Back from Buffalo!!!!
The 2003 Young Democrats of America National Convention is in the books, and what a four days it was! The fun kicked off Thursday, August 14, with an electrifying opening address by ex-Cincinnati mayor, Congressional candidate, and current ringmaster-er, host-of what he himself calls "the stupidest show on TV": Jerry Springer. His speech, a mix of self-deprecating humor, righteous anger, was frequently interrupted by thunderous applause and the familiar chant, "Jer-ry!" Jer-ry!" (I must here confess that even I, an avowed nonfan of the carnival of the macabre that is Springer's show, got into the act.) Friday, YDA luncheon-goers were treated to a speech by New York Senator, best-selling author-and former Young Republican-Hillary Rodham Clinton. The highlight of the weekend came on Saturday, when Gov. Howard Dean brought the house down in the Buffalo Convention Center with his afternoon address. Dean's website has a photo gallery from his speech, as well as a link to an LA Times article about the event.
To top it all off, yours truly was elected Southeast regional representative to the Disability Issues Caucus of the YDA (DICYDA), joining fellow Dean blogger Howie Kent (Dean for Deaf America) on that caucus' executive committee.
Knoxville Dean MeetUp featured in Vines column; less than 24 hours til Buffalo!!!!
Yesterday's column by Knoxville News Sentinel political columnist Georgiana Vines is all about our most recent Dean MeetUp. Check it out!
38 hours and change til Buffalo!!!!
Nothing much to report tonight, other than I'm a day and a half from arriving in Buffalo, NY, for the 2003 YDA National Convention! (Scheduled "wheels down": 1:49 p.m. Wednesday afternoon.) I'm not sure if I'll have ready access to a computer there. so tomorrow night's entry may be the last for a week.
Another great article on Dean; 3 days til Buffalo!!!!
Howard Dean is "the buzz candidate of summer 2003," according to an article in today's Baltimore Sun..
"Where do people get the idea Howard Dean's a liberal?"
So reads the subtitle of "Establishments and Outsiders," Al Hunt's Wall Street Journal op-ed debunking the standard D"L"C talking point about our Dr. Dean. A definite must-read!
Poll: Democratic establishment not very popular; 5 days til Buffalo!!!!
A poll by the Pew Research Center for People and the Press shows that only 38% of Americans think that the Democratic Party establishment-you know, the D"L"C guys, the same people who themselves rarely breathe without taking a poll-does a "good" or "excellent" job of standing up for ordinary people, vs. 60 % who think it does a "fair" or "poor" job. Good news, perhaps, for an antiestablishment candidate like, say, Howard Dean? We'll see...
MeetUpers write to N.H. voters; 1 week til Buffalo!!!!
Tonight I attended my local Dean MeetUp, whjere we wrote leeters to undecided voters in New Hampshire, exactly five months and three weeks before that state's first-in-the-nation primary. As of this writing, over 75,000 people-three times as many as when I signed up in May-are signed up on Dean's MeetUp site.<./p>
The Gov. blows 'em away on "LKL"; 8 days til Buffalo!!!!
Gov. Dean was on Larry King Live lats night and he was pretty awesome, although there was at least one awkward moment when the "King of Talk" threw his guest a curveball on the subject of gay marriage. You can read the transcript here.
Dean wins the newsmag Triple Crown and storms into Lone Star Country (well, at least onto its TV's); 9 days til Buffalo!!!!
It's a red-letter day, Dean fans! In addition to the story in U.S. News (which I linked to in Saturday's blog entry), new issues of Newsweek and Time hit newsstands today with our very own Dr. Dean as cover boy. Also, today marks the debut of the Governor's new TV ad in Austin, TX.
By the numbers: 250,000+ Americans for Dean; 69,000+ on Meetup for Dean; 10 days til Buffalo!!!!
According to today's entry on Blog for America, 251,823 of our fellow fed-up Americans have signed up for the Dean campaign (compared with 228,422 just two days ago), while the Dean Meetup site boasts 69,806 signees-and we're still five and a half months away from Iowa. Hmmm...do you think word just might be getting around about this Dean guy? ;-)
The Doctor prepares to invade enemy territory; Knoxville mobilizes for Madeline; 11 days til Buffalo!!!!
U.S. News & World Report has an excellent article on the Dean campaign and its imminent airing of a new TV ad in Austin, TX-Bush country-beginning this Monday. The ad will be financed with part of the proceeds from an online fudraiser, held July 25-28, in which Dean supprters nearly doubled the $300,000 take by Vice President Dick Cheney at a Columbia, SC, funraiser on the 28th.
Closer to home, about a hundred Knoxville progressives, including this blogger, today attended a rally at the Knox Expo Center for mayoral candidate Madeline Rogero. A former tqo-term Knox County Commissioner; executive director of Dolly Parton's Dollywood Foundation and the University of Tennessee Community Partnership Center; and most recently the founder of Knoxville's Promise, the local affiliate of Colin Powell's America's Promise, Madeline, who I've been privileged to meet several times, has an outstanding record of public and community service that would be an asset to her as our next mayor. She's up against a much-better-financed opponent, but hey, so's Howard Dean, and that minor detail certainly hasn't slowed him down!
Welcome to the Dean Zone; 12 Days til Buffalo!!!!
This is the very first entry in my brand new blog about progressive politics in general and the 2004 Presidential campaign of Dr. Howard Dean in particular. Although he's been actively seeking George W. Bush's job since May, 2002, Dr. Dean has managed in the span of a few short months to catapult from asterisk status to the top tier of Democratic contenders, thanks partly to the largest grassroots Presidential campaign in U.S. history, and partly to his vow to reclaim our republic from special interests and $2,000-a-plate fundraisers.
Now a little bit about me. My name is Keith Odom, i'm 24 years old, and I live in Knoxville, Tennessee. I'm also a hard-core liberal Democratic activist, of the type recently labeled "out of touch" by the so-called Democratic "Leadership" Council. (Someday, however, I'm gonna have to thank those guys; if it weren't for that stupid memo they put out last May, I might never have gotten involved with the campaign of the supposedly "unelectable" Dr. Dean.) And less than a couple of weeks from now, I'll join thousands of other young Democratic activists in Buffalo, New York, for the 2003 Young Democrats National Convention. Plus over the next several months I'll be documenting on this very blog all of my activities with the Dean campaign as we "take America back!"
