On November 3, 2004, my friend, Elliot Quick, then a student at Brown, posted a sign on his door: “Go to your room America and think about what you did.”
 
Apparently we did.
 
On the day after the election this year, my friend, Andrew Beaumont, a doctoral student at Oxford, posted this: “On behalf of the world beyond your borders: Welcome back, America.  We’ve missed you.”
 
Sam and I were in Grant Park in Chicago on election night. The last time we were there was during the police riot of 1968; one of the worst nights of my life, a night when I thought my country had deserted me.  Forty years ago, I couldn’t have imagined what happened this last Tuesday in that same park.  Like most of you, I thought it was one of the most thrilling nights of my life.  I even got to shake Obama’s hand.  It was a brilliant event with perfect weather in the most American of American cities.
 
Next to us among the crowds in front of the podium was Ernest Green, one of the Little Rock Nine who first integrated Central High School.  Beside him, was General Wes Clark. I told Clark how much I admired him and his campaign and with tears streaming down his face, he said, “That was just a lucky moment in time for me.  This, this is history.”
 
So many of you I write to worked tirelessly to make this happen. Jesse Peretz organized 100 people to canvass in Cleveland; David Hawk spent two-weeks telephoning in Pennsylvania; Judy Green walked the trailer parks of Fort Myers; Judy DeVries, Anne Dybwad and Hilary Goldstine spent a week in Richmond; Anne Nou and Mary Lou Randour spent ten days in Virginia doing data entry; Stephanie Braxton and Marilyn Melkonian joined thousands doing Election Protection; Jan Soderberg walked precincts in Colorado; Leo and Dorothy Braudy gave phone calling parties in Los Angeles; Susan Boreliz and Linda Gage went to Nevada; Thalia Tsongas Schlesinger to New Hampshire . . . and the check-out guy across the street at our Whole Foods came with us for a two-hour break to northern Virginia in order to make calls to undecided voters.
 
I could go on and on.  I should go on and on.  Every person on this list has made a difference, but none of you would keep reading if I inserted hundreds of names. Forgive me.  Woody Allen said 90% of life is just showing up and you all did.  You should all know each other.  Trust me, you’d like to.
 
Whereas it would be totally presumptuous of me to thank anyone for working for Obama, an enormous number of you made financial contributions through us -- to Obama and other candidates we supported.  Those contributions ranged from $12 to complete max-outs.  We know that each of you gave what you could.  For that, we do owe a huge thank you.  Sam has a little gold lapel pin, given by the National Finance Committee.  It’s the most valuable piece of jewelry he owns and you bought it for him.
 
We’re back in D.C. now and, as many have said, the real work is just beginning.  But for the moment I’m holding on to my euphoria and still choking back tears.
 
My mother used to tell me she shook the hand of someone who shook the hand of Abraham Lincoln.  “You’re just two hand shakes away,” she’d tell me.  So this morning, I rushed over to the checkout guy at Whole Foods and asked him if he’d like to shake the hand that shook the hand of Barack Obama.  “Oh, I shook Obama’s hand a lot,” he said.  “I used to work at the gym he went to on Capital Hill.”  Disappointed, I left.  I’d reached the corner of 15th Street when I heard him shouting “Hey, lady!  Wait a minute!”  He’d left his post and caught up with me.  “I was thinking, I shook Senator Obama’s hand, so, actually, I do want to shake the hand that shook the hand of President Obama.”
 

But really, it’s my son Nicholas Brown

 

Two point five million. Now let’s put it upside down with exclamation marks around it because nobody does emphasis like the Spanish: ¡TWO MILLION FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND VOTES! That’s the mark Rock the Vote broke this last Tuesday. We have registered two-and-a-half million voters online and in person. Amazing. The registration deadlines have mostly passed by now, but two-and-a-half million new registrations mean that a whole lot of young new voters will make it to the polls. They may make the difference in this election.

It’s been 45 days now that we have been on the road and nowhere is it more measurable than in our waistlines. We have, to put it gently, become a touch portly. Perhaps pleasantly rounded or festively plump. We have, in short, gained some weight. This isn’t surprising. With some few exceptions, we usually stop in restaurants where you have to request silverware; the toast choice is between ‘white’ and ‘Texas;’ ranch dressing is served with your soup; and they would be happy to fry your salad if you asked.

Between stops, we keep ourselves well nourished with that same combination of jerky, soda, snack chips, and candy that has given long-haul drivers their robust good health. To supplement this diet, we encourage a strict regimen of no exercise. I myself do not do pushups every morning and I know that my sister, Willa, and the other members of the crew have made it a habit to get up early every morning in order not to jog, bike, or swim. It’s difficult to maintain such total indolence with a schedule as full as ours, but somehow we manage.

We’ve reached that point in our road trip where our daily routine no longer astonishes us. We get out of bed at whatever wretched hotel is housing us for the evening, meet in the lobby for straight-from-the-plastic-wrap danishes and ten-day-old hard-boiled eggs, then split into one of two vans or the bus. The highway between places is beginning to look the same and even the places have started to meld together.

It’s not altogether dissimilar from what the national press corps must feel. The reporters get on the plane, check the schedule to see where they’re headed, get off and are herded into a press area for an event that looks awfully similar to the last event. The candidate repeats his stump speech almost word for word. The reporters struggle to find something that distinguishes this speech from the last one. Then they send a piece to their editors and hop on the plane to do it all over again.

I knew reporters on John Edwards’ plane in 2004 who made chalk marks on the front wheel of the plane and then put $5 each into a cash pool. Whoever had the mark closest to the tarmac upon landing at the next stop won the pool. Plane-wheel roulette was the most exciting moment of most stops they made.

So thank god for rock stars and young people. Currently, we are doing concerts with Sheryl Crow, Santogold, and the Beastie Boys.  And Jack Johnson, who is – and I say this as a confident heterosexual male – a total dreamboat.

These are heavy hitting bands. More so than most we have dealt with. The bus tour crew has not quite adjusted to dealing with major celebrities.  We tiptoe past the Beastie Boys and stand staring at a spot near-but-not-too-near to Sheryl Crow.  Yesterday, one member of our crew drove the Beastie Boys to lunch.  He sat outside the restaurant while they ate.  No one told him they already had a ride home from their manager.  He just kept waiting in his van.  They are terribly famous.  He didn’t want to disturb their famous lunch.  He assumed famous lunches take longer than everyday lunches.  So he waited for three hours before we called to tell him the band had left.  This is how our brains have deteriorated.  Our basic logic functions are melted away by the presence of big musicians.  But we are acclimating slowly.  We better.  It’s getting late. Five days left.

 

Two bright spots:

http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/his-choice_ad/

The following was reported on NPR yesterday:
A factory training supervisor in rural Missouri said, "Rosa Sat so Martin could Walk; Martin Walked so Barack could Run; Barack is running so children can FLY".

It’s got to end soon. My behavior is disintegrating. I gaze at smog and get teary.  I burst into tears at the crowds of unemployed men in front of Home Depot hoping to pick up work.  I’m drinking too much. I grab food from other people’s plates, people I don’t even know.  I’ve stopped putting on makeup or exercising or fixing my hair.  Sam assures me I still have my looks but he’s afraid I’ve forgotten where I’m keeping them.  So we’ve left the Midwest and come home to Washington and will spend the last 12 days working in Virginia.
 
In spite of my anxiety, the places we’ve been spending most of our time in the last five months are looking pretty good.  McCain has pretty much given up on Colorado, where there will be appearances by the Obamas and Hillary Clinton in the next week.  There is intense Latino barnstorming around the state with Governor Richardson and Senator Salazar.  About a fourth of the state has already voted and it’s expected that 1.5 million are likely to do early voting, decidedly favorable for Democrats.  Younger voters are not turning out at the levels anticipated, but last time young voters and Independents were the least prone to vote early.
 
Take the Kerry states from 2004, add Colorado, Iowa and New Mexico, and it puts Obama with 273 electoral votes.  If he should get Ohio -- and pollster.com says it is leaning toward Obama -- that takes it to 306.  Montana, North Carolina, Missouri and Indiana are too close to call.  And who knows what’s actually going on in Florida and Pennsylvania  -- even though the polls show Obama with leads and there is no real reason to doubt them.  We know there will be a hidden anti-Obama vote, but I have long believed there will also be a hidden pro-Obama vote. It’s all beginning to look bluish.
 
Now onto another senate race.
 
My daughter Willa says, “You are a one-woman campaign to make DC smokin’ hot.  Future interns of America will thank you.”
 
It’s true that several of the races we’ve spent time following have a certain sex appeal (see Scott Kleeb and Martin Heinrich), and now I’m adding one more to that list.  Nonetheless, I insist my interest in Oklahoma’s Andrew Rice has to do with competence not countenance.
 
If Rice is to beat Inhofe, he has to match Inhofe’s TV time in the final 12 days.  The campaign’s final TV buy is tomorrow morning and they desperately need another $15,000. A contribution of any size will help.  Oklahoma is a relatively inexpensive market -- a spot on an Andy Griffith rerun only costs $15. Time on The View sells for $130 per 30 seconds. They can even advertise on the Today Show for only $250.
 
Inhofe is up by 12 points in current polling but he was up by 22 points a month ago.  It’s a long shot.  No question.  Remember, Oklahoma did give Eugene Debs his Second highest percentage vote in the country in 1912.  Also, Woody Guthrie and Fred Harris come from Oklahoma.  Do it for them.
 
https://services.myngp.com/ngponlineservices/contribution.aspx?X=Tb%2fj2kIF7fJ3Jn5xwfsjNw%3d%3d
 
This race, like Nebraska, is not on the “likely to win” list.  In fact it is on the solid red list.  But there has been little polling, and what there has been, shows Inhofe with very low positive ratings.  This is the kind of race that can only be won in a total wave year.  So if you believe in the wave, this is a place to throw a wish in the water and hope it will wash up on friendly shores.
 

Andrew Rice and Sam Brown
 

Andrew Rice with his wife Apple and son Noah.  Another one-year old son, Parker is not pictured.
 
For more on Andrew Rice, go to:
http://www.andrewforoklahoma.com/free_details.asp?id=45

 
What could feel more like finding the Holy Grail then taking back Dick Cheney’s seat in Wyoming?
 
Gary Trauner was sipping red wine in 8 Rivers, a new Caribbean restaurant in Denver, dressed in his standard cowboy boots, jeans, blue shirt and jacket. The last two days were typical ones.  He had driven from Cheyenne, Wyoming to Jackson Hole late in the day so he could make it to his son’s ninth birthday celebration.  After the party, he drove back to Cheyenne where he caught a plane to Los Vegas for a fundraiser and then on to Denver where Sam and I met him at another fundraiser.  Fundraising is what congressional and senatorial candidates do about 90% of the time.  They have to.  It’s not just a campaign strategy; it’s the campaign strategy. Two years ago before starting his campaign, Mark Udall was showing Trauner around Washington.  When Trauner asked to make some money calls back home, Udall took him to a room at the DNC called “Call Time”.  “I was hoping you might not see that that room existed,” said Udall.  “It might make you change your mind.”
 
Because of his run two years ago, Trauner has terrific name recognition.  He’s walked the precincts.  They recognize his slim frame and the squeaky-clean look that comes with balding heads.  They’ve shaken his hand and talked to him.  “This time they don’t dismiss me as that ‘liberal freak’.” But he also has a harder race in several ways.  Barbara Cubin, his opponent in 2006, was a wing nut even by Wyoming standards.  Two years ago when Sam and I were raising money for Trauner, I wrote about her confrontation with the wheel-chair bound, Libertarian candidate in Wyoming when she yelled “if you weren’t sitting in that chair, I’d slap you across the face!”  She was a lazy and unappealing candidate with a dismal legislative record, but she was also a six term incumbent with huge name recognition.  On election night Trauner was actually up 200 votes at midnight but had lost by about 1,000 votes once they were all counted. 
 
Cubin retired this year after her overly long and undistinguished career.  His current opponent, Cynthia Lummis, a long-time member of the Wyoming legislature and former state treasurer, is neither so well known, nor so extreme.  Her campaign has made mistakes including a rather stupid call-in by her press secretary (formerly Cubin’s press secretary) to a Trauner radio interview using a fake name, claiming to be a supporter and then asking whether Trauner “would support Pelosi and the rest of the Democrats energy bill?”.  Saying ‘Pelosi’ is pretty much akin to saying ‘the devil’ in Wyoming.  But, oops, she called on her cell phone, which showed up on the caller ID at the radio station.
 
As of Friday polls showed the race as essentially a tie.  Lummis’s hometown newspaper the Cheyenne Wyoming Tribune Eagle endorsed Trauner.  Also, this year the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee seems to have caught on that Wyoming may be winnable and has long had Trauner on their “Red to Blue “ list, although Charlie Cook still rates it as a dark red “likely Republican”.
 
Undoubtedly it is a hard year for Democrats in Wyoming.  Obama will lose by huge margins – the polls say over 25% -- and is not running a campaign, so there is not the same voter ID and turn out operation that is at work in many other marginal races, and the Republicans are throwing the kitchen sink at Trauner. “You need a steel stomach for this race,” he says, “my nine-year-old has come crying to me about the lies he’s heard on TV.  Before I even had the birds and the bees talk with him, I had to have the political talk.”
 
As a candidate, Trauner lets you know what he would be as a legislator. It’s all good.  “I’ll answer anything,” says Trauner who is known as a straight talker, even where people don’t like what he’s saying.  “If it’s too personal, you can ask my wife. She isn’t here, of course,” he laughs.  “I’m looking forward to spending time at home again, but meanwhile, I know every good and bad restaurant in Wyoming, every grocery store, every gas station.  When you lose a race by the small margin I did, you keep thinking ‘maybe if I had just talked to one more grocery clerk’.”
 
“Two years ago the issue was Iraq, but like everywhere, now the issues in Wyoming are gas and groceries; the economy,” says Trauner. “And health care.  It’s a bad joke, but our health care is killing us.”
 
“As to the economy, this crisis is the direct result of eight years of thinking that markets don't need regulation or accountability, that we don't need rules or don’t need to enforce the ones that exist.  If the Denver Broncos got rid of the rules and took out the referees in the third quarter, what do you think would happen?  People would be getting killed, that’s what. We have to resist the siren call that a free market solves everything. But my opponent only offers simple slogans like free markets and lower taxes and cutting wasteful spending," Trauner said.  This was in late August.
 
You have to love a guy who, as a candidate, actually had an understanding on the financial crisis -- before it happened.
 
His opponent, Cynthia Lummis, is aloof, with the kind of arrogance and sense of entitlement that comes from living in a state with a long-time, one-party rule. Trauner addresses this in his stump speech.  “What we've been practicing here in this country is the politics of fifty percent. You get career politicians that only talk to the people they think will support them or give them money or vote for them. And that's something we need to change. I was speaking to someone from the Petroleum Association not that long ago, and he looked at me at the end of the lunch--I didn't think I was going to get his vote -- good guy, good lunch -- and he said, "You know what, Gary? You didn't have to come do this today." I looked at him and said, "You know what, Bruce? Yeah, I actually did. Because if I win this seat, I'm going to represent you and the people that you represent just as much as I represent anyone else in this state."
 
With your help, this is a race we can win.  But it needs your help:
 
://www.actblue.com/contribute/entity/18216