AlexLeduc.com

The State of the Division

2010-01-21T19:13:00.019-05:00

So, Obama was good, but is anyone surprised?

Screw the banks, spending freeze, go health care reform, etc. All good.

The real question was where was the other team?

Considering how famous Congressman Joe Wilson is, not to mention how well-funded his re-election campaign is, how were there not dozens of Republicans yelling "you lie!" or "my ass!" or "die commie!" from all corners of congress? Where is all this vehement opposition to the Administration and congressional Democrats we've heard all about?

Not only were there no random exclamations, but the GOP actually made an effort to not do anything interesting. There were barely any boos from their side at all. The closest thing to a protest was Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito muttering "not true" to himself when Obama criticized the recent decision regarding political advertising by corporations (more on that later).

And how disappointing was the Republican response? Virginia's new Governor did well to speak in front of a crowd to add some flair, but he LITERALLY SAID NOTHING. Amidst all the ridiculously cliche and meaningless statements about how bad things are bad and how doing good things is good and the generic "small government is good" and "government should be for the people," the only statements of substance were those in which he agreed with Obama.

Of course, this isn't a bad thing, at least for Obama, but I'm beginning to understand why conservatives are getting frustrated with the Republican party. With the country still generally preferring Democratic ideas over Republican ones, although the difference is much smaller than a year ago, the GOP is trying to posture itself as centrist (by American standards) to win back the independents it lost during the election. It's working.

But the hard right hates Obama so much that this isn't good enough for them. Maybe next year, the State of the Union address will be followed by a Republican Response followed by a TEA Party Response. Political junkies can only dream...

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On another note, I'd like to comment on last week's US Supreme Court decision to repeal the law preventing corporations from paying for political advertising.

Most Canadians don't realize exactly how many political commercials are already on Amercian television during an election. I remember being in New Hampshire in December 2007 and seeing almost every commercial being for one of the Democratic candidates in the upcoming Presidential Primary.

This means you can add commercials from corporations who care about any given election. AND THEY DO. These are corporations that have WAY more money than any given political campaign.

It is possible to foresee the day that whichever political candidate sells himself or herself to the most and largest corporations will automatically win.

All this because of the absurd view that money is speech, and freedom to spend money to advertise something is a part of freedom of speech, which cannot be abridged.

This is completely false. The act of spending money isn't speech. Also, a corporation like any person has every right to state a political opinion, but there's a difference between stating something and broadcasting or advertising it. I can't broadcast "obscene" language or visual content on television or radio in the US. People complain about their freedom of expression, but the FCC doesn't care, because they think it's bad for society. In Canada we outlaw hate speech, because we think it's bad for society. Most people are more than fine with that.

Corporations running political dialogue is bad for society. Keep the law that stops it. Most people were and still are more than fine with it.

Why is this guy Senate Majority Leader?

2010-01-11T16:23:00.009-05:00

Can someone explain to me why Harry Reid became Senate Majority Leader in the first place?

He's got to be one of the least charismatic people in the Senate, not to mention the type of geek you could picture no one listening to, and he's the man charged with leading the only meaningful body when it comes to passing legislation Democrats would like to see passed. Anything Dems want, like heath care, would easily pass the House and surely be signed by President Obama.

It's great that he's got a rags-to-riches story, but that's not going to get more votes in the Senate.

Thanks to his Biden-esque candid words during the last election, recently revealed and already plastered all over the American info-tainment-o-sphere, the man at the center of the bottle neck is not only a painful bore, a virtual anti-Obama, but a total liability. Why would a white senator from Nevada think he can speak with authority about someone's "Negro dialect" or lack thereof?

Reid isn't racist. He's just an average senator, and shouldn't be tasked for such an important job. I've said it since she lost to Obama, Hillary Clinton should have become senate majority leader. After the President, who's kidding who, it's the most important job these days. Nancy Pelosi shouldn't be speaker of the house either, because although I'd agree with her on most issues, she is considered extreme left in the United States, doesn't represent a broad enough section of the electorate, and is a huge punching bag for the GOP and TEA partyers to whale on, just like former House Majority Leader Tom Delay was for the Dems 5 years ago.

All the uproar from GOP Chairman Michael Steele and Co. is expected, it's an opposition party pouncing on anything they can, just like the Liberals are doing here in Canada.

But there's one argument I'd like to comment on. Steele has complained that if a Republican said such words, it would be construed as plainly racist, whereas if a Democrat says it, it's just a poor choice of words. He's right. If Lindsey Graham said those words, he'd be crucified. There's a reason, dude.

Who's kidding who, there's still plenty of racism in America, and it comes much more from the conservative side than the liberal side. It's only logical. So to the average person, it's more plausible that if a conservative politician makes some awkward and ill-advised racial comment, it's more of a Freudian slip than a poor choice of words.

As for Harry Reid, it's just dumb. Just like Joe Biden is dumb every once in a while. But Biden gets a pass, because he's awesome.

How to survive as a journalism grad - today

2009-11-16T17:16:00.011-05:00

Someone asked me recently for some advice on how to get jobs in journalism, and in a response email I ended up rambling on a bit. I figured why not post what I thought here in case anyone else is interested. I can't claim to be an expert, nor can I claim to be an awesome success story to draw inspiration from. But I can explain what has worked for me and fellow journalism school grads.

If you're looking for a career in journalism, I would say to work on four things:

1 - GET AN INTERNSHIP: Decide exactly at which news organization(s) or media outlet(s) you'd ideally like to work, and find a way to introduce yourself in person to whoever directs news there, or whoever picks interns. Some news organizations run developed internship programs with strict application processes, and some don't. If your organization is the latter (or even, really, if it's the former), bring the right person something that demonstrates your superior abilities. For broadcast, have a demo reel of only 2 or 3 short and well-produced items (mine are on my youtube account). For print reporting have some good clippings for print or online, and for copy editing, have a copy of one of their articles with your edits (Fagstein style). Basically politely pester them for an internship. Most people working in TV newsrooms started there as an intern, and so did many in print. If you're lucky enough to impress them and get that internship, while you're there, do everything you can to stay there indefinitely and be a presence until one day they're short a researcher or something and you're the first person they think of to call. If this fastrack doesn't pan out, then you need to find other ways to...

2 - GAIN EXPERIENCE: Do one of two things. Apply for entry level reporter or researcher jobs in tiny markets to get experience. If you can't get in to that dream job or internship off the bat, most people start in small markets, especially in broadcast. If you don't want to do that, and I am one of those people, decide what media market you'd ideally like to work in, move there, and start as a freelancer. You can't really pitch stories to news outlets in broadcast, but obviously you can for print. Once you get to know people in local media, opportunities will come up, and people hiring for jobs will like that you know the local market. These days, you need a hook to get noticed, so...

3 - PICK AN EXPERTISE: Pick something you're passionate about, blog about it (you're looking at my example) and start pitching freelance stories about it. Preferably pick some subject most people where you want to work don't know much about, so go beyond the big sports or pop culture. Do this pretty much permanently, regardless of if you think people are paying attention. The idea is to establish a reputation with local media as a go-to person whenever they want to report on the subject. It's a great way to get to know and impress people in the media. They'll also like that you're still being a journalist even when no one is paying you a salary. But this will only work if you...

4 - SELF-PROMOTE: It's not easy for most journalists to promote themselves, generally because it's regarded as good to be an observer rather than try to be the centre of attention. Some are comfortable with it, some are not, but either way you've gotta do it. If you've followed step 3, it will require telling everyone that you're doing it. Or at least telling the right people. Your work doesn't need to be read or seen by thousands of people, but if other journalists follow it regularly because it's less work than doing their own research, you're in good shape. If you've got videos, make them viral. If you've got a column or blog somewhere, talk to beat reporters about it. Work on one big story for a while, and get it picked up by major media by just talking about it to journalists. Even if it doesn't get you any kind of job, it can be a good calling card. Or, take a page from Barney Stinson's book:

The idea of all these of course is to get to know the right people so you're not just a resume in someone's inbox, but also to get to know them under the right context. They need to know you as more than someone who graduated from j-school, especially in this economy.

Keep burying yourselves, conservatives

2009-11-05T23:31:00.007-05:00

Five years ago, the Democrats couldn't win anything in the states because they were labeled as left wing, anti-patriotic pinkos, and the fringe left's foaming rage over Bush's presidency was reinforcing such views.

Today, the exact opposite is taking place, and it's burying the Republican party, the only realistic way conservatives will have power in American government. Already having lost control of the presidency and congress, foaming rage over Obama from a Fox-News fueled fringe right (the difference between the left and right is that the fringe right only gets their news/opinion from Fox News and talk radio, whereas the fringe left still gets news from multiple sources) is having the opposite effect.

Furthermore, the TEA Party-ers (Tax Enough Already - i know, like, seriously?) and Palin-ites are splitting the right. Conservatives want more teeth in their politics than many Republican politicians are willing to give, and the half of Americans that describe themselves as conservatives are now split between the G.O.P. and the T.Par.T.

Take a look at the NY-23 congressional race last week, which is just across the Quebec -NY border from me. Instead of a moderate Republican, the Tea Party movement / Sarah Palin backed a third party conservative candidate, who actually had a good chance of winning. Sitting at third in the polls, the Republican dropped out a week before and endorsed the Democrat, Bill Owens, who ended up winning. Yes, the Dems lost two governorship races, but state politics and national politics are two different things, despite how many pundits threw out the "referendum on Obama" bull.

And just today, someone officially registered the "Tea Party" as an actual political party in Florida, planning to run candidates against Democrats and Republicans. With their base defecting thanks to Glenn Beck's "everyone in government is evil and out to get you and I'm crying on TV so it's gotta be legit" rants, the Republican party is going to have a tough time winning anything back, especially since a quiet and 2008 election-fatigued majority of Americans still back Obama and his full public-option health care goals - seriously, who would think, watching the news, that 60% of AMERICANS support a public option.

So if like me you are generally pro-Democrat, the best thing to do right now, is to cheer on the Tea Party and contribute to Sarah Palin's 2012 presidential campaign. Obama is a Maoist Nazi!!!

Yo Steve

2009-10-13T17:17:00.001-04:00

Mini profile of me in Quebec Magazine Le Trente

2009-07-31T20:28:00.002-04:00

The "media whore" strikes again! A classmate at Concordia Journalism wrote a piece in Quebec journalism magazine Trente about how hard it is for j-school grads in this economic climate, and included profiles of me and three other grads, including another classmate.

I find it a bit funny that the pull quote put next to my photo was about how 9/11 changed how i saw the world, which sounds super cliche, and isn't in the article, let alone explained. But whatever, 9/11 DID change everything. Right?

I also find it a bit funny that I'm quoted as saying I'm keeping an eye on New York and Washington for jobs (I was interviewed back in April) and now I'm working in New York, albeit not in journalism.

Here is the text of my profile by Annabelle Blais, en francais, naturellement.

Alex Leduc, 25 ans, de Montréal

Diplôme d’études supérieures en journalisme,

Université Concordia

Alex a un horaire chargé. Le rendez-vous pour l’entrevue avait été pris plusieurs semaines à l’avance. Le jour venu, Alex se remet tout juste de sa fin de session. La voix fatiguée, il n’hésite pas à parler de son parcours. « Il est impossible d’être un bon journaliste à Montréal sans parler un minimum français », affirme le jeune homme dont la langue maternelle est l’anglais. Cependant, il ne croit pas avoir les capacités nécessaires pour travailler uniquement dans la langue de Molière, « mais si quelqu’un veut m’engager avec le niveau que j’ai, je ne refuserai pas non plus », dit celui qui est né à Montréal et a grandi en Ontario. Il a hésité quelque temps entre la politique et le journalisme une fois ses

études de musique, de marketing et de relations publiques terminées. Après avoir travaillé deux ans pour Universal Canada, Alex, qui possède également la citoyenneté américaine, a rejoint l’équipe d’Hillary Clinton, en 2007, lors de la campagne des primaires, et a ensuite décidé de revenir étudier le journalisme dans le programme de deuxième cycle de Concordia.

Il est conscient que Toronto reste la capitale des médias anglophones et que la couverture que ces derniers réalisent à partir de Montréal est plus régionale. « En tant qu’anglophone, j’ai moins d’opportunités à Montréal, mais, en général, j’ai accès à un marché plus vaste », dit-il. Pour le moment, cet inconditionnel supporter du Canadien de Montréal souhaite faire ses armes en terre montréalaise, là où sa famille est revenue s’installer. « Je vais tout de même garder un oeil sur de grandes villes américaines,telles New York ou Washington. » Tout comme ses collègues, il croit en l’avenir du cyberjournalisme. « C’est une évolution naturelle des médias qui offre plus de diversité. » Alex s’était d’ailleurs transformé en blogueur compulsif au moment des dernières élections américaines, sujet qu’il connaît bien. Son blogue a été repris

sur le site des publications en ligne de Transcontinental. Au cours de l’été, il misera surtout sur la pige pour The Gazette. Son premier choix reste toutefois la télévision, et c’est à CTV, où il a déjà fait un stage, qu’il souhaite commencer sa carrière. Il demeure toutefois réaliste. « Je crois que je vais avoir besoin d’un emploi à temps partiel pour payer mon loyer. Je regarderai du côté des relations publiques, mais je veillerai à ce que mon CV contienne toujours le mot “pigiste”. »

"Veterans Share Trauma"

2009-06-13T09:23:00.009-04:00

Finally, after months of work, the Montreal Gazette has published my article on Veterans helping each other with PTSD and other psychological trauma. All 1,500 words of it is on page B3 of today's Gazette, in the Saturday Extra Section.

The photo was taken by Gazette photographer Pierre Obendrauf Tuesday at Acceuil Bonneau, a mission in Old Montreal where luckily, three of my four main characters were volunteering and looking for homeless veterans.

This story started as a project for my online journalism course at Concordia, which is where I conducted interviews with Beaudin, Lacoste, and Veterans Affairs Canada clinicians. You can see the project, which includes YouTube videos and soundslides, by going to my course blog.

Once I got the green light from the Gazette in late April, I finally got interviews with Trépanier and Jean, which I had been trying to get since I started the project in February.

Moving forward, Trépanier and a friend of his are working on launching a website for social support for people with PTSD. I have been asked to contribute to the site, which should be launched in the fall.

Tweeting the Google Street View car (update)

2009-05-06T16:48:00.006-04:00

MAY 30 UPDATE: My Twitter-Google story is in today's Gazette, page B2. The online version links to the map below of Google Street View car sightings.

View Tweets of Google Street View Car Sightings In Montreal in a larger map

These photos were taken by Redmond Shannon of where the car parks at night:

From each according to his ability, to each...

2009-05-01T15:43:00.031-04:00

Yesterday basically being the closest thing communists have to a holiday, I published an article in the Montreal Gazette about our small but vocal extreme-left community here.

They marched downtown yesterday (took the shots below outside Concordia). But protests downtown is what Montreal looks like pretty much every day, so I doubt it turned too many heads. According to the Montreal Police, there are over 1500 demonstrations a year here. Why is this city so angry?

Anyway, my European friends don't understand why North Americans find communists so exotic, but if any of this has made you curious about communism, here's an edited transcript of my conversation with two communist activists.

What I've been up to

2009-04-26T19:29:00.026-04:00

So journalism school has ended, and it's all being capped off with three weeks as an intern/freelancer at the Montreal Gazette, where i've published one article, and have at least two or three more in the works. I'm trying to catch the Google Street View car speeding around town via twitter updates. Yes, I'm aware that it's probably impossible but should still be a fun experience. Apparently, I'm getting some attention for it.

Although it seems i've all but forgotten American politics exists (which has a lot to do with election burnout and finally being able to trust a U.S. president with the job) I've gotten quite a bit of journalistic work done in the past 4 months.

Along with a few other j-students, I've produced two short documentaries. One was a current-affairs doc about Montreal's reaction to the Gaza conflict in December-January, and the other was on Quebec's doctor shortage. You can watch both of them here, via the National Film Board's Citizen Shift site.

Montreal Reacts To Gaza:

A Systematic Illness Part 1:

A Systematic Illness Part 2:

I've spent the last three months working on an online multi-platform report on Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder within Canadian military veterans. The interviews can all be seen through this vuvox embed, and the entire report can be seen here. One of the videos has made its way around the veterans' online community, and I'll be writing an article for the Gazette using some quotes from these interviews.

In December and January I interned at CTV Montreal, where I produced three demo news reports. One is about the Christmas shopping season in a bad economy, one is about Obama's inauguration, and one is about snow removal in Montreal.

I produced this student newscast which featured the work (on or off-screen) of a dozen of my classmates. Most of the news was from Friday March 27th, with a few pre-made reports. It went live at 4pm that day and I edited in graphics later.

Finally, I made these two small reports for my Advanced TV class. One is on controversy surrounding the Montreal police union's pressure tactics, and one is an extended version of the interview with one of the characters from the Gaza documentary.

So that's why I haven't blogged in 5 months, or written any columns. After the Gazette, I'll keep freelancing for them and CTV (hopefully) and perhaps do some work for WatchMojo.com, who are based in Montreal. That is, unless someone actually wants to employ me...

Best of 2008

2009-02-28T13:18:00.005-05:00

As I have been concentrating on school and internships so far this year and have had no time to write about politics, I thought it would be interesting to point my readers to the columns or blog posts I'm most proud of from 2008. Enjoy!

Politics And Small-Town America (Feature about my Hillary Clinton campaign experience) - Nov 27

Obama Loses: 2.8 Days Later (Most read column - over 3,000 hits on Transcontinental sites) - Oct 25

Campaigns Tolerating Cultural Ignorance (Eerily e choed by General Colin Powell the next day) - Oct 17

The Fundamentals Of Our Distractions Are Strong (Personal favori te) - Sep 19

Who The Hell Is Sarah Palin??? (Most read blog post) - Aug 29

Yeah Buddy!

2009-01-20T16:37:00.003-05:00

Canadian idiots of the week

2008-12-04T17:08:00.004-05:00

Sean Avery talks shit, but how dumb do you have to be to do it with piles of cameras and microphones in your face.

Stephen Harper pisses off the other 55% of the house of commons, and lucky for him, the Queen's rep calls a timeout so the kids can cool off.

Canadian Parliament, calm down please

2008-12-01T09:16:00.002-05:00

Parliament needs to take a deep breath, and calm down.
Only two months after they decided it would be a great idea to spend $300 million and drag unwilling Canadians to the polls only to hand the Tories a few more seats, they’re throwing another fit.
Upset over last week’s Conservative economic plan, its lack of immediate fiscal stimulus, and its cuts to political party subsidies, the opposition is threatening to take down the government, and possibly form a coalition. Am I the only one who threw up in their mouth a bit when I heard last week that we were potentially staring down a choice between another election and a constitutional crisis?
Not since 1928 has a coalition of opposition parties formed a government, and it wouldn’t be a drama-free affair. First of all, the Governor General would have to decide if a not-so-friendly gang of Liberal, New Democrat, and Bloc MPs could run the country, with one of their leaders as Prime Minister. Making the Paul Martin-appointed Michaëlle Jean politically relevant could cause a firestorm of time-wasting constitutional debates.
A coalition already sounds like a highly unproductive potential government, and the idea of the new prime minister being lame duck Stephane Dion, less-than-20 per cent-support Jack Layton, or the result of a fast-tracked Liberal leadership race doesn’t inspire confidence.
We are in a time of impending economic crisis, and what the country needs is stability in leadership that can inspire confidence, and keep us clear from national bankruptcy.
Canadians were aware about the economic future of the country during the federal election in October, and more picked the Tories to handle the situation than any other party. Equally, it is not likely those Canadians were harbouring any delusions that Harper’s government would handle the situation with drastic spending increases.
Harper’s Tories are doing what a Conservative government should be expected to do. They are expecting the recession to decrease the government’s tax revenues, and reacting by cutting government spending to avoid a deficit. This is basic fiscal prudence.
They are additionally taking a careful and calm approach to considerations of added stimulus spending to dull the recession’s bite. Although many governments around the world in more desperate situations have opted for stimulus packages, some economists doubt its effectiveness.
If they do eventually opt for stimulus and dump cash into the hands of taxpayers and industries looking for bailouts, it will be good to know the government isn’t already fighting massive deficits like the United States. We wouldn’t want our grandchildren paying for those bailouts.
This is the strategy enough Canadians voted for to bring the Tories a few seats from a majority last month, with one glaring exception. Those Canadians certainly didn’t vote for the arrogance of using cuts to political party subsidies as the flagship spending cut of last Thursday’s plan.
Among $2-4 billion in annual spending cuts over the next five years, the Tories chose to highlight a $30 million per-vote subsidy cut as the prime example in the opening text of their plan, before retracting the idea over the weekend amidst all the clamor. A proposal that so obviously harms the opposition and lower-tier parties far more than the flush-with-cash Conservative Party makes them look hyper-partisan and opportunistic. In this sense, they have some culpability in inciting the opposition’s uproar.
Still, non-essential spending cuts are prudent, and cutting political party subsidies is better than cutting education or infrastructure, and can always be reversed in better economic times. Arguments stating that this is a threat to democracy are nonsense, as politicians and parties are still able to raise funds through supporters. Immediately after the plan’s announcement, Michael Ignatieff’s leadership campaign solicited donations from supporters using the proposed subsidy cuts as motivation.
I will not argue for or against a stimulus package, as I am not an economist. But if the Liberals, NDP, and Bloc Quebecois feel so strongly that it is necessary, then they should act like they did before the last election. They should use their voices and their votes to state their demands to a minority government. If you look how easily the Tories dropped the political subsidies idea, you’ll see that the system works fine, and that there’s no need waste time playing games and fighting over power.
The last thing an election-fatigued and recession-facing country needs is this undue political drama. So for now, Parliament, cool it, please.

Politics and small-town America

2008-11-27T06:58:00.004-05:00

Confessions of a Canadian who joined Hillary Clinton’s campaign

They were mostly middle aged or elderly Latino women sitting in on that evening’s caucus training at the Corpus Christi field office of Hillary Clinton for President. A solid turnout of the mostly pro-Hillary Latino population of South Texas was what the campaign was working towards.
Before an explanation of Texas’ unusually complicated vote and caucus system, we staffers would ask the attendees why they supported Senator Hillary Clinton over Senator Barack Obama. But it wasn’t the economy, it wasn’t war or terrorism, nor was it health care on the minds of the dozen Texans sitting in the converted dance studio.
“I read on the internet about Obama’s connections to an African Islamic terrorist. I just can’t trust him, he scares me,” said a middle-aged woman. “We can’t have a Muslim president,” said another.
As political staffers, we tried in vain to explain that Barack Obama was indeed a Christian, and that there were better reasons to support Hillary. Oh did we try, over and over, but to no avail. With these otherwise charming Texans, fear trumped reason.
In conversation with a supporter a few days later, I was asked point blank who I would vote for in the general election if it came down to Obama and Senator John McCain. As a Democrat and a strong believer in voting on the issues, I pledged my support for Obama. As a volunteer organizer, I should have said McCain.
South Texans were some of the more amiable characters I met during my four-state journey with Hillary Clinton’s primary campaign last year. But their collective xenophobia – ironic considering they were Latinos in the United States – and lack of education would become but an example of the conflict I sometimes felt between seeing Hillary as the more qualified candidate and identifying with the people that supported her.
Yet, the struggle to find connections between this upper-middle class suburban Canadian and small-town America would become one of the more authentic and enlightening experiences of my life.

Observation
My first encounter with small-town America was in New Hampshire. That is where I began as a field intern, trekking through the snow in an old paper mill town called Berlin – pronounced “Burrln” by the locals.
Weeks earlier, the Clinton campaign was the first to jump on my application to work for free. I had also applied to Obama’s as well as Senator Joe Biden’s Granite State campaigns after becoming fascinated with American politics in the volatile years after September 11th, especially during the 2004 presidential election.
As if joining a presidential campaign wasn’t exciting enough, shortly before I left for The Granite State I had the fortune tuning into CNN broadcasting live coverage of one of Hillary’s New Hampshire campaign offices being held hostage by a deranged maniac. Americans, it seems, are very passionate about their politics.
Told to expect long hours of repetitive work, I arrived on a dark and snowy night in a dismal looking working-class town called Berlin and met the two campaign staffers.
I was pretty nervous about calling random voters, and I’m fairly sure stared at my first call sheet for about an hour before I summoned the courage to call the first name. We eventually figured out easy methods for starting conversations and gathering information, although most voters didn’t answer the phone or found their own creative and polite ways to tell us to take a hike.
Weekends were reserved for door-to-door canvassing. Since we had no volunteers willing to canvass in December, I went out on my own the first time in -15°C and several feet of snow. Sure I had winter gear on, but you try handling a pile of papers with ski gloves. It was freezing, I had no idea what to say to anyone who might answer the door and talk to me, and who would want to stand in his or her doorway and talk politics in that weather?
Despite its challenges, the work made for great practice at talking politics in small-town America. Working field teaches you how to speak on the same level as the average person, rather than talk down to them as if you’re educating them. This means being able to simplify arguments and play on key language the voter can identify with. Clinton=90s=Good Economy, Hillary=Health care for all, Democrat=bring back the troops, etc. It’s not a political science dissertation or Washington Post editorial material, but it works on the phone or on someone’s porch.
It became apparent that Hillary’s side was filled with politicos. Among the out-of-state volunteers that arrived in for the final push in Berlin were Senator Evan Bayh’s executive assistant, the vice-president of the Liberal Party of Canada, a New York Democratic Party insider, and an organizer in the D.C. Young Democrats.
By Election Day there were thirty-something volunteers in the office and we had all watched Obama win in Iowa and Hillary near tears on camera a few days after. Her big “performance” paid off. Despite being down in the polls, Hillary Clinton beat Barack Obama by three points in the New Hampshire primary.
Sold on political campaigning, I spent four days in New York City volunteering before Super Tuesday, when 24 states held their primaries.
Spending time in the surprisingly hospitable and friendly boroughs of Queens and Brooklyn, a friend and I helped the campaign rally support in a Hasidic Jewish community with a local Congressman. Here we were educated about ethnic groups voting as blocs, and how they could be courted by courting their community leaders.
During our stay, we watched the New York Giants upset the New England Patriots in the Superbowl, cheered on Hillary outside the studios of the David Letterman show, and smiled for the cameras at Hillary’s victory speech in Manhattan. We were truly nothing but political tourists.
With the primary battle still raging on, I managed to procure myself a staff position as a field organizer in Corpus Christi, Texas. Now thousands of miles from the Canadian border, amongst oil refineries, navy bases, and gun shops, I got a taste of Latino politics.
In the land of South Texas, once part of Mexico, no local politician runs for office without a Spanish name. Paradoxically, the team of paid campaign staffers was almost uniformly white, myself included, while nearly all of the volunteers and voters were Latino.
My responsibility was to train Hillary supporters in San Patricio County in the workings of the complex vote and caucus system. My teacher was Daniel, a campaign veteran from California. When motivating campaign volunteers, Daniel would speak of labour leader and civil rights activist César Chavez, which played well with South Texans, or Tejanos.
Across the bay from Corpus Christi, San Patricio county is a mostly rural and small town county that included Taft, the “friendliest cotton pickin’ town in Texas” according to a highway sign I couldn’t resist taking a picture of.
The people of San Patricio were very approachable, and already sold on the significance of the upcoming primary. The area had a sense of community I had not yet seen, not to mention a love for stereotypical Mexican food that is expressed daily. Needless to say, obesity and diabetes were rampant.
Tejano politics was all about community and history, as my hosts would explain. The people tended to support politicians who had provided for them as a group in the past. There was less of a left-right dichotomy and more of an embrace of the familiar. Hillary Clinton naturally benefited from that, winning large margins in South Texas, despite collecting fewer total delegates in the state.
The last state in my journey was the Keystone State, Pennsylvania, last spring. As one of the least experienced organizers, I was placed in small-town central Pennsylvania, on the edge of coal-mining Appalachia.
Working out of Williamsport, the self-described “home of little league baseball,” I was asked to organize volunteers in three counties south of the once-wealthy town. Northumberland was the largest county, and it encompassed the depressing Coal Township, which included old and crumbling coal industry towns of Shamokin and Mt Carmel.
These were the working class democrats that Barack Obama had such trouble courting, and who likely leaned McCain in the general election. The simple reason was the economy, as many were looking back at the economic boom of the 90s.
My territory was ripe with contrasts. Into the countryside I encountered some of Pennsylvania’s Amish community, passing buggies on the road in Union county. I was also assigned campus organizing at Bucknell University; an upper-class private college filled with overly sheltered and conceited co-eds. To the dismay of Coal Township citizenry, Bucknell was the site of appearances by Bill and Chelsea Clinton, giving me a fourth opportunity to see the former president speak.
We would find it tough to win university campuses, with youth and intelligentsia opting for a new kind of politician. But Hillary took enough working class votes to win the state. Unfortunately for her, she had already lost the nomination.

Connection
Climbing a steep road in some miscellaneous neighborhood in Berlin, passing houses with New England Patriots logos and foreclosure door locks, I knocked on the next door on my list. Unlike the first thirty-something doors I knocked on in Berlin, the family sitting at home that Sunday invited me into their kitchen to thaw my fingers and make my pitch.
I had made political arguments before, but this was different. Standing in this family’s kitchen giving the same simplistic talking points I had given on the phone, what most impressed them was how one citizen would reach out to another. The fact that I was there in the cold was more valuable than anything I had to say. It was the first time I truly understood the person-to-person appeal of voter contact in the field.
On a broader note, I have always been fascinated with American culture. Perhaps it has more to do with growing up with portrayals of it on my television screen, but I needed to be more than a casual observer during my campaign time. My interactions with the people of New Hampshire, New York, Texas, and Pennsylvania allowed me to make some very real connections with their reality.
Where it began while canvassing in Berlin, it continued with the relationships developed at the campaign office. Chuck was the only volunteer from Berlin to come into the campaign office regularly. A retiree who seemed to know the entire town by first name, he would bring us our donuts and coffee each day and distract us with his rambling stories.
Chuck and I would have conversations on the differences between our own cultures between phone calls to voters, and shared horror stories of the reactions we would get from the voters who answered the phone. Although he knew I was a proud Canadian, he gave me a stained red baseball cap with an American eagle on the front as a heartfelt gift after the election was over.
Through the horrendous work hours, the two staffers in the office became good friends of mine. Erik was a 29-year-old from the Boston area who had worked for Howard Dean’s unsuccessful 2004 campaign, and Nick was a 23-year-old Notre Dame graduate from Sacramento, California.
Erik and I got the chance to speak to high school civics class about our efforts, as well as grade student presentations. As a Canadian critiquing teenagers’ knowledge of their own government, I temporarily gained an inflated sense of self-importance.
Watching the results come in for the New Hampshire primary, Erik, Nick, and I had one hell of a time. The words “AP called it! We won!” shouted by our regional director will be forever in my memory, symbolizing the moment I fell in love with campaigning.
The following night we joined the state campaign team at a pub in downtown Manchester. Although we didn’t know many people because of Berlin’s remote location in the state, we seemed to be celebrities because of our county’s 50% margin of victory. With four or five competitive candidates in the New Hampshire primary, our margin was legendary.
Of all the volunteers that I met in New Hampshire, Steve stood out. A 19-year-old frat boy trapped in the body of a 43-year-old securities lawyer from Queens, New York, Steve was a veteran of the New York Democratic Party running for New York city council. We became good friends while canvassing, and he gave me a place to stay while I was in New York and came to help my canvassing efforts in Pennsylvania.
In San Patricio County, though, it started and ended with Aurora, head of the San Patricio United Democrats. She was the owner of Aurora’s Hair Fashions, a quaint hair salon right off the highway in Portland with a faded sign and shag carpet.
Aurora was the first volunteer I spoke with after arriving in Corpus Christi, the most committed local organizer, and the last person I visited before leaving San Patricio country on election night. She would let me hold supporter caucus trainings in the hair salon, which became a de-facto campaign office. Aurora became a good friend that I regret not keeping in touch with.
A religious person like most small-town Texans, Aurora saw my presence as a sign that helping Hillary win the nomination would be a calling she could not ignore. She took that conviction all the way to the Democratic National Convention as a delegate for Hillary.
Caucus trainings like the ones I conducted with Aurora were the most rewarding of all the volunteer organizing efforts I engaged in. The Latino community there was so motivated and interconnected, I would show up to train a community leader and find dozens showing up to hear what I had to say. A few days removed from skiing in Quebec, I was suddenly an authority on Texas politics, teaching young and old about their system.
I soon found that I was embroiled in a very local political battle that was splitting the town of Mathis, Texas. On the same ballot as the presidential primary were several other local races, including the County Commissioner race in Mathis. Half the town supported one candidate and half supported the other. Both sides supported Hillary and competed to be my Mathis organizers, bringing their supporters to my caucus trainings.
Arturo, a leader in one of the local factions, invited me to speak at a campaign barbecue he had organized. I arrived with other campaign volunteers, ate authentic Tejano food and made an impromptu speech for a hundred locals. Needless to say, my speech was translated into Spanish immediately, which helped with some of the bewildered faces in my audience. By the time we left, though, we felt like we were leaving old friends.
In an even smaller San Patricio County town called Gregory, we planned rally at a highway crossing, somehow the town’s busiest location. When I say small, I mean ‘the mayor and half the town council joined the roadside rally for two hours bearing homemade Hillary signs’ small.
Tired of rallying, we all went for lunch at RG Asadero’s Old Fashioned Cooking on the side of the highway. As we ate yet another delightful meal of enchiladas, the table next to us was a small group of Obama supporters awaiting their own organized caucus training. I found a chance to shake hands with some Obama staffers and make peace, which proved surprisingly awkward.
But the determination, positive attitude, and warmth of South Texans gave me the motivation to get up every day and work until I dropped. I even found myself listening to country music in the car, feeling so immediately connected to the culture I was embedded in.
On election night, I ended up running a 60-person caucus in Taft, an awesome feat considering I wasn’t even a resident of the country, let alone a registered voter. But by the end, I was comfortable enough with my San Patricio County brethren to pull it off.
Pennsylvania was a whole different world, where a sense of community more or less only seen within the large Amish community in Union county and felt in the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) union office I was posted in. The campaign did not target the Amish community, but it did get a great deal of help from AFSCME in many states.
As someone with absolutely no previous experience with or understanding of unions, working with a local chapter provided a great education. AFSCME organized members from across the country to support causes through grassroots efforts, and in their green t-shirts, several members joined my canvassing excursions.
Through my volunteer recruiting efforts, I found a few gems in the otherwise dismal pool of voters, one of which was an unforgettable character named Nicolas. Standing six feet tall with a cowboy hat and a cane for a bad leg, Nicolas was Kulpmont, Pennsylvania’s only political organizer. He also happened to be the owner of the Jan Sobieski Hall, a dark and depressing Kulpmont watering hole. Nicolas was of great help, though, and allowed me to use his bar as a staging location for Coal Township canvassing.
My most active volunteer in nearby Shamokin was Diane, although like seemingly everyone in the area, she also had a bad leg and could not canvass. But she and her friends would make phone calls for the campaign from a house in Shamokin.
The family I resided with made the month spent working long hours and seven-day weeks somewhat bearable. Probably the easiest to relate to, Penny and Ed were a simple couple living in Milton, Pennsylvania. Two of the friendlier people I encountered, their willingness to take in outsiders – I wasn’t the first – and to learn new perspectives on the world spoke well of small-town America.

Disconnection
If that were the entirety of my experience with the campaign, I may not have bothered to return to Montreal. But being able to understand and relate to some of the experiences I encountered eventually became difficult as quickly as it became easy.
The first encounter with brute ignorance and outdated cultural norms was in the snows of New Hampshire. In the less-than-affluent parts of the less-than-affluent town of Berlin, we came across some odd comments while canvassing for the campaign.
One lady who supported Hillary asked us how anyone could support Obama. “Don’t they know he’s part of Iraq?” She said. There were also a few older women who thought the presidency was a man’s job. At the time, the comments were shrugged off as anomalies and not indicative of the greater population.
In South Texas, the anomalies became the rule. The rampant and stubborn fear of Barack Obama’s rumoured religious views and ties to terrorism that we encountered in caucus trainings were eye opening. We were all aware of the chain emails circulating with false allegations about Obama, but I never imagined how effective they might be.
Although we worked mostly with Democrats, we were still in Texas, and pro-life views and influences were the norm. While speaking briefly with some teenagers in a McDonalds near the Corpus Christi office, the first comment they gave about Hillary was “She’s for abortion, right?”
As someone who is pro-choice, I argued that no one is for abortion, but that simply outlawing it on moral grounds does more harm than good. To my astonishment, they had never heard such a comment before. No need to get into a discussion on abortion rights, but it is safe to say that some aspects of conservative America will always seem backwards to me.
Until Pennsylvania, the positive experiences made the workload enjoyable, and any negative experiences marginal. But Central Pennsylvania was different. There was no enthusiasm for politics like there was in Texas. Perhaps by April many were tired of the extended primary campaigns, but political participation was non-existent.
To add to the frustration of trying to organize volunteers who just aren’t showing up, the average age of a Hillary supporter in rural Penn seemed to be very high, with a high probability of a physical ailment preventing them from volunteering. Our candidate was not doing well with the young.
At one phone bank in Shamokin, where volunteers could come and use campaign phones and an automated system to call voters, my guests were three elderly ladies. Although I applaud to this day their perseverance, they were never quite able to figure out the automated dialer system with the provided campaign cell phones after hours of my repetitive coaching.
To make matters worse, the campaign was getting more desperate and kept pushing hard for quantifiable results. Doug, my 22-year-old regional director, began to annoy me with demands for me to boost my phone call and volunteer numbers.
With 12 to 14-hour workdays, 7 days a week, and an absurd amount of mileage being added to my car each day, I began to hate being on the campaign. The work was no longer enjoyable, only frustrating and exhausting.
As a reaction, I started spending time with a co-ed I had met through my futile campus organizing at Bucknell University. Jane was the most enthusiastic of the small Bucknellians for Hillary group, and she introduced me to the college scene. Although it meant canvassing hung over and sleep deprived a couple of times, it kept me sane.
But as the University was extremely sheltered from the small-town America that surrounded it, being there also gave me the chance to detach from that culture; deteriorating much of the initial connection I had developed with it.
When I did return to organizing, I found that many local voters also very easily bothered by seemingly insignificant issues, like off-hand comments the candidates would make on the campaign trail. This was shortly after Hillary’s “I was under sniper fire in Bosnia” gaffe and Obama’s “bitter” gaffe.
By the final days of the campaign, I was counting down the hours till I could return to the normalcy of home. I had almost lost interest in the election itself, save the results from my three counties, as field organizers look at their territories as true tests of their performance.
More importantly, I had completely lost the motivation to relate to small-town America that I had gained in New Hampshire and Texas. After the primary, the campaign asked me to work field in South Dakota, the last of the primaries. I declined, left head office in Philadelphia barely exchanging a word with the other staffers, and hit the road.
Looking back, I would do it all over again as the unique cross-section of American culture provided me with several doses of reality, in many different ways. Although the last memories were not the best, I’ll never forget the wave I rode in 2008.

Me and Hillary - Part 3: New York

2008-11-16T21:41:00.005-05:00

After some extensive celebrations in the New Hampshire campaign office, I returned to the Motel as tired as I was after moving out of my apartment in London the summer before. The next day was office cleanup, and by the end of the day the storefront office was without any evidence that we had been there. Nick, Erik and I drove the computers and other equipment two hours south to Manchester, with plans to stay the night partying with staffers from all over the state. Erik and I also planned to catch the Habs-Bruins game in Boston the next night, as Boston was only two hours further south.

Dropping off the equipment, I got the chance to see head office in Manchester, which was covered with volunteer schedule posters and had a large headshot of Hillary in the main stairwell. That night we joined the state team at a pub in downtown Manchester, a town that reminded me of London, Ontario. Although we didn’t know many people because of Berlin’s remote location in the state, we seemed to be celebrities because of our 50% margin of victory in Berlin. If that doesn’t seem like much, keep in mind there were four or five competitive candidates in the New Hampshire primary. In Berlin, Obama and Edwards each won around 20% of the vote, leaving 10% for Richardson and the others.

We stayed in a hotel that night, and since Erik elected to go see his girlfriend in Boston, I hit the road back north to Montreal. The next couple weeks of unemployment included a couple of job interviews and a very brief radio internship.

The previous summer I had tossed my resume around in Montreal, including a “why not” copy submitted to the Montreal Canadiens. While I was in New Hampshire my mother called saying someone had left a voicemail from the Canadiens. As it turns out their marketing department was hiring an intern and wanted me to come in for an interview. The week after I returned from New Hampshire I fulfilled a dream by interviewing with my beloved Canadiens. Since my first language was English, I was asked to conduct the preliminary interview in French. The hour-long interview was a challenge, but a success as I was asked to come to a second interview with the head of marketing. Unfortunately, my inexperience working in a francophone environment was exposed when I was asked to create a mock newspaper ad in English and French. Safe to say I wasn’t called back, but I was proud to have made it that far.

At this point I had no idea if I was going to continue with the campaign. I wasn’t sure if I could afford to do another unpaid internship in some other state, and Erik and Nick had said they would try to find me a paid position, but by the end of January I had not heard anything.
In the meantime, I set myself up with an internship at CJAD 800, the same local station I had criticized in my introduction post. The first day it was hard not to mention my time with Hillary, and so luckily enough, the Hillary-hating radio personality Tommy Shnurmacher invited me on his show to talk about my experience. Strangely enough, even though I was told I was a great intern on my first day, I was never called back for a second day, and my calls were never returned. What is up with that station?

As “Super Tuesday” (February 5th) approached, I had discussed heading down to New York with Brigitte, who I had met in New Hampshire. We arranged to help with GOTV in Albany, as it was the closest office to Montreal. Days before we were to leave, Brigitte said she was going to New York City instead because the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s New York bureau wanted to interview her. I decided I would just go with her, since it was a good excuse to see the city. I spoke with Steve Behar, who I had also met in New Hampshire and who lived in Queens, NY. He invited the both of us to stay at his house in Queens and said he could get us involved in the campaign there.

On February 2nd, Brigitte and I took my Civic to its second state for Hillary, listening to the Habs game on satellite radio on the way, and talking a lot of politics. Apparently Brigitte had received a great deal of attention from the Canadian media for her involvement in Hillary’s campaign. It wasn’t surprising considering her status in Canadian politics.

So we arrived in Queens, NY, at the address Steve Behar had given us. It turned out to be the home of Steve’s parents who were out of town. Steve took us to a bar in Bayside, a neighborhood of suburban Queens, where the budding politician seemed to know every one of his future constituents. Although it was only February 2008, Steve was already preparing his campaign for City Council elections, which take place in late 2009.

The following morning we drove into Manhattan, passing Ron Paul signs along the highway and the flying-saucer towers from the end of Men In Black. After driving in from snow-covered Montreal, I easily had the dirtiest car in all of New York. It was embarrassing driving a muddy and salt-stained car it around Manhattan, where it was fifteen degrees out with no snow in sight, and every car was spotless.

After checking out Hillary’s Manhattan office and touching base with the organizers, we headed to the CBC bureau for Brigitte’s live interview on RDI (the French-language all-news CBC station). For her, this was another day at the office, but I’m not sure if I had ever been in a television studio before, nor seen a friend interviewed live on national television. I actually recorded the whole interview on my digital camera by pointing it at a television in the newsroom. They actually asked her if her being there meant that the Liberal party supported Hillary.
After her RDI interview, one of the producers asked to interview the both of us in English for CBC on the street outside the studio. The CBC interview was brief and simple, and a piece of it was used on The National that night, making it my debut in national media.

Eventually we made some calls to campaign organizers to see where we could help out, as we probably had to help out eventually if we were going to say to the national media that we were down there helping. They gave us an address in Brooklyn where supporters were meeting to rally support. Since we didn’t have a GPS, we took crude directions from the campaign and attempted to follow them into Brooklyn. Bad idea. We got very lost and ended up having to ask for directions. On the upside, there seemed to be no connection between what we were seeing and the stereotype that comes with the words “Brooklyn” or “The Bronx” or “Harlem.” Not only was Brooklyn a fairly nice-looking borough, but also the people who helped us out with directions were incredibly nice. After an hour or two of wasting gas we eventually got some correct directions and made our way to the other side of Brooklyn and found our destination in a Hasidic neighborhood.

What we arrived too late for was a group of local politicians, including a Congressman, speaking to the leaders of the Hasidic Jewish community. Following their meeting, all of the leaders and some volunteers walked the streets of the area with signs and a megaphone urging the community to vote for Hillary.

Brigitte and I followed them along, holding signs that strongly suggested that we were Jews supporting Hillary. It felt a bit fraudulent but it was still interesting to see reactions from the locals. The Hasidic Jews were naturally very reserved and mostly shied away from us. We were told that turnout was usually very low during elections but if they did vote, it would be as a bloc. Thus, this was the reason why we were there. After the march, we bought some traditional chocolates at a local store and headed back to Queens.

That night something big was happening in New York, and it wasn’t political. It was the Giants in the Super Bowl against the undefeated Patriots. Steve invited us to a party with some of his friends somewhere in Long Island to watch the game, and it turned out to be at a Jewish temple and community centre. Since he seems much younger than he is, I had forgotten that Steve was 43 and his friends were parents with young children, so this was not the rowdy party I had imagined. Although I was cheering for the Pats until that point, as most Montrealers usually do, I felt compelled to cheer for the home team. It paid off since, as I’m sure you remember, the Giants upset the Pats and ended their dreams of a perfect season and being hailed the greatest team ever.

The next day, Monday the 4th of February, we took the train from Steve’s back to Manhattan. The CBC producer, Neil Herland, was the CBC’s United Nations producer and in conversation we thought of taking a tour of the UN after the interviews, since it was only a few blocks away. Herland offered to give us a tour himself that day. Since nothing was happening at the UN, he was able to give us a full tour once we had passed security. We were able to see the UN Security Council chamber and the media booths that overlooked it. I could picture Colin Powell in 2003 with that vile of anthrax, and Adlai Stevenson showing pictures of Soviet missiles in Cuba in 1962.

The highlight of the tour was easily the general assembly, as we got to walk freely around it and even stand on the podium. I have an amazing photo of myself on the podium with a majestic backdrop.

Brigitte and I also got to be tourists, checking out Time Square. The campaign told us that Hillary was going to be on David Letterman that night and that the campaign was organizing for supporters to be outside the studio cheering her on. This was the eve of the primary. So we headed down to the studio, which was near Time Square, and found dozens of people already there chanting with signs.

It was my first real opportunity to learn Hillary chants, as there weren’t really any rallies in Berlin, New Hampshire. “H.R.C.4.U.&.Me!” and “Madam President” were the easiest to remember. We kept chanting and waiting for about an hour for Senator Clinton’s motorcade to arrive, and when it finally did, the black SUV’s swept by so quickly we didn’t even see her. But the organizers there told us to prepare for a quick meet & greet with supporters after the show was taped. They asked some of us to head towards a barricade near the door of the studio, and Brigitte and I wasted no time running over there to be front row. We managed to cram our way to the front of the barricade among dozens of others, and waited for Hillary to walk out the door while having some less-than-friendly conversations with Secret Service. When Hillary walked out, she made her way over to us and shook our hands while I took hundreds of pictures and mothers threw their children forward for stereotypical photo-ops with the politician.

On a related note, I visited the Newseum in Washington, D.C. in August and again in November, and what did I see laminated on the wall in the 2008 campaign section? A photo of Hillary greeting fans outside the David Letterman show just before Super Tuesday. It’s hard to see my face, but it’s there.

After the event was over, we headed to a campaign watch party for Hillary’s half hour of purchased airtime on the Hallmark channel. I had no idea such a channel existed. The special was essentially a live scripted town hall with supporters and celebs. They ran out of airtime before they could signoff, and it just ended abruptly. We headed back to Queens.

The next morning it was Super Tuesday, when 24 states would hold their primaries, including New York, California, Illinois, and Massachusetts. It was also the day of the Super Bowl parade in New York. Not wanting to miss an event like that, we headed to Hillary’s campaign office to grab some signs and we told them we would hold them up at the parade.

On the way downtown from Hillary’s uptown office, I’ve never seen such a crowded subway. When we got off near the parade route, the crowd was so huge that we could barely even get out of the subway station. It was shoulder-to-shoulder everywhere within a block of the parade route and we couldn’t even come close to seeing the parade.

To make things worse, the rabid football fans made it a bit intimidating to start holding up Hillary signs in the middle of the crowd, so we eventually just walked around the area.
One thing we stumbled upon was quite a sight. Recruiters for the marines had parked a promotional hummer near the crowd, in an attempt to sway urban youth. The hummer had marines-themed spinning rims, blasted hip-hop from huge speakers, and had some young hip-looking marines surrounding it. You gotta love their desperation.

We had agreed to later help Steve out in Queens. He was working there with a local union that was supporting Hillary. We made our way over and they had us hand out flyers on the corner, reminding people to vote. There happened to be an Obama volunteer standing at the same corner, yelling “Obama was against the war” at passers-by.

Steve let us know that the campaign had a victory party organized at a ballroom in Manhattan, and managed to figure out how we could obtain two tickets. We were told to get there early as they gave more tickets than they could let in, and we did. As soon as we arrived, we knew where we were. This was the scene of Hillary’s post-election speech later that night, as we could see a stage built with stands behind it, not to mention an opposing stage full of cameras and media correspondents. In the middle, only twenty or so feet of floor space remained for supporters.

On the stage, CNN’s Candy Crowley sat on a chair looking at her laptop. Next to her, NBC’s Andrea Mitchell. And the line of reporters and cameras was about a dozen deep.

But we wasted no time walking around. Ever since I started watching politics, I have always wanted to be in the group of supporters standing behind a candidate at a rally, getting the eye of the world’s cameras. It’s probably the foundation of my media-whoreness that is so prevalent today. We rushed towards the security on the side of the stage and asked if we could sit in the stands. An organizer looked at us and let us through, and I rushed towards the most central part of the stands, directly behind the podium. Since this was hours before Hillary was likely to speak, I began rabidly text-messaging everyone I knew, telling them to watch Hillary’s speech later that night.

After an hour or so, a screen came down and broadcast the results on CNN. Each time Hillary won a state, we in the stands would cheer for the cameras. Eventually, the entire place was packed and Hillary made her entrance in a trademark yellow pants suit. With her were Bill and Chelsea. She made her speech, and it was hard to not cheer everything she said while everyone around me did as well. In fact, I had almost no recollection of what she said, just of how much fun it was to cheer every word, even though she had her back to us.

I was mostly stoked about being watched by the world. What I didn’t take into account, though, was the angle of the cameras. CNN’s cameras were on the far left side of the media stage and I was left of the podium, so I was out of their angle of Hillary. Most of my friends watching back in Canada on CNN only caught a glimpse of me during a few brief zoom-outs. I was, however, in a perfect spot for the cameras on the right side of the media stage, including CBS. The next morning, while having breakfast in Steve’s favorite Queens diner, a television tuned to CBS showed a clip of Hillary and I was right over her right shoulder. I got up from my booth and ran over to the TV pointing and shouting, “that’s me!” like a child. The diner folk loved my enthusiasm and there were high-fives all around. You can see the clip here (Notice how Brigitte tells me to stop chewing my gum, and later how I say “number one” for the cameras)

The day after the primary we visited Ground Zero on our way out of town, and headed back north towards Montreal. On the way, Brigitte received a call from a researcher at 98.5fm in Montreal, a French-language talk radio station. She asked Brigitte what she was up to, and asked if she would come into the studio that weekend to tape an interview with one of the hosts. Brigitte agreed.

The researcher also asked if there was a romantic element to our trip, Brigitte said no, and she passed the phone to me. I recall the researcher asking me, among other questions, why I liked Hillary over Obama. In a strained French, I regrettably said that Obama was too idealistic. The researcher responded with a loud “Oh Oui???” as if I had just said something highly controversial. She definitely wanted me to come in as well, and I agreed.

The interview was tough, as I had never really talked about politics in French. Although I think I got most of my points across, I still cringed several times when I listened to the interview later.

Back at home, my parents held copies of the Globe and Mail as well as a Sherbrooke newspaper. Both had the same photo of Brigitte and I, front and centre, cheering on a Hillary primary win before the victory speech.

After the dust settled, I had to face the reality that I was still unemployed, which I promptly avoided by going skiing.

SEE ALSO:

Me and Hillary Part 2: New Hampshire
Me and Hillary Part 1: Introduction

Milestone & Hiatus

2008-11-11T17:08:00.003-05:00

Now that I am recovering from election season, I need to take a month off from blogging and columns to focus on school and to catch my breath. I should resume sometime in December, or at the latest in January around inauguration time.

On the positive side, I am proud to say that on November 9th AlexLeduc.com received its 1000th hit since I started blogging regularly and keeping track of readership in July. Other statistics i noticed are 635 absolute unique visitors (635 different people visited the site in that time frame) and a one-day high of 50 visits on election day, Nov 4.

Photo Caption: Me celebrating with friends late on election night in Burlington, Vermont.

Change Has Come

2008-11-05T13:02:00.001-05:00

Election Night Live Blog from Vermont

2008-11-04T20:08:00.001-05:00

Join the conversation

The Possibilities of President Obama

2008-11-03T17:02:00.003-05:00

If anything, the presidency of Barack Obama holds the possibility of the rebirth of a United States that has been falling apart at the seams since 2001.

There is surely a great deal that he promises, as most aspiring leaders do. Politicians rarely accomplish most of what they promise, and Obama could very well be too overwhelmed by his country’s financial troubles to be an exception.

But the senator from Illinois, and hopefully president-elect by the time you’re reading this, owes his success to his ability to articulately personify America’s dissatisfaction with its current leadership. His election could prove a willingness among its public to usher in change if the circumstances over the next four years allow.

There is therefore a great deal of possibility that Americans can look forward to, which deserves to be discussed.

The most important asset that America will likely gain with Obama is a sense of confidence. A country’s economic engine has a lot to do with its sense of collective resolve, as evidenced by America’s booms following victories in World War I and II as well as the Cold War.

In the shadow of the Bush administration’s blunders, America is feeling the same sense of wounded pride that it felt after the Vietnam War. It took a charismatic leader in the form of Ronald Reagan to lift American spirits back then, even though Reagan’s policies and actions were far from perfect.

Obama’s policies will likely also be far from perfect, and surely subject to debate in a re-election bid four years from now. But there is no doubt he has that unique ability to make most Americans feel good about themselves and their future, and make the world feel good about America. That in itself is the first step towards a recovery.

Although there is no perfect way to manage a failing economy, Obama the pragmatist will bring educated and experienced minds with differing points of view to the table, rather than rule by strict ideology. Although no guarantee of success, the strategy is an intelligent one.

Amongst all the talk of his foreign policy philosophies, The Economist pointed out in their endorsement of Obama that his election alone would “dispel many of the myths built up about America.” America’s enemies, whether they be Islamist leaders, left-wing dictators, or authoritarian superpowers, would find it much harder to demonize America for their people with Obama as president.

Armed with willingness for dialogue and an understanding of subtlety, Obama could reduce tensions between America and its rivals while renewing American moral superiority in the global community.

Although nothing is likely to happen quickly, Obama would be sure to also move America’s seven-year-old War on Terror forward by leaving Iraq, focusing on Afghanistan and Al Qaeda, and closing Guantanamo Bay.

Without an America that is a leader on climate change, the world’s other energy consumption giants could continue to drag their feet on the matter for decades to come. Obama’s “Manhattan Project” ambitions on the subject of energy independence and carbon emissions are a promising attitude he could bring to the White House. Since his plans focus on job creation, they may have a fighting chance to be enacted in an economic crisis.

Obama may not realistically be able to completely reform the heavily flawed health care system. He could, at the very least, regulate the health insurance industry to make insurance more affordable and reliable for lower income and middle-class Americans.

Finally, Obama’s pragmatic nature would allow him to amend his spending plans should they become unaffordable in America’s economic and financial future. On the other hand, should he see an opportunity to boost the economy through spending like Franklin Roosevelt did during the Great Depression, he would not hesitate to consider it.

McCain, on the other hand, is committed to an ideology of a smaller role of government.
With $10 trillion in debt and the possibility of a $1 trillion annual deficit, the country could benefit from hearing all ideas from all points of view.

The possibilities of President Obama are large, but the times are tough, and four years will tell which of them become realities. But because the enormous potential for America to rebound, Obama’s could be a great presidency.

Post Script: It's the night before the big day and big things are happening. Obama's grandmother has passed away hours before election day. McCain's campaign is pulling out all the stops, with help from outside groups airing ads calling Obama "radical" and "risky" and stating that he will project military weekness to America's enemies. Desperate and disgraceful stuff. I'm not sure if I can handle the day I've been stressing about for four years. I will hopefully be liveblogging tomorrow from Burlington, Vermont.

Off to Virginia...

2008-10-31T01:56:00.002-04:00

So, once again, I have driven south to do what cannot be done sitting on my couch with my laptop, yelling at the TV over something that angered me on CNN.

Like the day I drove to New Hampshire to give Hillary a hand almost a year ago, I've taken off to Northern Virginia to help bring change to America. This time, I brought three friends, three fellow agents of change, and we're in for the "Get Out The Vote" weekend of a lifetime.

I will write about it when i get back next week, but for now, yes we can. Oh, yes we can.

Obama Loses - 2.8 Days Later

2008-10-25T14:02:00.004-04:00

Perhaps to a fault, there is a great amount of emotional investment in the result of the November 4th American presidential election. A wounded liberal America and Democratic Party have been resurrected by an unpopular Republican president and a failing economy. Disenfranchised and cynical minorities and younger voters have been inspired by Barack Obama’s rise. A world that saw America in a negative light during a disastrous Bush Administration fawns over Obama and is poised to change its mind.

With a week left until Election Day and a significant lead for Obama in the polls, how would people react if Obama still lost?

November 7, 2008 – The American public reached a near-chaotic state of polarization yesterday as it attempted to understand and react to the surprising and controversial victory of Senator John McCain in Tuesday’s presidential election.

African-American communities, left-wing groups and supporters of Senator Barack Obama rioted in major cities across the country. Claims of mass racism and conspiracy were seen on signs and heard in chants as tens of thousands in Chicago, Washington D.C. and Philadelphia took to the streets.

There was no masking their anger and disbelief at how Democrat Barack Obama could lose after being up ten points in the national polls. John McCain won the Electoral College with 277 votes to 261 for Obama after razor-thin wins in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida; all states Obama led in before Election Day.

Numerous reports of voter suppression and anonymous racially charged anti-Obama automated phone calls in key states have triggered many of their reactions to McCain’s victory. Campaign strategists and their legal teams have warred over the last two days as voters who were turned away from the polls testified for the media. In some Ohio counties, thousands of voters were reportedly refused the right to vote for various reasons, and counts are still being disputed.

African-American leaders who feared the effects of Obama’s race prior to the election have accused election officials and the Republican Party of race-based voter intimidation, as they did during the 2000 election aftermath in Florida.

“There is clear evidence that there was a systematic effort by forces opposed to Obama to stoke racial fears as well as dull African-American turnout,” said Reverend Al Sharpton during a television appearance.

Racial tensions were accompanied by political tensions, as liberal groups rapidly mobilized online to inundate the blogosphere as well as the mainstream media with evidence to support their claim of an organized conspiracy to steal the election from Obama. The evidence circulating included rumours of electronic voting machines rigged to choose McCain, unexplained voting delays in heavily Democratic counties, and the automated “robocalls.”

Some of the enraged groups turned to violence. One of the more radical anti-war groups confronted election officials conducting re-counts in Philadelphia, according to the Associated Press.

The democratic candidate vowed to contest the results, but attempted to calm his furious supporters. “Although this fight is not over, I strongly urge my supporters to conduct themselves peacefully, so as we do not lose sight of our goal,” said Senator Obama at a press conference in Chicago.

But some in the media were extremely pessimistic about the political ramifications. “This is a disaster,” claimed CNN analyst Paul Begala. “This is not only a bad day for America, but this could very well mean the destruction of the Democratic Party. They were handed this election on a silver platter and they still blew it.”

The sheer surprise of the election results has convinced some evangelical Christians divine intervention was at work. “Although John McCain has not yet proven he plans to do the Lord’s work, God has spoken and has struck down the idea of Barack Hussein Obama and his extremist reign over the Lord’s greatest nation,” said Televangelist Pat Robertson. He has drawn sharp criticism for his remarks.

Although the election saw the highest turnout of younger voters in decades, voting for Obama two to one over McCain, the results may have increased their cynicism. “Everyone feels like the system is rigged and they wasted their time,” said Sarah Saccany, President of the Ohio Young Democrats.

The United States’ image abroad may have also been hurt once again, with foreign media ridiculing American democracy yesterday as they had in 2000. Most of the reaction throughout the world appeared to see the result and particularly the potential of a Sarah Palin presidency as a definitive sign of the end of American global dominance.

My Canadian Television Debut

2008-10-23T18:41:00.003-04:00

I was interviewed by CTV Montreal on the US election today in my first official TV appearance as a political commentator!
See the video HERE
(Click on the video icon)

I talked about the state of the race two weeks from election day. I was fairly nervous before but overall it was an awesome experience. I was also pretty stoked to briefly share the green room with Hockey Night In Canada legend Dick Irvin. They had me in the newsroom looking into a camera with an earpiece in my ear, listening to the questions. I couldnt even see a screen with the broadcast on, and it was live!

Colin Powell endorses Obama, steals from my column

2008-10-19T22:59:00.002-04:00

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell on Meet The Press this morning:

I'm also troubled by, not what Senator McCain says, but what members of the party say. And it is permitted to be said such things as, "Well, you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim." Well, the correct answer is, he is not a Muslim, he's a Christian. He's always been a Christian. But the really right answer is, what if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer's no, that's not America. Is there something wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be president? Yet, I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion, "He's a Muslim and he might be associated terrorists." This is not the way we should be doing it in America.

This is the exact message I conveyed in yesterday's column. I'm not actually saying he took it, i'm just happy that its being talked about.

Full video of the endoresement:

I don't even know where to start on how meaningful this endorsement is. Everyone should watch it.

Campaigns tolerating cultural ignorance

2008-10-17T19:07:00.004-04:00

“I can’t trust Obama. I have read about him and he’s not…he’s an Arab,” said the elderly woman to Senator McCain.

“No ma’am,” replied the Senator. “He’s a decent family man.”

McCain was praised in the media and by Obama's campaign for correcting the woman without hesitation. But what no one seems to have picked up on was what an insult McCain's wording was to anyone of Arabic descent. The idea that Arabs are immoral or untrustworthy was an underlying prejudice that went completely unnoticed in the media. The answer should have been ““No ma’am, but even if he were it wouldn’t matter.”

Quick wording during a rally is not grounds for accusing McCain of xenophobia or racism, and you can't expect American politicians to worry about pandering to Arab swing voters. But this prejudice can still have an effect on an impressionable public, and it reveals how American political dialogue has devolved into tolerance of racism, xenophobia and narrow-mindedness.

It's a long-standing stereotype that Middle America has an unhealthy level of cultural ignorance. In reality this situation exists in most countries, so it's unfair to broadly label Americans as ignorant, but there is plenty of evidence that the election campaigns aren’t helping.

On the issue of race, the official strategy is to bill Obama as a politician who transcends it. An unofficial strategy that has been visible is to highlight his Kansan half and downplay his African half. Obama speaks of his single mother and the role she played in his upbringing, and of his World War II veteran grandfather. One voter was quoted as saying they would not vote for a black president, so they planned to vote for Obama’s white half. To the question of Obama’s race, the answer should not be “he’s actually half white,” but “what’s wrong with a black president?”

It appears that race will effect this election, to some extent. There have been many Americans who have expressed a fear that it would be unwise to elect Barack Obama because he would be assassinated by remnants of the Ku Klux Klan before his inauguration. There have been more that have openly opposed Obama's candidacy due to his race.

There are also widespread fears that even more Americans who won't admit their racism to pollsters or the media will express it in the privacy of the ballot box. This, however, should be distinguished from the Bradley effect, which is where white voters tell pollsters they support the black candidate because of a fear of being perceived as racist, even though they plan to vote for the white candidate on non-racial grounds.

On the issue of religion, a year's worth of mysterious e-mails being circulated all over the United States claimed proof that Obama is not only connected to terrorist organizations in Africa, but also a Muslim.

On the campaign trail, Obama has repeatedly had to convince voters of his Christian faith and deny any significant connection to Islam. The larger issue, which has gone unnoticed, is the utter demonizing of Islam itself that results from such a dialogue.

In the years since Sept. 11, knowledgeable leaders, scholars, and journalists have worked to help the world understand the difference between moderate Islam and Islamic extremism. In this campaign, the words Islam and Arab have become synonymous with terrorism and evil, allowing the idea of a Muslim president to incite fear in voters.

Hillary Clinton earned some votes during the primaries because of that fear. The official Clinton response was always that Obama was a Christian, but the American public would have been better served by the idea that a President’s religion shouldn’t be relevant, provided they honored the separation of church and state.

The McCain campaign, with the help of friendly 527s, Political Action Committees (PACs) and media like Fox News, are stoking the fires. Although Senator McCain himself is not contributing to it, the message coming from his side has been attacking Obama's patriotism, connecting him to terrorism, and generally promoting his "otherness."
Likely a symptom of such campaigning, a couple of peaceful Obama supporters who attended a recent rally for Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin to have their voices heard were promptly assaulted physically and verbally by McCain-Palin supporters. The two young men were called "traitors" and "anti-American," and were physically attacked by a horde of seniors, according to the Boston Globe.

Cultural ignorance is on the rise for the moment, but perhaps, if he wins, the ignorant in America will finally see that the black man with a scary middle name, and a childhood in the predominantly Muslim country of Indonesia, isn't the boogieman they've been reading about.

See: Colin Powell endorses Obama, steals from my column