I just got back a little while ago from the opening of the Obama for President campaign headquarters in Arlington. There were about 200 people there, including Obama campaign deputy political director Yohannes Abraham, Rep. Jim Moran, and former DNC chair (and presumed future Virginia gubernatorial candidate) Terry McAuliffe. A few others in the crowd were State Senator Adam Ebbin, Arlington County Revenue Commissioner Ingrid Morroy, Arlington County Board members Chris Zimmerman and Mary Hynes, Arlington Precinct Operations Chair Kip Malinosky, ACDC Deputy Chair Maureen Markham, former DPVA Executive Director Levar Stoney, former House of Delegates candidate Stephanie Clifford, and many others, including Brad Doggett on guitar.
Substantively speaking, this was the 13th Obama for President field office opening in Virginia, as compared to a grand total of ZERO for Willard “Mitt” Romney. Clearly, the Obama campaign is emphasizing the “ground game,” aka the grassroots, while the Romney campaign is almost exclusively a top-down, super-rich-donor, “SuperPAC” smear campaign. Right there, that should tell you all you need to know about these two candidates and their campaigns. If that’s not enough for you, though, imagine – as Jim Moran explained at length and in detail – how horrendous a Ryan/Romney/Republican budget would devastate America’s middle class and working people generally. If you think income inequality is bad now, and that the recovery from the Bush/Republican Recession has been bad enough, imagine how awful it would be if we handed Republicans control in Washington, DC? Not to mention their hostility towards women, towards the 99% of Americans who aren’t super-rich, towards Latinos, towards African Americans, towards separation of church and state, towards clean energy, towards the environment, towards government, etc. Like one of those horror movies, the message here should be: do NOT even THINK of going in there!
In stark contrast, President Obama has a long, long list of accomplishments, including turning the economy around, devastating Al Qaeda, courageously going after (and getting) Osama bin Laden, ending “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,” putting strong fuel economy standards in place to help wean us off of our “oil addiction” (as Bush called it, but did nothing about of course), signed historic health care reform into law, etc, etc.
I mean, seriously, why is this even a contest? Well, one reason is that Karl Rove, the Koch brothers, and others on the right will throw hundreds of millions of dollars in coming months to lie, distort, and smear. Sadly, many Americans will fall for this. Which is why the Obama campaign needs to beat them with people power. So, if you haven’t done so already, sign up to volunteer with your nearest Obama field office (and again, there are 13 in Virginia, so you should be able to find one), and get involved! Thanks, and go Obama!
P.S. I’ll be uploading video of Terry McAuliffe, Jim Moran, and Yohannes Abraham shortly.
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