRO/etc. have done a superb job of establishing themselves as the only honest news outlets and of poisoning the role of government. There is virtually no opposition to the notion that ‘government is the problem’ on the right, so no matter how extreme or moderate a conservative you might be, if you are captive to these outlets, your bottom line will be that Democrats are trusting in government and Republicans are skeptical of government. If you get no further into the issues than that, you’ll be a reliable Republican voter.
Chat Noir
@Kay: First, let me say I’m so glad to see you on the front page. I’ve always enjoyed your comments and I learn a whole lot from you; now I get even more! And I like both “scram” and “am-scray.”
Second, what’s your view of Sherrod Brown? I don’t live in Ohio but I think your state did very well for itself by electing him to replace Mike DeWine. He’s a good liberal Dem and I like his gravelly voice (plus, he’s cute). I was very impressed with him during the whole health care debate.
Kay
@Chat Noir:
I really like him. I have the misfortune of being the person who objected to him as the candidate because I thought he was too liberal for my county, so I have to hear about that a lot. How very, very wrong I was.
We have a local manufacturer, candy, big employer, who came over to our side in 2008, because of Obama. Since then, he’s gone further Left, and is starting to sound like Woody Guthrie. Anyway.
I spoke with him recently and he, personally, lobbies for his family business. He visits both Voinovich and Brown, and he was really impressed with Brown because the Brown staffers researched the whole candy business before they met with him.
Hillary Rettig
i loved this post.
my favorite Bugs Bunny: “Shut up shuttin’ up.”
LanceThruster
@quaint irene:
Is that a euphemism for “too much bronzing lotion chemicals absorbed into the skin”?
gogol's wife
@Scott:
When Shirley Temple (at 6) auditioned for “Little Miss Marker,” she had to prove she could speak with an appropriate Damon Runyon intonation. The audition consisted of “Aw, nuts!” and “Scram!” She got the part.
Martin
@MattR: I fall in this category. I’m opposed to two-party systems in principle because I think they force all issues out of the realm of ‘debate from the various viewpoints’ and turn them all into a ‘for us or against us’ kind of attitude. Basically, they make us stupid.
Further, I believe that in order for any political party to survive this system (like any corporation), it needs to put its own needs above that of the people it represents. I’m free to agree or disagree with their platform and their candidates, but I won’t pretend to support them unconditionally because I don’t. Not joining the party is how I express my independence. I know that’s a position that’s any different from most Democrats, it’s just a matter of personal attitude.
That said, I’ve voted almost perfectly Democratic for the last decade and a half. That’s more a reflection of the trajectory of the Republican party than it is the trajectory of the Democratic party, however. On a number of issues I hang out somewhere between the two, but for most issues I’m either aligned with the Democrats or are well off to the left of them. I can’t off the top of my head think of an issue I fully agree with Republicans on (I’m talking about what the parties actually espouse vs what they stick in their platform statements) but if they should actually come around on an issue, I’m perfectly eager to shift my loyalties.
I don’t see the GOP as some conspiracy of evil (try as they might to convince me of it) and I don’t rule out a day that they present a much more rational approach to governance than the Democrats do. Truth is, I tend toward being a skeptic, and in quite a large number of respects I consider myself conservative, but nobody would really recognize that. For example, I think that in matters which could have national security implications, that government should retain active control. Everything from food security to production of key materials used by the military to port security and so on. Fiscally, I’m very conservative, but not like how the GOP thinks. To me, fiscal conservatism is elimination of future uncertainty, which entitlement programs can be instrumental to in addition to a stable, reliable, and somewhat excessive tax base. I can’t think of a single individual that would say that having an income cushion isn’t fiscally responsible, yet we declare a different standard for government.
It’s in these ways that the folks in the middle get lost in the current political climate because we don’t fit in well to the cartoonish caricatures that the political media portrays.
JGabriel
Kay @ Top:
I love it too, but there may be a reason why scram has nearly died out. For instance, every time I hear the word scram, I envision a pinkish gray lump of generic meat product, the third in a trilogy: Spam, Scrapple, Scram.
.
Ash Can
And btw, “scram” is a great word. When the 10-year-old is getting underfoot and/or being a pest, I use it on him (along with “beat it” and “get lost”) and it cracks him right up (and he does as he’s told, on top of it). Of course, it helps that we’re both Loony Tunes fans.
SiubhanDuinne
@Chat Noir #19
@Kay #20
If you haven’t read it, I recommend the campaign memoir by Connie Schultz (not sure of spelling) called *And His Lovely Wife* (not sure of title, either, I just realized!). Anyhow, she’s a columnist for the Cleveland Plain Dealer — with a Pulitzer under her belt, FWIW — and when she and Sherrod Brown met and married it made for huge adjustments, professional as well as personal. Especially for her, where perceived conflict-of-interest issues arose early on (I will just say about that, that Connie handled them more ethically and professionally than McMegan did). Anyhow, it’s an entertaining read if you enjoy the occasional political memoir. I would call it light but not superficial.
Pangloss
I did a satrical “exclusive interview” with John McCain during the 2008 campaign in which he replied to every question with 1930s slang.
catclub
@Ash Can:
Does anyone not like scrapple and scrambled eggs?
Just don’t ask what is in scrapple.
(It is kind of like Fight club that way.)
Lysana
@catclub:
I’d happily eat that. But I’ve long been a fan of eating everything on a pig but its squeal.
SiubhanDuinne
@Pangloss: Brilliant!!
goblue72
I live in Oakland (CA) so have been fairly insulated from the GOP primary battles for Governor (Queen Meg) and Senate (Princess Carly).
Just saw my first Whitman ad on TV last night – it featured some 20 year old footage of a 1992 Presidential election debate between Bill Clinton and Jerry Brown with Bill beating up on Jerry for raising taxes or some such nonsense. Regardless, made me furious that this is the kind of crap they are running on – California is nose-diving into the toilet and Meg is running as its a effing game.
There wasn’t any doubt before that I was going to show up on election day – but this just seals it that I’m dragging as many people to the polls as I can.
Martin
@goblue72: It’s a fairly effective ad, unfortunately. Showing Clinton beat up on Brown is going to shake a few independents – which both candidates need for a win.
Ash Can
@catclub: I love scrapple, and I say this in full knowledge of the fact that it’s made with supremely unattractive ingredients. I figure if the pig parts in question are edible, camouflaged, and delicious, I’m not going to worry about it.
EFroh
Marcy!
experiences wave of nostalgia for first time vote for Clinton and Kaptur
catclub
@Ash Can:
“if the pig parts in question are edible, camouflaged, and delicious, I’m not going to worry about it. ”
Of course, the scrapple naysayers will argue both the edible and delicious parts.
I am more worried about how you might approach a similar food made from people – or kittens.
N.B. I am no longer in a scrapple rich environment, but did attend a college dining [sic?] hall in one.
debbie
Like a cockroach when you flip on the light.
Ash Can
@catclub:
Now you’re just being silly.
Gravenstone
@Kay: From this comment, I’m going to guess you’re in (or near) my old home town. /salute
That said, once my last immediate family member passes, I will have absolutely zero reason to ever set foot in Ohio again.
aimai
@Violet:
Yeah, in my ward a few years ago we talked about the necessity of building brick and mortar places where Democrats can go an meet, work together, and just kind of get the moral and emotional support they used to get from ward bosses. Of course that takes money. I think that drinking liberally is kind of a cool thing but its clearly a very niche market–I never go myself because it wouldn’t work for my schedule.
One thing I loved about OFA when it was the Obama campaign was the way it enabled people to create affinity groups with whom they could work: organize, plot strategy, and go do something (anything). It was pratically a joke, of course “Pacific Islanders” “East Village Weight Watchers,” “People who love Green” all for Obama. But it answered people’s need to self organize and act.
Its clear that the DNC and OFA were afraid of unleashing a grassroots activism that might turn against them, a la teaparty, and they did shut down that part of the system more or less instantly. ITs a pity, because its very hard to start that shit up again on the fly. I know: I’ve tried holding the same fundraiser that I did for Obama for this current midterm cycle but the people I knew who were excited to get active for the 2008 election are now busy doing other things. If we’d kept the whole thing alive I think we’d be in better shape now.
aimai
geg6
@aimai:
Exactly. I believe that was the biggest mistake that the Dems have made since the 2008 election. And that’s saying a lot. ;-)
JRon
@Scott: It may be inappropriate to plug my 6-year-old son’s Zazzle store here, but I have bought several of his “Scram/Don’t Scram” coffee mugs. They are teh awesome for when you’re not sure if you’re ready to greet the world:
http://www.zazzle.com/scram_dont_scram_mug-168373945955134962
Jeff R.
And of course SCRAM is what the vernicious knids in “Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator” spell out before try to attach Willy Wonka and Charlie.
Tax Analyst
@Martin:
Martin: Good luck with your Mom’s re-education program. It sounds like you might get her to turn the corner as some point in the future.
vicki
Scram is my second favorite word. I use it every day.
First comes alacrity, but I don’t use it every day.
Scram. LOVE IT! USE IT!
:;
Mustang Bobby
Kay:
My folks live in Ohio 5 (Perrysburg) and my guess is that if you’ve hung out with the Wood County Democrats, you’ve run into them.
If I didn’t know better, I would say that it was my mom that was working with you. I’ve heard her say “Scram” more times than I can count. It’s a perfect word: terse, inoffensive, and gets the job done in one succinct syllable.
Elie
@Martin:
What I also find amazing is the rank inequality and disparity that so many Repubs are willing to tolerate as ok in the name of “freedom” and “market forces”
We have a country full of horrible schools — many right next door almost to really good schools. We tolerate unequal education and preparation of our children — the future of this country, in the name of keeping races, classes separate and unequal… but wow, lets wave that flag, America is supposed to mean what? The second coming of the Aryan nation, a code word for “I got mine, screw you”?
In this country, individualism, capatalism and social darwinism have resulted in a horrible, hybrid horror monster — rigid, inflexible, unable to cope with modernity or really reflect the freedom we so often say we believe in..
Arnie
If you’re thinking of buying that cute scram t-shirt on Zazzle.com, then the promo code EMMAANDPETE1 will save you 10% on any orders of $50 or more ;)