Oh, man, this is going to be one LONG campaign season

So, I get to Linda’s campaign office late.  I have another throbbing headache and it took me longer to get there than I anticipated.  There’s only one person in the office, everyone else is canvassing.  He sets me to work phone banking.  Conflucians, I’ll do just about anything for a candidate but I absolutely LOATHE phone banking.  Yes, I’ve done it.  Called hundreds of people in PA and NJ.  Done the scripts, multiple scripts, winged it, left messages.  But for every person I reach, the next name on the list gets that much harder to deal with.  I get relatively few negative results.  I don’t know what it is about a phone that makes me want to hide under a desk but the tension builds the longer I have to do it.  Usually, I manage to quell my anxiety with a bit of downtime every 5 calls or so. There’s something about a phone that just feels wrong.  I’ve never been a phone person.  Text and face to face are fine but phones drive me crazy.  But anyway, I’m rambling.  It’s just my least favorite activity.  It’s a necessary evil.

The phone banking was an endless series of message machines this afternoon.  I guess I should be grateful but the longer I got used to leaving messages, the more rattling to the nerves that first voice contact.  So, I asked Jorge if there was something else I could do.  He asked me to bundle door hangars.  Calming, menial, went well with headache.  That’s when I spotted my first Obama sign.  It was inevitable.  Linda shares her office with the state Democratic campaign.  Of *course* there were going to be Obama signs.

My reaction was visceral. I can’t help it.  It’s a physical reaction.  I want to sink my teeth into it and rip it to tiny bits. I can’t stand the coca-cola Obama symbol.  I made some comment to Jorge about the sign like, are Linda and Obama campaigning together?  He said the office was joint and anyway, he was the nominee.  Ooo, did that set me off.  He is NOT the nominee.  The convention hasn’t been held yet.  Jorge said something like, it’s going to happen, get used to it.  I replied, not if *I* can do anything about it.  (More on viscera and the like from Heidi Li who gave a talk this morning at the 160th anniversary of the Seneca Falls Conference on Women’s Rights.  In 160 years, all we’ve earned is the right to vote for whoever the men pick.  Makes me want to take down an antelope.)

A few minutes later, Travis came in.  Jorge went to him and they had a conversation that I heard bits of.  Sounded like, “Hillary supporter”, “nominee”, “that makes no sense”.  Basically, I am a batshit crazy Hillary deadender who won’t get with the program.  Guys, I might be an ancient, uneducated, woman, but if you’re going to talk about me, make sure you’re out of range of my hearing aid.  Whoops!  That wasn’t my hearing aid, it was my Bluetooth.

Jorge, Travis, if you’re reading this, pay attention:  Obama is NOT the nominee.  He is just a candidate.  He doesn’t have enough pledged delegates to win.  He needs superdelegates just like Hillary would.  The pledged delegate count is essentially even and the only reason Obama is ahead is because he got awarded unearned delegates in MI and more delegates in caucus states that is warranted by their sparse populations.

Now, you can keep saying that we should get used to it and that it’s over but if Hillary’s name is not entered in nomination at the convention in Denver as it should for someone who has as many pledged delegates as she has, then Obama is not a legitimate nominee, as far as I and millions like me are concerned.  You can follow Obama to defeat in November for all we care.  That’s what’s going to happen.  Get used to it.

In the meantime, I’m campaigning for Linda only.  I will not lift a finger or read a script that has anything Obama in it. The minute anyone suggests that I do, I’m outta there.

BTW, what kind of sick thing has this election season turned into when I actually WANT Sean Hannity to take on Barack Obama?  Sean Hannity would be stupid to make such an offer to Hillary.  We’ve seen what she did to Bill O’Reilly.  But Obama?  That’s something I would pay HBO premium prices to see.

One more thing:  I don’t know of any other term for a black hole.  It is both an astronomical term and a phrase that is used so frequently that most of us don’t give it a second thought.  Colloquially, it just means a place where things disappear and that are never seen again.  The gravitational pull for important things that are lost forever is a black hole.  I’ve used that phrase before and never knew I was a racist.  But until someone can come up with a better name for a black hole, I’m going to have to stop using the term unless I am refering very specifically to the astronomical event and nothing else.  Oddly enough, I have also found myself editing words like Oreo and zebra.  I’m not kidding.  In the sentence above, the first animal I wanted to take down was a zebra.  It’s all of those damn MUtual of OMaha footages with Marlin Perkins that come to mind when a lion stalks its prey.  I just keep seeing zebras but now I realize that it is a no-no.  Someone is sure to cut and paste it into a “Riverdaughter is a racist” page of examples.  This is ridiculous and is making true racism meaningless.  Obama needs to stop it or he’s doing African-Americans real harm.