Obama in Texas (or where I've been lately)

Where have I been lately? Time flies and I didn't even realize it had been more than a week since my hide and hair had been seen here...

The Obama national campaign has done descended on Texas and I have been amazed. See, the county I live in isn't just red in a red state, Collin County would show up on that blue state red state map as scarlet. Richest little county in Texas. Where Democrats go to learn how it really feels to be disenfranchised. How do I describe this?

Oh! A story. I love stories and this one is true. I love true stories best of all. See, it was like this. My husband and I went in to vote early for one of the national primaries, not that it really counted, I'm thinking that was when I voted for Bill Bradley even though he'd already dropped out and all. But nonetheless, we went to vote, you have to vote in a primary to participate in the election night precinct convention. Two-tiered primary, we call it the Texas Two-Step and national campaign workers call it a nightmare.

But I digress. We went in, got our ballots (we were using the hanging chad style of punchcards then), voted and then came back to put our ballots into the ballot box. Don't know about your precincts, but ours don't use any sort of a box, especially not in primary elections. In this case the GOP was using a 50-gallon barrel. And the Democrats were using a shoebox. No joke. No exaggeration. If you can visualize a shoebox sitting next to a 50-gallon trash barrel, you can visualize what it's like to be a Democrat in this county.

So last Sunday night I was heading to an Obama precinct captain training session, to be held after or during a social time in a restaurant the next town over. On the drive over I was hoping there would be a better turnout than most of my NOW meetings used to get -- sometimes three people, sometimes five, if we got 10 that was a huge turnout for us! I really thought this would draw better, but I was still thinking in the 20-50 person range. I got within a block of the restaurant when the traffic stopped me. People were walking from who knows where they were leaving their cars. And the line to get in stretched down and around and around. I boggled for a few minutes then finked out just knowing that precinct captain training wasn't going to happen with that sort of crowd, drove back home both baffled and ecstatic. Turns out 550 people showed up and the training happened -- TWICE! If we'd been laying odds, I would have bet against there even being 550 Democrats total in this county. And there is precinct captain trainings every night this week.

I really think Obama is going to win Texas. I'd tell you to take that to the bank, but I'm not very objective and I'm looking at the campaign from the inside, sort of like looking at the forest from the middle of a tree stand. But I still think so. Obama was here yesterday for a rally in Dallas, held at where the Dallas Stars hockey team used to play, where I've only seen filled with people when we were close to winning the Stanley Cup. Oh blessed memory, hockey was a foreign game to us, ICE was a pretty foreign concept once it's outside of a glass, but we learned Stanley Cup mania just fine. It's not going to happen again this year, we've only come close twice, only won once, but again I digress. I do remember from the haze of Stanley Cup Fever that the arena held 18,000 at capacity.

So our invitations to the rally read "doors open at 10:30, rally starts at noon" (or something close, I can't find that to check it) and "first come first served." Now I didn't really think there would be a problem getting a seat in this huge arena, but figured I better show up around 10ish anyway. People started lining up at 4 a.m., and yes, a thousand or so did get turned away. So what does Texas look like? It looks like an Obamarama! We can't get the preprinted campaign signs, national HQ keeps selling out, so we make our own. And you can see hope in the very colors of each and every sign.

Watch THIS VIDEO and see and feel how Obama is doing in Texas. Now this is just Dallas-area images, but I hear this is how it is in every area of the state. So yeah, I've been preoccupied lately and oh so glad to be back to share what I've been doing with y'all.