Why didn’t we hire a community organizer ages ago?

It looks like President-elect Obama will be taking his grass roots organizing strategies with him to the white house.  The day after he was elected, this site: www.change.gov was up and running.  Take a look around.  One of the first things I noticed was a link to something called the GSA Transition Directory (linked two places on the home page of change.gov).  This site is not designed for the public, it is designed for newly elected or appointed officials and their staff to get aquanted with their new jobs.  Clearly, Obama would like us to think of ourselves as part of his staff.

He is using technology in very smart ways.  He is thinking like an organizer. The thing about organizers is that the more people they can involve, the better.

I will come out and say that I have never believed it is possible to have a true participatory democracy with 305,000,000 people.  This web site is just a start, but it is an important one.  President-elect Obama and his team may prove me wrong.

When you didn’t used to believe in something, and now you do, you are a convert. I am a convert today.  I didn’t believe in America before.  I didn’t have a sense that it could heal. So I am a convert.  Today, I guess I am a born again American.

I have voted and I am actually pretty emotional now.  I have, of course, categorized my hope into 3 seperate thoughts.

1. I am hopeful for a President that will be, as Clinton was, a strong leader and a respected presence in the world.  He will work with both parties and be the uniting figure the Bush said he would be.  I am hopeful that Obama will be an even better president than Clinton was.
2. I am hopeful that we will turn a corner concerning race today by electing the first black president of the United States.  It will be a sign that my generation and those that come after me will finally do away with racism, subtle or otherwise.
3. I am hopeful that this election marks the death throws of the Republican Party as it is right now.  I am hopeful that by getting elected and doing a good job, Obama will help us usher in the end of this kind of Republican.  I am hopeful that the Republican party will rebuild itself as a worthy partner and opponent in discourse.

These hopes may be dashed tomorrow.  I might read this next week and think it is folly.  But for now, it feels pretty good.

My dream last night:

I leave class to be told by my arch nemesis in the grad office that my defense is at 9pm that day.  I have just begun my research for my thesis, and am in no way prepared for a defense.  I was under the impression my defense would be at the end of next semester.

I run to the library and frantically print things out.  I run back to my desk, thinking it is about 7pm and I have 2 hours.  I get to my desk, and my clock says 9:35 pm.  I assume it is daylight savings, and that it is 8:35pm.  Shit. I have 25 minutes to prepare for the defense of a thesis I have not even begun to write.

My arch nemesis (who doesn’t even exist in real life) tells me that my adviser was looking for me.  I discover that my computer clock was indeed right, and it is 9:35pm.  I have missed my defense.

I wake up in a cold sweat.

Like so many who suffer from OCED (Obsessive Compulsive Election Disorder) I’ve become addicted to the daily poll updates from fivethirtyeight.com.  Each day Nate Silver, who is apparently a well known baseball statistician, provides commentary on the daily polls.  He gives a table of all of the major polls and offers a thoughtful discussion on how they came to their numbers.  Millions (mostly dems, I’m sure) follow his site, eagerly awaiting the statistical analysis he can provide.

His analysis offers more than just comfort about the election, and more than just a way to understand these polls.  It offers a view into the scientific process.  I’ve spent the past year studying the disconnect between science and society.  It has been approached differently under different titles, ranging from ’science literacy’ to ‘public engagement with science,’ but there have been few, if any, examples in which a group of people were so eager to understand something so completely.

And the story Nate Silver tells them is not the glossed over, clean, and CORRECT version of science they are used to.  It is the messy version in which validity is separated from correctness.  He takes his readers into the minds of the pollsters, he talks about how they did their sampling and why they made the choices they made.  He tells us that these are valid ways of coming up with these numbers, but that doesn’t mean the numbers are going to be right.  He also calls bullshit when a pollster uses measurements he doesn’t agree with, and he explains why he thinks it is bullshit.

I think Silver has opened a black box here.  I think that if there is a way, those of us in the Public Understanding of Science game should jump on this bandwagon.  The lesson for the public, and for us, is that talking about processes instead of process, giving the actual debate, could open up some closed lines of communication.  That could lead to more trust.

Of course I could be full of shit.  The only people going to fivethirtyeight.com could be pretty educated people who want to know if Obama will will.  But what if Silver ran the same kind of site for something that appeals to different people, like baseball stats.  I have no idea how they work, but if they are anything like the stats he is running now, they could help start a rich conversation about how different statisticians get different numbers.

I saw this tonight, and though it doesn’t resemble my own story at all, it reminded me of how much I love my husband, and how excited I am to grow old with him.  It is just beautiful.

A SHORT LOVE STORY IN STOP MOTION from Carlos Lascano on Vimeo.

This post is from Ian Gurvitz on the Huffington Post.  It pretty much sums up how I am feeling about all of this right now.  I’d love to see a group of intellectuals named Joe to form Joe the Intellectual rallies.

I’m Joe, too.

And by the way, I lived in one of those anti-American cities that Palin doesn’t think are REAL America in 2001.  We were American enough to be bombed by people who actually DO hate America.

So, to quote Jon Stewart, “Fuck you.”  “Fuck all y’all.”

We downloaded templates for these pumpkins and had a great time carving them last night.

The only people with McCain yard signs in this whole town live next to us, and there are no Obama signs left at Dem HQ in Ithaca. So we improvised.  And we got roasted pumpkin seeds, a bbq, some good music, and a lot of fun out of the event.

The fact that the CNN truth squad finds no false claims in the Obama campaign’s Keating Five film and ad campaign tells me that while the McCain campiagn is grasping at straws like Ayers to show Obama’s poor judgment and paint him as risky, Obama’s campaign is calling on facts.

The Keating film is still negative campaigning, but it is even handed and lets the facts speak for themselves. The McCain ads break the number one rule of good writing: they tell instead of show. They throw out a lot of accusations based only a few actual details. There is no there there. If they had anything more than smoke and mirrors, they wouldn’t have to say Obama is risky, they could show it.

On the other hand, the Keating film shows very clearly why McCain is risky, giving Obama not only the ethical high ground, but also the stylistic advantage. When there is substance, you can write a good story. When there is none, you can only level vague accusations.