Hillsdale is ObamaLand

I found myself over in the inner east side today so I dropped by the county elections office to see if they had the detailed results from the May 20 primary. Those are the tallies that have the local political goods: a break-down of the vote precinct by precinct.

They did have the detailed results ready. In fact the clerk hit the wrong button on her computer and printed out more than 100 pages of county precinct voting data for me.

I had asked for the results from only two precincts — those that cover most of Hillsdale.

Oh well.

Before each election, I put out “Hillsdale Votes!” signs to encourage voting.

I like to think the signs make a difference. There’s no way of telling what the signs do, but while voter turnout county wide was 60 percent, 73 percent of registered voters voted in our two Hillsdale precincts. (Kind of makes me wonder what the other 27 percent were doing. Bowling? Alone?)

We are predominantly Democrats in precincts 1205 and 1224. Of the 7443 registered voters here, 60 percent are Democrats, 20 percent Republicans and 20 percent independents.

Hillsdale Democrats resoundingly favored Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton.

County-wide, Obama got two-thirds of the vote in the Democratic presidential primary. Here in Hillsdale, he got 71 percent of the 3811 votes cast in the two precincts.

Don’t ask me what this means. I suppose that someone could accuse me of being blind to local sexism, even as I accused southern counties in Kentucky and West Virginia of being racist.

I doubt whether those same Kentucky and West Virginia voters, who voted four-to-one for Clinton, were really intending to vote for Clinton in the fall had she won the nominations. Call them "McCain Democrats." My guess is that they were voting AGAINST Obama, as an African-American, not FOR Clinton.

Here in Hillsdale, the vote was decidedly for Obama, not against Clinton. Oregon's November results will tell whether Obama's backing is sincere. I'm dead certain it is.

Another political note: I am pleased to see that national political pundits no longer are calling Oregon a “battleground state.” Or, preferably, a "toss-up." Ditto Washington state. The Obama campaign would be smart to focus its resources somewhere other than the Pacific Northwest, including — particularly including — Hillsdale.

In that regard, when I participated in a local Move-On phone bank two years ago, the organization had us calling voters in a hotly contested congressional race in ... the wilds of Nevada, of all places.

We Obama-istas shouldn’t become complacent about Oregon but be prepared to make your voices heard in Missouri, Virginia and New Hampshire. It’s kind of fun. You meet a lot a nice people, albeit telephonically.

Hillsdale produces an Obama Move-on ad

As we've seen, this year's election offers elections within elections. The Republicans want Republicans to register as Democrats so they can vote for Democrats who will be easier for Republicans to defeat.

Are you still with me?

Anyway, here comes another election-year election. The voting for a Barack Obama Move-on political ad. Here is a Hillsdale-produced ad, written and co-produced by neighbor Ellen Currey-Wilson. See how many of your friends and neighbors you recognize in it. Ellen says that many of its "stars" are Wilson High School students.

You'll be asked to vote for it. Don't take that vote lightly. If it wins, it could influence hundreds of thousands of voters — one way or the other.

TV debate moderators scrape the bottom

I'm sure many of you have received the Move-On petition protesting the inane "gotcha" questions on last night's ABC Network debate.

If not, here is where you can go to sign the petition, which will be sent to ABC News.

You are also invited to add your own comments. Here's what I wrote:

I am a journalist and a former student of Fred Friendly, who was the conscience of television journalism for many, including those of us who studied under him at Columbia University.

The "performance" of your moderators during Wednesday's debate was a disgrace to broadcast journalism. I am only grateful that Fred isn't around to see what so often passes for television "journalism" today.

Last night you actually managed to lower a bar that many of us previously had thought could go no lower.

Note that the problem is not limited to ABC News. Television journalism started to unravel 35 years ago when "personalities" and "happy talk" drove up ratings. From there, TV journalism descended into polemic and sarcasm. No need to name names; we know them all too well. The line between news and opinion disappeared. Lurid video of crime, candid shots of celebrities and depictions of mayhem pushed aside serious reporting. News was no longer a public service but spectacle and entertainment chasing audience and advertising dollars.

And so in this election year, perhaps the most important in decades, we are left with smirking, cynical TV coverage of the inane and irrelevant. It's just this kind of "reporting" that framed the public debate in the past two presidential elections. Look at what that got us.