I don't care if you are a firefighter and I don't care that 9/11 happened, if you are a sexist pig, you are a sexist pig, and I would take that exact same logic to so called progressives acting sexist towards someone like Sarah Palin. What is sexist is sexist. Your wearing the progressive label does not change that. And stop cashing on 9/11 that way. That is wrong and disrespectful. Palin has taken plenty of wrong stands, like in Arizona. Got to beat her on ideas. Acting sexist can not be in the arsenal.
We have been in the water collecting part since Fall 2009. Those 14 days will be when the surge happens, I think. I am hoping Maloney agrees to at least one debate in August, sooner the better, but I am not counting on it. She can't do zero debates but I think she will do one as late as possible, likely week one in August. And we will have our five minutes at the September NY Tech MeetUp, first Tuesday. That is 800 plus young professionals. That could create a social media frenzy for us. Just what we need.
Those 14 days we are going to have reverse problems/challenges to what we have had so far. What do we do with all this media attention? What do we do with all these new volunteers that keep showing up at the office and getting in our way? What do we do with all this new money people are donating online? We can't save any of it for post September 14. How do we spend fast? Maloney just came out saying she wants a second debate. What now? Nancy Pelosi is on the phone. I can see Barack Obama calling up during the days after September 14, or as early as September 15.
Pollsters don't talk to the 18-38 crowd. They are the cellphones only crowd. And they do very little voice on those phones anyways. That's our surge crowd. That's women who want to be able to take equality for granted and men who get physically uncomfortable around sexist jokes. It is about The New Woman. It is about a new generation. This generation helped Obama get power. This generation is at some point going to want to get power for itself. And that starts now.
I expect us to ride a steep curve those two weeks. Now is the time to prepare.
I experimented with two hours of phone calls earlier in the evening. Early evening on a week day truly is the best time to be making phone calls. But only slightly better. My conclusion is that all times are good. You can't be calling too early or too late at night. But other than that.
And so I have a new appreciation for my first choice: Sunday afternoons. Best would be to do both, but if I could do only one, it would be Sunday afternoons.
I have learned it is important to leave full voice mails. For most voters that call might be the one live interaction they had with the campaign before they showed up to vote.
Phone calls can't be the only thing you are doing, but they are a very important thing to be doing. And you can make phone calls every day. I think you can make 50 phone calls per hour. 10 people doing that for five hours is 2500 calls.
You talk to a few strong supporters and they make up for all those people who did not pick up the phone.
One guy I talked to, all he wanted to know was if Reshma was running against Maloney. In that case I am voting for her, he said. Another woman, when I asked her what issues she was interested in, she listed them all and said, aren't we all? I said, no. Most people are not.
Sample voice mail: "Hi, this was calling on behalf of Reshma Saujani. Reshma is running for Congress. You can learn more about her at her website at reshma2010.com. That would be r-e-s-h-m-a-2-0-1-0-dot-com. And please vote for her on September 14."
Dress Code
I got two more Reshma 2010 shirts. Now I have three. I think I am going to wear them a whole lot. Black shoes, black pants, black jacket, and the red, white and blue Reshma 2010 shirt. Actually I think I am going to wear them every time I show up at the Reshma 2010 headquarters, every time I show up for a Reshma 2010 event leading to September 14.
After some trial and error, I got a dress code now. I am all set.
Tomorrow I am going to a tech event in Dumbo. I think I am going to show up in my Reshma 2010 dress code.
A Marathon Race
A congressional campaign is a marathon race. Got to pace yourself.
We got a great candidate, a great staff, great momentum. We are on our way.
Reshma Saujani has already overtaken Hillary at this blog, and she is closing in fast on Obama. I don't see me renaming this blog in Reshma's name, I would not want to slight the most powerful man on earth, (Why I Am Pressing The Like Button On Al Sharpton) but if I were to rename it, it would be inspired by some Meryl Streep movie. (Reshma Aur Shera) Do you have any suggestions? Or I could rename it Pappu, my family's name for me.
Since June 2008 I have not followed Obama daily for a few hours each day like I did before that for a year and a half. So I don't exactly have my finger on the pulse. But following the headlines has been as good as seeing hill top to hill top.
The political landscape as it stands right now is a mystery to me. There are few things I can say for sure, but I can try and attempt and make a few guesses.
On immigration I don't know what to say. This issue is hard for me because (1) it touches me at the bones level, (2) I know Obama feels deeply about this issue, it touches him almost at the bones level, he understands it to be a civil rights issue, and (3) I would not want him to lose the House and the Senate over it.
How do you kill the snake without breaking the stick?
I first argued that immigration has to be saved for 2011. Then I argued it perhaps needs to be worked on now. Now I am thinking it has to be worked on now but only if work on it can be completed in two months. If you can be done and over with by the end of September, start work on it now. If not, save it for 2011. 2009: Stimulus. 2010: Wall Street Reform. 2011: Immigration. 2012: Deficit.
So how to keep the House and the Senate? Obama could do it because he has done this before. He has defied history before. There was no rule in any book anywhere that said a black man could end up in the White House.
There is a rule in the books that says a president does not get to keep the Congress during his first mid term elections. Defying this rule should be much less challenging than that first rule. After all, race is America's original sin.
There are a few pointers I could give.
I like Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, but it is the president who has to step up. This has to be his election. He needs to campaign and campaign vigorously. He needs to treat 2010 like it were 2012.
He has to make the point that had he been the president from 2000 to 2008, there would have been no Iraq War and there would have been no Wall Street meltdown. Had there been no Wall Street meltdown, there would have been no bailout and no stimulus bill. The stimulus bill was expensive, but minus that we would have been in the middle of a Great Depression right this moment. If you think 10% unemployment is ugly, try imagining a 25% unemployment.
The bailout was expensive but the banks already paid for it for the most part. The stimulus bill was expensive, but the economy will pay for it over time. That money did not go down the drain.
We can not run these deficits forever, but now is not the time to cut back. If we cut back now, we run the risk of running the economy to the ground all over again. The stimulus will have gone to waste.
The deficit will be eliminated, and that will happen while he is in the White House. But now is not the time.
Health care reform happened. That was a once in a century thing.
Wall Street has been reformed. That has been a once in a half century thing.
It makes no sense to take a winning team out of the league.
A hole that was almost a decade in the digging, I never promised to take you out of it in one year. We are not there yet fully, but we are on the right track, and we need to stay the course. Let me keep my team that has let me get this far. I have bigger and better things in mind that I want to do. And I need my team to stay with me.
I want the unemployment rate to come down to 5% from near 10% more than anybody else. And that is why I need your continued support. Just like the deficit will be eliminated on my watch, unemployment will be brought down to about 5% on my watch, but I need to keep at it. And I need to get to keep my team.
I think the Dems stand to keep the Senate right now, and they stand to keep the House, although I expect the margins to get slimmed, especially so in the House. But then we have three full months. And three full months are a long time. Three months are a long time for the political winds to blow. Obama could make them blow his way.
Obama's 2010 election effort has to be about the economy first, second and third. I can see him defying history "but the arc does not bend on its own."
I showed up for the Clean Tech event with an open, blank mind: Reshma 2010 Clean Tech Event July 27 Tuesday. Blank because I did not know much about clean tech at all. I had a few ideas, I could say a few buzz words, I could draw a few outlines. There is a slope: tech as in internet tech, then clean tech, then bio tech, I know the least about nano tech. If the next Reshma 2010 event is going to be on bio tech, I am going to spend a good few hours doing some serious reading online. I am going to do some homework.
It was that feeling that led me to ask the question I asked.
"I showed up for this event not knowing much about clean tech at all and so this has been a wonderful experience. It is so obvious Clean Tech is going to be a major source of much needed jobs for this city, this country, this world. But those jobs will not get created if certain political decisions are not made and those decisions will not get made if the politicians don't feel the pressure and the politicians will not feel the pressure if the voters, the citizens are not actively involved in the conversation, the discussion, and debate around clean tech, and a great way to do that would be to have Reshma Saujani and Carolyn Maloney do a debate on TV exclusively about clean tech, but I don't see that happening. Why are Reshma Saujani and Carolyn Maloney not debating clean tech on TV?"
The moderator looks at me and he gives me a perplexed look for about two seconds. This guy looks Indian, but he is all hostile to Reshma. He does not seem to realize Reshma is not the reason the debate is not taking place. Someone needs to point out he is knocking on the wrong door. And so he says, "You need to take that question to Carol!"
The moderator started out saying he was Australian and that "American politics is baffling to me." If American politics is baffling to him, he should take a crack at Indian politics. JFK's ambassador to IndiaJohn Kenneth Galbraith, well esteemed in the intellectual circles of this country, went on record about "the imponderables of Indian politics."
The panel was a huge one. It could barely fit. It was an impressive panel. The flyer had details on each company and participating organization. I wish I had an electronic version so I could publish it at this blog. I might still type it out and publish the introductory paragraphs on the various companies and organizations that participated.
Off the bat the company that most fascinated me was Bodega Algae. It is "a developer of scalable algae photobioreactors. The closed continuous-flow reactors produce high-energy algal biomass for use in the production of biofuel."
I briefly got to talk to the Bodega representative, a MIT PhD, after the formal program was over. I told her how her company stood out for me of all companies on the list. And she shared some more info. One thing she shared alarmed me. The thinking in the energy industry seems to be that big oil names like Exxon will do biofuel as well because they have the distribution infrastructure. That was alarming to me. That would be like saying Google should have happened under Microsoft and Facebook should have happened under Google. That would totally stifle innovation. The thing to do is to make Exxon share their distribution infrastructure by law.
The political highlight of the event for me though happened before the formal program began. A Sara (not real name) walked over to me while I was talking to another Reshma 2010 intern that I had met once before. She introduced me as a "huge fan of your blog." She said she was a Reshma 2010 intern.
Sara is going to be a senior at high school soon. She said she lived on "the north side of town." I hope that means Upper East Side and not Westchester. The way she presented herself made me think she alone could deliver 50 votes. When I am talking about Reshma Saujani as The New Woman (Reshma Saujani: Top 10 Women To Watch In America), I am thinking about women like Sara.
She asked me if I would do a blog post on her. I hereby pledge to do a blog post on every Reshma 2010 intern and staffer who might express interest. All you have to do is schedule to sit down with me for an hour long interview at the Reshma 2010 headquarters, and let me take a few pictures of you with the others in the room. I like to take a few different pictures and then put them together as collages. That's my style.
I asked her about college applications and where she might want to go. She said she had visited Stanford.
"Me too. It is such a pretty campus," I said.
Sara told me she looked at both the Maloney and the Reshma campaigns before deciding on the Reshma campaign as the one she wanted to intern for. That is a good sign.
Also if high school students are reading my blog, I think I need to be more careful in terms of what I put out. I did not realize.
I have come to realize Sunday afternoons are perhaps not the best time to be making phone calls to voters. I asked Paul last Sunday and he suggested the best time might be weekdays from 5:30 PM to 7:30 PM.
My current professional status is that I am a pro blogger. Every day is like every other day to me. I could show up on a Sunday, or a Wednesday.
I got to meet a whole bunch of people, one of them was an Ashish. He said he was a friend of Reshma. You look familiar, I said. I think I might have seen him at the last Reshma 2010 tech event. I asked about his background.
"India."
"Where in India?"
"Jamshedpur."
"They broke up Bihar against my wishes, but that makes you the sixth Bihari I have met in America."
"I am a Punjabi."
"I once got an email from a Punjabi who thought I was one. Paramendra can sound like Parmendar." (Bhangra, Cricket: Exotic To Me)
And Bhagat can sound like Bhagat Singh.
"I came to America when I was nine months old."
That was one remarkable nine month old, I thought.
I aimlessly walked out after the event was over. After whiling away in Union Square I decided to walk over towards Times Square. Up on Ninth Avenue I decide to go over to Central Park. It is amazing to me how well lit all parts of Central Park can be at night. That is a Third World perspective for you. I decided to go in for a walk. I stayed by the big road. That is another Third World perspective for you. Deep inside I came across two Chinese looking guys who asked which way to Fifth Avenue.
"I have no idea where I am at right now, or I could tell you," I said. Then I spotted the two two dimensional buildings of Columbus Circle and told them which way.
Deep in thought, I missed the 14th Street stop for change of train two times.
By the time I got home it was past midnight. My Harvard Law School graduate roomie had already called it a day. The dude shares a few other traits with Barack: he is black.
"See you soon" was Reshma's greeting to me towards the end of the event.
You bet. That might be as early as Wednesday evening.
This is not just a list of Democrats, there are Republicans on the list. This is not just a list of people running for public office either, although most are. And this is no regional list. Call me an ignorant male, but I did not recognize any other name on the list. Or maybe I am not that ignorant. This is not a list of people who are big today but will be big tomorrow.
I would not be surprised if her Netroots Nation appearance played a small role in getting her on the list. (Reshma Saujani At The Netroots Nation) The list was put together by a blogger, I believe. It is possible the blogger saw her in action in Vegas and then dug up background information on her and got impressed.
Reshma 2010 has echoes of Obama 08 for me, although I am clearly biased as one of Barack's earliest people in the city, and one of Reshma's staunchest supporters. Let's start with their names. They rhyme: Obama, Reshma.
Obama 08 put a major emphasis on field organizing. Reshma 2010 has been doing the same and has been making remarkable strides, "street by street, block by block." This is urban warfare.
Obama went to two top schools. Reshma went to three top schools.
Obama's style rested on positivity. Reshma's style is excellence.
Obama has done as much for race relations as anyone in history, but he has done so without holding talk marathons on race. Instead he will go ahead and pump billions into inner city schools. Reshma will contribute to gender in similar ways. Major strides will be made, big things will get done, and it will all feel normal. But there might not be big, specific talks on gender. Reshma Saujani is the embodiment of the New Woman.
Terri Sewell of Selma, the Democratic nominee for the 7th Congressional District seat, recently made the Next 10 Women to Watch in Politics in an online newspaper, PoliticsDaily.com
Columnist Patricia Murphy wrote the column the day before Sewell popped her competition, Shelia Smoot, in the Democratic primary to take the nomination. Sewell is No. 10 on the list.
Murphy notes “But no matter what happens, Sewell has already built a record of success that would have most high achievers calling it a day.”
She talks about Sewell’s Harvard education; her as the first black valedictorian at her high school. Sewell went to Princeton and named one of Glamor Magazine’s College Women of the Year — Oxford University in England and then her work as a corporate lawyer in New York and Alabama.
Others on the list:
1. Kristi Noem, the Republican nominee for the U.S. House from South Dakota; a member of the South Dakota House of Representaives.
3. Ginni Thomas, She’s the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who has founded a nonprofit lobbying and political-organizing group to appeal to people aligned with the tea party movement.
4. Alex Sink, is the top Democratic candidate for governor in Florida. She is originally from Mt. Airy, N.C. She is Florida’s elected state CFO and held that position since 206.
5. Debbie Wasserman Schultz is the incumbent from Florida’ 20th congressional district. She’s a Democrat and well respected in the House.
6. Mary Fallin is a Republican member of Congress from Oklahoma. She’s running for governor of the state, and if elected would be that state’s first female governor.
7. Susana Martinez is a Latina Republican running for governor of New Mexico.
8. Jaime Herrera is a state legislator in Washington running for Congress to replace retiring Congressman Brian Baird.
9. Reshma Saujani is a Democrat running for Congress on the East Side of New York.
I just did some thorough research online and have come to the conclusion that Barack Obama did not accept a dime of PAC money from the NRA when running for president in 2008. That makes Barack Obama the NRA's candidate, and progressives beware.
That has been the Carolyn Maloney camp's logic as applied to Obama 08.
Maloney has taken half a million dollars from the various Wall StreetPACs. Reshma Saujani has not taken a dime from them. But that still has not prevented the Maloney campaign from working day and night to paint Reshma as the Wall Street's candidate.
That is downright dishonest. No wonder people stay so cynical of people in Congress. When Maloney does what she does, that makes the entire Congress look bad.
That is demonization. That has racial overtones.
John Liu, the next Mayor of NYC, was on Wall Street before he got into politics. Ends up that is a good thing. That means you are smart, you can get things done. (John Liu: Mayor Of NYC: 2013)
The Maloney camp needs to stop the lie. They need to stop feeding the lie to the media. They need to stop feeding the lie to Chris Mathews.
Bhangra and cricket are very Indian. But they both remain exotic to me. I hear cricket is big in Nepal by now. But it wasn't when I was growing up. It was soccer, and volleyball in the hills. I am from the plains.
My mother's side of the family is Indian, Bihari to be particular. Because there are so many Indians out there, to claim the Indian identity is to claim humanity itself.
Getting my maternal uncles to read Nepali in their peculiar Indian accent was one of the fun things to do. Indians emphasize the syllables differently. Don't let the shared script between Nepali and Hindi fool you.
And in America, I have met a total of five Biharis so far. Meeting Indians in America is like meeting the French and the Germans and the British if you are perhaps Polish. The Tamils, Marathas, Gujaratis and Punjabis are all over the place. I have lost count of how many times some white person asked me, "Are you a Patel?" I have been left with the impression the Patels are a huge clan in America, perhaps the biggest of them all.
But the Indian identity is hugely scalable. I feel very Indian.
I was in Kathmandu in a boarding school for a decade of schooling. And I was living in Kathmandu right before I came to America. Eating dumplings is the best thing I learned in Kathmandu. (My Secret Sauce) A few weeks back I showed up at this place in Jackson Heights for some momo, Nepali word for dumplings. It is right by the train station on the way to Patel Brothers, same street. In the front you have a Bengali restaurant, in the back you have a Nepali/Tibetan corner. When I opened my mouth to order momo, the girl just burst out laughing. Later she explained she laughed because the idea of perfect Nepali coming out of a Bengali mouth was hilarious.
My first language is Maithili. Maithili and Bengali are the two languages closest to each other in the family of languages. I never actively learned Bengali but I can understand some of it. For my first few years in NYC, I lived in Little Bangladesh in Brooklyn, it is south of Prospect Park. I have walked every inch of that park.
When I would go out for grocery shopping, store owners would talk to me in Bengali. They simply assumed.
There are strong anti-India sentiments among the ruling elite of all small South Asian countries. But India is too big to do anything about it. And so who ends up bearing the brunt is Indian looking people who might be around, people like me. I feel like I had to come all the way to America to be able to claim my Indian identity.
I have never said no to the question Are You Indian while traveling through America's heartland/hinterland. For one, it's true. I was born in India, my mother is Indian, my hometown in Nepal is 10 miles from the Indian border. And it is a see through, walk through border. You simply walk over to India.
But I have not said no primarily to avoid having to explain who or what or where Nepal is. I prefer you google things up.
Once I met a Mexican who had never heard of India. "Too far? Too far?" He said. As in, is it so far away that I have never heard of it? But that is another story.
But even so you would routinely meet people who had that one Indian friend by the name of so and so. Would you by any chance know him/her? Over time I learned to give the right reaction. Say that one more time. Sorry, no, that name does not seem to ring a bell.
I am amused when Reshma Saujani gets referred to as a minority woman. There are so many of us, we are trying to control the population down there. Don't be calling us no minority.
One reason I like New York City so much is because it reminds me of both India and America at the same time. I love the city full package. Crowds, filth, everything.
Bhangra and cricket are exotic, Bollywood, though, is another story. I grew up watching Amitabh Bachchan.
Image via Wikipedia
Image via Wikipedia
Image via Wikipedia
Image via Wikipedia
