It seems that a disproportionately high number of the political conversations I overhear are at the gym. Maybe this is a sign that people are really starting to sweat over the Presidential race?

This time, it was a couple of guys on the weight machines. I had no choice but to eavesdrop (the leg press is rather centrally located).

"I tell you, she’s smart."

"Yeah?"

"She is. She knows her stuff. Every curve ball they’ve thrown at her, she’s been able to hit it right back. That girl’s somethin’ else."

"Yeah."

I know enough by now to know who it is they’re talking about.

"I tell you," says the first gentleman, a man in his mid-60s with erratic tufts of gray hair. "She’s us. She’s Middle America! She’s just like you and me. And that’s what we need in this country."

I fight the urge to say that, even if we ignore the more than $1 million she has in personal assets….and even if we ignore the strikingly un-Middle American wardrobe she’s been sporting of late… even then, maybe someone who’s "just like you and me" is not who we need in the second most important position in the executive branch of the whole system of government in the United States of America. Maybe a VP candidate should know a little more than, say, Joe the Plumber. Perhaps he or she should be…oh, I don’t know…marginally well-versed in matters of foreign policy, economics, etc. My friend Brad and I discussed this recently, and he brought up a valid point: Do we really want someone who’s just like us as Vice President of our country?

Instead, I stay focused on the leg press, biting my tongue. "She really is something," the man says, with reverence in his tone.

The other man is a little younger, with a classic brown mullet and a shirt that says "Proud to be an American" on the front. When he stands up to grab the squirt bottle, I see the back of his shirt: Osama Bin Laden in a turban, smack dab in the middle of a red bull’s-eye.

"I don’t know about McCain, though," this man says, making a valiant attempt at disinfecting the seat of the weight machine but really only managing to spread sweat/spray around with a towel. "I don’t know if I buy his spiel."

The older gentleman starts gesticulating wildly. "Do you shoot?"

"Just got my gun back," says the mullet-man, as my eyes are drawn again to the bull’s-eye on the back of his shirt. I can’t help but wonder who took his gun away.

"Well you might as well kiss it goodbye again if Obama gets into office. He’s gonna take away our Second Amendment rights."

At this point I am reminded of a commercial I heard on the radio a few days ago. "When Obama said we cling to guns and religion, it showed how out of touch he is with small-town America," a man with a thick country accent growls. "We love our God, and we love our guns!"

Sigh.

The grey-haired man tries a different approach with his conversation partner. "Have you seen Obama?" he asks in earnest, "Have you seen this guy? I tell you, I have a picture where they’re all doing the Pledge of Allegiance. Everyone else has a hand over their heart. And do you know what he’s doing?" He shakes his head in disbelief, as if he can’t believe what he’s about to say, even though he’s most certainly told this story twenty times before, at least. "He’s just standing there. Like this." He slouches with his arms crossed. "He’s just standing there! During the Pledge of Allegiance. And this man would be our Commander in Chief!" His less-than-enthusiastic listener is trying hard to focus on doing squats, so he’s at risk of losing his audience. "I have the picture," the older man says again, as if to prove his point.

In the meantime, I am at risk of losing my patience with this kind of ignorance. These sorts of tactics—scaring people, impugning Obama as an American citizen—seem base and sophomoric. Aren’t there enough official smears circulating already? Anonymous robocalls, literature accusing Obama of being a terrorist, emails that circulate about his Muslim heritage—and now this man is accusing Obama of a lack of patriotism. Doesn’t Barack’s little flag pin mean anything?

Of course this political gym rat shouldn’t bear all the blame. I am reminded of the man in Ohio that told my canvassing partner, John, "I’m voting for the American, like any American would do."

Or the woman who told me she didn’t like Barack’s name—it was too Muslim, and it scared her. "If he was named Bill," she said, "I’d probably vote for him."

Or the man in Pennsylvania who came right out and said why he wouldn’t be voting for Obama. "I’m prejudiced," he said, without a trace of regret.

Is this really our country?

Amidst the smears and the fear, I continue to hope. And, as a way of fighting back, I decided to raise my voice in the Los Angeles Times. As we slip headfirst into demagoguery and fear mongering, I still cling to my belief that, try as you might, You can’t smear hope.

I was all poised to write a funny post tonight. Had a humorous video prepped; was already chewing over appropriate captions in my head. Then, on the way home from the bookstore, I stopped to buy groceries at the local supermarket—whipping cream, a loaf of bread, and a mango. As I was leaving with my miscellaneous bunch of goods, something caught my eye in the parking lot. My “Obama '08” bumper sticker, bright white against my burgundy Honda, looked slightly amiss.

Someone had slashed my car.

That’s right: someone put a nice fat slash through my “O,” and squeezed in an “N” to the left.

I can’t decide whether to be entertained or enraged. Okay, so they didn’t cause me or my vehicle any bodily harm. But some unknown villain defaced my property in an attempt to belittle my beliefs. I find that mildly infuriating. In the midst of the vicious ongoing smear campaigns, my car has now been smeared, too.

So what? you might say. Somebody slashed your “O.” Big deal. But what’s next? Slashed tires? Slashed brake lines? As I drove out of the parking lot, I must admit: a slight shiver of fear ran through me as I placed my foot on the accelerator.

If I’d seen the culprit, you better believe I would have nailed him with my mango.

Throwing a mango would, of course, be an immature response lacking in finesse (though not in citrus). We’ve all had similar impulses, I’m sure. There’ve been a dozen times when I feel the sudden impulse to rip a McCain/Palin sign from someone’s front yard as I drive by. But the difference between me and the faceless attacker of my bumper sticker is this: I don’t act on that impulse. Why? Because I don’t believe shredding the dreams of our opponents—no matter how “harmless” the act may seem—adds anything of value to this race.

Screwing with someone’s bumper sticker is, admittedly, a puerile pursuit in infantile politics. And I’d like to say I’m not one to get incensed about a little purple marker. But there are people who are very angry in this election—obviously angry enough to put their hands (and their markers) where they don’t belong. I live alone in an isolated area. If someone decides they really don’t like Obama, what’s to keep them from following me home to wreak havoc on my house, my yard, myself?

I’ve had an Obama/Biden sign sitting in my trunk for weeks. I hadn’t put it up in front of my house, precisely because I didn’t want to draw attention to myself. Now my mind’s made up: it will remain hidden in my trunk for these remaining days leading up to November 4th, silent, safe, sad.

The paranoia ebbs and flows, but my ideological complaint stays constant. “No.” That’s the message my car is now advertising. How fitting. “Yes, we can,” says Obama, and all those who have been rejuvenated by his campaign. “No,” proclaims the coward who wields a purple marker masquerading as a world view. And now my innocent Honda is giving in to the wave of pervasive pessimism. Thank you, scribe whom I will never meet, for transforming my car into a coward, too.

I’ve heard several Pennsylvanians complain vociferously about their hunting rights. “Obama will take our guns!” they say, clamoring after that Second Amendment right to bear arms. These guys, in their cool aviator shades and hunting caps, are all about personal property. Maybe they’re the ones who carry purple markers around in the deep pockets of their cargo pants.

Well, I’m all about personal property, too. Like my car. The car that someone defaced tonight in a juvenile attempt to smear the man who has given me hope that I might be proud to be an American again. Attempting to slash through that hope with a nasty, nameless act? That’s not the kind of thing that makes me proud at all. And really, now…aren’t the official campaigns doing enough smearing of their own?

I tried to wash it white as snow. But can smears be made to vanish? You’ll have to see for yourself.

After I first noticed the bumper sticker, hands still full of whipping cream and mango, I started to climb back into my car, a little dumbstruck, oscillating between disbelief and fury. Out of my peripheral vision, I saw the woman standing by the station wagon next to me crane her neck around and look long and hard at the back of my car.

“Excuse me,” she said, walking toward my half-open door.

I bristled. Surely this was the fiend herself, back to view her dastardly deed and christen it with a smug comment. She was even lingering at the scene of the crime!

“Yes?” I said, ready to spit fire.

To my surprise, she smiled. “Where’d you get your Women for Obama/Biden sticker?” she asked, pointing to the other, untainted bumper sticker gracing the back of my car. “I’d love one.”

Swallowing my fiery spittle, I smiled back.

There may be hope yet.

“No,” say you, anonymous naysayer?

Well to that I say, “Hell, yes.”

A full ten days has passed since I last wrote—the price of a vacation in Puerto Rico, I suppose.

With a little detective work, I was able to find the political underbelly of PR. On a beach in Boquerón, I met Jim, an ex-pat who claimed he wasn’t (“To be an ex-patriot you have to leave the U.S.…”); he wasn’t voting, either. In Old San Juan, I saw an Obama sign in a front yard. In a club in Fajardo, I met a couple of young Obama supporters who were casting their votes as US citizens in New York.

But the Puerto Rican elections far eclipsed our presidential election; the countryside is literally blanketed with propaganda for senators, governors, and the like. What’s interesting, too, is that in PR, every sign is accompanied by a picture. You know how when we see political signs in people’s yards, they just have the name of the candidate? Well, in Puerto Rico, you NEVER see the name without the face featured as well. Some of the faces are rather comical—men with big bushy mustaches and bedroom eyes (and yes, most are men). But it’s interesting, always having that personal, face-association with the name. It gives one the feeling that you really know these people, that you’d have them over for a beachside barbecue of bacaito (fried cod) and lechon (pork) and go out back to smoke a stogie after the flan.

Now I am back home, and I’ve traded green plantains stuffed with crabmeat for eggs and home fries. That’s right: when I arrived back in the United States, I was ravenous for breakfast.

In my many travels, it is always essential that I find some place I can go to write, reflect, and, ideally, eat. In Cape Cod, I went to the library (sadly food-less). In Vermont, a brilliant bookstore/café rose to the occasion (excellent chai tea and muffins).

In Eastern Pennsylvania, diners are pretty much my only shot.

So today I grabbed my thinking gear and headed to the Chestnuthill Diner for French toast, scrambled eggs, and home fries.  I was supposed to go canvassing at 10 a.m., but I was fourteen minutes late and the group had left without me. When I squeezed into a booth this morning, I was still wearing my Obama button, a feeble attempt to assuage my guilt for sleeping in.

I quite like the Chestnuthill Diner. They have breakfast all day, cozy booths, and a bar—for when orange juice straight up just isn’t going to cut it. Since I’d tried their blueberry pancakes before, I only needed a quick glance at the menu. But something caught my eye.

“What’s a ‘pork roll’?” I asked my waitress.

“A pork roll?” She eyed my candidate button suspiciously. “Where you from, honey?”

“Texas,” I said, “so I guess I should know.”

She nodded her head in agreement. “Hey, Chad,” she accosted a patron at the next booth over. “How do you describe a pork roll?”

“It’s a roll, but it’s pork,” said Chad, shrugging his shoulders and forking a piece of steak and eggs into his mouth. “Ham’s better.”

The concept of a pork roll really wasn’t coming together in my mind.

“I’ll have the ham,” I said, pulling out my laptop as my waitress scurried away. From across the diner I heard whispers of, “That’s a laptop she’s got there.” “What?” “A laptop, Hank!” I smiled to myself.

When my waitress, Marcia, returned with a steaming plate of food, she noted my button.

“Who do you think won the debate on Wednesday?” she asked, her hand on her hip.

“Neither,” I said, cautiously cutting into a plump slice of French toast. Wondering what the right answer was, I pandered a bit, avoiding the question. “I mean, I thought Obama did a better job of directly answering the questions, and McCain was certainly on attack dog mode. Still, he seems to be better at telling stories. And I hate when Obama stutters, I find it so disheartening…” I trailed off and took a sip of my cranberry juice.

“They did a poll,” Marcia said, leaning in a little closer. “Right after the debate? And they said Obama’s answers seemed more honest.”

My fingers were poised over the keyboard, itching to take notes.

Marcia edged still closer to my booth. “Let me tell you something. Do you know who took down those towers on September 11^th?” I gave a half nod. I mean, I’m pretty sure I know. She continued undaunted. “Don’t tell me it was the terrorists. The government took those towers down. And that’s Bush’s government right there.”

Marcia was just getting started. “You know what it is? His daddy pushed him in, and he couldn’t get us out. He’s drained us. And I always knew it. I told my husband, the first time I saw George W. Bush, I told him, ‘We can’t trust this man.’ And look at us now!”

I swallowed a bite of ham and let Marcia lead me on an impassioned trek backwards through time. She was on a roll. “I’ve always been able to tell, you know. I knew Nixon was a liar. I knew it from the very beginning.” She leaned over my table and whispered conspiratorially. “And let me tell you something. Do you know why JFK got shot? Because he wanted to take the soldiers out of Vietnam. Bobby got shot for the same reason.”

She shook her head and laughed, almost embarrassed at our shared confidence. “But I like Obama,” she said. “And I know a lot of people ‘round here don’t. I think it’s a black thing. I just hope he doesn’t get shot. I grew up in Newark, you know. I was never bothered by the color of anybody’s skin.”

And with that, she wiped her hands on her apron, gave a quick decisive nod, and headed back to the kitchen.

Sometimes I am so fascinated by the American people. Who knew my waitress at the local diner would be a budding political analyst and psychic to boot?

Bill Maher better watch out.

It’s a sunny day in Akron. I’m sitting on a brick wall outside the Summit County Democratic Headquarters, chai latte in hand. I was tempted to stop at Starbucks and use my gift card, but instead I opted to stick it to the man and go for the caribou. Come to think of it, Caribou Coffee might alsobe corporate, but at least they use an edgier font.

Last night I stayed in the most beautiful house. They placed me in a dazzling two-story with a spiral staircase, giant wall-sized artwork gracing each room, and a baby grand piano. It even has one of those magnificent circle driveways leading up to the facade, which makes my car—a 1990 Accord in dusty, fall-from-grace red—seem less than magnificent.

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about democracy. I’m not particularly equipped to delve into the deeply political implications of the term—my lone venture into the Poli Sci and Law/Jurisprudence departments at Amherst was an LJST course in law and literature, further proof that I’ll use literature to mitigate practically anything. So I’ll fully admit to having an embarrassingly puerile knowledge of politics. But the tenets of democracy, the fundamental application of it…those have been on my mind of late.

In the wake of the VP debate, I heard a lot of people express disappointment that Sarah Palin didn’t majorly screw up. People were expecting (and many of them hoping for) further gaffes along the lines of those already immortalized by Tina Fey.

I don’t think I agree with these people. And that’s not to say I’m not every bit as misanthropic—I very well may be. But to me, what made Biden v. Palin so powerful is that it was, in my opinion, a great debate. Yes, they both edged around certain questions. Yes, they both stretched the truth when it served their point. I can even give credence to the comment made by a close friend of mine that it was like watching a politician debate a high school civics teacher. But the words were fiery, and the passion was there, and that’s what makes politics exciting.

And isn’t that part of what makes a democracy, dare I say it, “fun”? It feeds our innate sense of competition. We want two candidates who are, at least on some levels, evenly matched. Then they struggle, and the best man (or woman) wins. If it’s a total landslide, we feel cheated. That’s the brilliance of debate: two people, on equal standing, pitted against one another. Though content may very well slip, the beauty is in the essence of the form.

... 

I wrote the first part of this blog post on Sunday. I’m currently in a biblioteca in Puerto Rico, squeezing in a few minutes of internet time while I attempt to salvage my vacation (hitherto thwarted by a variety of disastrous events, ranging from my car motor seizing on a New Jersey highway to Tropical Storm Kyle). It’s an interesting place to be ruminating on democracy, considering that PR is a commonwealth but not a state, and though they get to vote in the primaries, they are excluded from casting a vote in the presidential race.

On my first full night in PR, I flopped down on my hotel bed and watched the second Presidential Debate. If everything I said in the first part of this post was true, then I should have been happy. The candidates seemed evenly matched, physically standing (or sitting) on the same plane, and the form of the Town Meeting is, at least in theory, even more conducive to the democratic ideal.

But I felt a paralyzing sense of discouragement crescendo as the debate raged on. Both men passionately believe they are right; both men promise some sort of salvation to this nation. But who is right and who is wrong? How can you discern what to believe? Now both candidates are advocating a massive surge in government spending, and we are a nation in severe economic crisis. Can we really trust that one of these men holds all the answers?

Also, I find it disconcerting that neither candidate (and for that matter, neither of the VP candidates, either) will ever respond to questions along the lines of, “What don’t you know?”  “What would you have to sacrifice?” “What’s not going to work?” Allow me to add one more question here: Why is it so unacceptable to show weakness?

I know why: because the other candidate, and moreover the other candidate’s party, would leap on this opportunity to tear the opponent to shreds.

When I turned off the McCain v. Obama debate, I didn’t feel inspired. I felt uneasy, uncertain, deflated. So I picked up my copy of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, and listened to the patter of a million little drops fall against the tin roof.

It’s a rainy day in Ponce.

Today marks the dawning of a new era. As my political passion grows, I’m finding that my farm house, despite its cavernous rooms, isn’t large enough to contain it. So I’ve decided to take my youthful vigor elsewhere. That’s right: I’ve now turned the page on a new chapter of my voterdom. You might say BBBB has made a shift to BBGA. No, not the Bread Bakers Guild of America. Rather, Bree Barton Goes Abroad.

Well, not abroad per se. But surely Ohio counts as some kind of adventure, right? According to the state welcome sign, there’s “so much to discover!”

Today I braved several long hours of highway—and the splendid autumnal color palette bedecking both sides—to drive to Akron, Ohio, where I now sit. I’ll be volunteering for the campaign on and off up until Election Day. This afternoon, it started with phone banking.

Phone banking is a funny phenomenon. It is especially funny for someone who has a deep, debilitating, and totally irrational fear of phones. Actually, I take that back. It’s not funny; it’s terrifying.

At the beginning, it seems innocuous enough. You’re given a cell phone and a sheet that tells you what to say. The pitch is basic:

“Hi! My name is Bree, I’m a volunteer with the Obama/Biden campaign for Change here in Akron. How are you today? Great! I am reaching out to folks in the area to see if we have your support in November.”

You can vary the amount of exclamation marks in your delivery, of course, depending on how much coffee you have sucked down during your 11-hour shift. But the initial pitch stays constant.

I didn’t get very far. It was my third call. Things started out well enough.

“Hi! My name is Bree, I’m a volunteer with the Obama/Biden campaign—“

That’s when she cackled.

I’m not exaggerating. This woman did not giggle. This woman did not laugh. A laugh is a pleasant, whimsical thing—a puff of air off the arytenoids, a crinkly cricothyroid with twinkly eyes. This woman cackled.

I stopped and took inventory. “Um…” I said, frantically searching through the sheets in front of me, unable to find any advice on how to respond when the person you are calling cackles at you. “Did you…is something funny?”

“You called the wrong household for Obama,” she said. I was still waiting for the attendant “girlfriend” and finger snap when I heard the phone click.

Nobody said phone banking was good for the morale.

This particular woman’s name was Shbeeb. The real question is: Should she really have been the one laughing?

Phones and Shbeebs are one thing. The people here…well, the people are another thing entirely. The people are an inspiration.  They are larger than life.

Today I met Belinda Barton, a woman who shares my surname and does it proud. Belinda grew up in Mississippi, walked with Martin Luther King in the 1960s, and is raising her two young grandchildren after her daughter died. This evening, Belinda was canvassing with a high school kid when they came to a house with three McCain signs in the front yard. “Watch this,” she told him. She strode up and knocked on the front door.

Thirty minutes later, the man took down his McCain signs and replaced them with Obama signs as the high schooler looked on in awe. Meanwhile, Belinda also registered the man’s son to vote.

Now that’s change I can believe in.

I’m invigorated. I’m on fire. I’m proud to be a part of my political party.

I just watched the Vice Presidential Debate. What a performance! I don’t think I’ve ever been so enthralled watching two people debate one another. Excellent job all around. And my pick for VP was, in my opinion, spectacular.

A few general observations I was able to make:

Joe Biden is a man who is not afraid to cry.

Sarah Palin is a woman who is not afraid to wink.

…a lot.

Tonight I went to the same inn where I’d watched the Presidential Debate, and the crowd was more or less the same as before. This time, I did not bring my laptop cord. But when I edged near the television to get to the bathroom, one woman cried out, “Stay away from the wall!”

Apparently, I now have a reputation.

The candidates themselves were riveting—for 90 minutes I could barely look away from the television. And yet perhaps most fascinating to me was the ongoing poll at the bottom of the screen. Throughout the debate, CNN was holding a viewer response line for uncommitted voters in Ohio. They charted the positive versus negative responses on a graph (similar to a heartbeat monitor) using two lines, one for women and one for men. As the debates progressed, you could watch the lines rise and fall, based on how positively the message was affecting the group of viewers at that particular moment. It was fascinating, watching the blue line flatline, then the orange line spike, and soon after orange would nosedive, and then blue would level out. Sometimes the lines would do an intimate tango, side by side. It was a brilliant way to get an immediate read on how people thought a candidate was doing on a certain topic—though the sample size was admittedly small.

Selfishly, I admit: it was exhilarating to watch the lines dip when I was thinking, “You have to be kidding me.”

And just as exhilarating to watch them soar when I threw my fist in the air and yelped with patriotic pride.

In solidarity, there is hope.

But by far the best part of the evening was waiting in the parking lot outside. It’s waiting for you, too—I finally figured out how to post a video. So I’m sharing my extraordinary find in Bree Barton: On the Streets.

All I can say is: Main Street better watch out.