Politics
Entries related to things political.
Investigative Blogging
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 11/04/2004 - 16:07When I, and several others, received press credentials from the Democrats to blog from their national convention this summer, many people complained that we weren’t real journalists. That is true. I have not been to J school. Nor do I make any pretense at being a journalist. I tend to think of myself as more of an activist and an op-ed writer.
That said, I have a great respect for the profession of journalism, and I believe that bloggers can learn a lot from journalists. Today, I received a call from a friend who is a retired investigative reporter. She believes that given the current economics of the news industry an insufficient amount of investigative reporting is being done. She would like to see some sort of grassroots fund to support investigative reporting.
Sleepless Ramblings
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 11/03/2004 - 12:41(Originally published in Greater Democracy)
It is 9:30 in the morning. Last night, we were up until about 2:00 as we went from one election party to another. Fiona is with her grandparents, so we had the opportunity to sleep a little bit late. However, the pets wanted to be fed, and there is still too much adrenaline in the system. I have a pretty bad headache, and no coffee yet.
If I ramble, or seem incoherent, I apologize.
I’ve scanned various blogs and emails. I have over six hundred unread emails. It will take a little time to get my thoughts together, but I will offer a few random first thoughts.
My biggest concern had been that if Kerry did not receive a clear mandate, there is a serious chance that the United States will experience social unrest worse than the sixties. Kerry has not received such a mandate. The battle lines are drawn in Florida and Ohio. We shall see what the next developments will be. Already, I’m finding the words ‘bloodshed’ in emails. As I re-read my post, the words ‘four dead in Ohio’ come to mind.
Kim's Victory
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 11/03/2004 - 10:31Last night was a trying night for us. We had been up since four or five in the morning, standing at the polls and running a GOTV effort out of our house. It was hard work, but it was a lot of fun.
We were hoping that the results would be coming in fairly early, and we went to Greenwich headquarters first. Unfortunately, the results were slow in coming in. A friend called us and said that she had seen on the television that Kim had gotten 49% of the vote. We were very excited, because the Republicans outnumber the Democrats two to one. As the more Republican areas started reporting, the numbers dropped to 35%. In the end we believe Kim got about 38% of the vote.
Election Day
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 11/02/2004 - 05:55It is four thirty in the morning. The cat woke me up asking for an early breakfast. Our alarm clocks are set to go off at five, so I figured I am up for the duration, and a long duration I expect it to be.
It feels a lot like Christmas right now, all of the planning and anticipation. I was up last night getting the house all prepared and decorated for today's Get Out the Vote activities.
There was a meeting last night at the local Democratic Headquarters on how to run an effective GOTV effort, and they run a great operation in Stamford.
I've been spending a lot of time at headquarters, so I'm way behind on email, blog entries, and general online socializing.
Saturday Night Update
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 10/30/2004 - 21:35It has been a long couple of days. I am home decompressing before I pick up one of my daughters from a Halloween party. I am reading blogs and emails, and putting together this post.
As an aside, I am currently over 300 email messages behind. I haven’t been to BlogExplosion or the MOOs in quite a while. Hopefully I can catch up a little bit before crashing.
Yesterday, I created turf maps for much of Stamford. (See my entry here and here for some of my comments on political map making).
This morning, I stopped at Greenwich Democratic Headquarters and dropped off a box of walk cards for Kim’s campaign. Hopefully, a lot of them will get distributed over the next 72 hours.
