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Badger State Stomp

My lady friend and I went down to City Hall here in Kenosha Friday. We had to get in line. About a dozen or so people were waiting patiently to cast their ballots, old and young, black and white alike. I took the opportunity to vote, and as I handed the attendant my ballot, I asked her how many had been cast. My jaw hit the ground as she told me nearly 5,000 -- 3,000 of those walk-ins.

This in a city of 90,000. I'm betting that a majority of those votes, as in Iowa and Florida, went to Kerry.

Kenosha was once a bastion of solid Democratic support. But with the shuttered factories went the dyed-in-the-wool Dem voters. From the `80s on, working class whites, the original "Reagan Democrats," began voting their social conservatism before economic self-interest, and a plague of North Shore bedroom commuters, reliable Republican voters all, settled on the new subdivisions along the Interstate. The county barely went to Gore, who visited UAW Local 72 today. We were a block away, but busy dispatching ACT canvassers. My step-dad tells me it was a helluva speech.

Bush signs easily rival those for Kerry and our embattled state senator, a dumpy but good-hearted old Brass worker who's fighting for his political survival against some slick young Republican lawyer weaned at a fat teat and swimming in campaign cash. Pretty boy. Cut his teeth on voter suppression, like so many in the GOP. He's got more signs up than his so-called president. Feingold, however, seems to be secure.

But the big unknown unknown in this election, here in Wisconsin as throughout the country, is the black vote. The GOP is sure as hell gaming it in Milwaukee as best they can, and I'm here to tell you that they'll reap the whirlwind their dirty tricks have stirred up. Lincoln and Douglass will have their revenge on the party that so cruelly sold them and the ideals they stood for out. I was struck the other day at City Hall by the sight of a young black man -- couldn'ta been more than 19 -- being shepherded through the process by an older man (Grandpa?).  Look, I'm a white guy, but in conversations with ACT's mostly black and blue collar paid canvassers here, it's occured to me that most have a greater awareness of voter suppression efforts nationwide than the most broadband-addled blogger. There's a coast-to-coast game of telephone going on, and the black community is pissed and engaged. People I talk to don't see much in Kerry, the patrician white dude with a boring narrative who couldn't hold a candle to Clinton in the charisma department. But they know Bush is working overtime to keep them from the polls. And they'll be damned if that'll happen.

I feel as though I'm in the eye of the storm here. There's been a ton of amazing events going on around us -- Gephardt, Elizabeth Edwards and now Gore over at Local 72, Bob Dylan playing the local Christian college on Saturday night, Kerry in Milwaukee or Madison every other day, often with The Boss in tow -- and we've missed all of it, keeping our noses squarely  to the grindstone. But then, we're unpaid volunteers. This is what we came from New York to my podunk hometown to do. Otherwise, we'd only be political tourists, and frankly, I'd rather be the Graham Greene character I'm becoming. I hope that early tomorrow morning, as we mop up, we can feel we were part of something bigger, and I believe we will. On, Wisconsin, my earnest, cheesey, well-intentioned and ever well-proportioned homeland, to victory!