Cruz Up Close

Passion.  Real Passion.

Cruz headlined a revival.  

When I see Ted Cruz on news shows he talks about political things: taxes, war, Planned Parenthood, Obama.    But in a rally that packed about 400 people into an event venue in exurban South Carolina front and center was faith.    Faith in our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

The warm up introducers spoke of faith and led the group in prayer concluding, "in the name of Jesus Christ."   Mark Sanford, the South Carolina congressman (and former governor and former hiker on the Appalachian Trail) spoke of faith when he introduced Ted, then amid enthusiastic cheers Cruz came to the front.

Cruz gave essentially the same speech I heard in New Hampshire in November.  But it was different.   It was much more "Southern".   Cruz said "y'all" and "aint".   The New Hampshire speech was angry and about politics.  This speech was about sin and redemption.

Yet it was the same essential speech.   The difference was that Cruz dropped in references to scripture and said overtly what I don't remember being referenced in New Hampshire: that we were in a war to preserve "Judaeo Christian values."   The event ended with an exchange of tokens between Cruz and his state co-chair.   The co-chair spoke for 8 minutes, in detail and without notes, about various Roman centurions who interacted with Jesus, affirming their faith, explaining that they acted under the authority of someone greater.  This related to Cruz because Cruz acted under the guidance of Christ and the authority of the Constitution.   Cruz handed back a token of some sort himself.


I expected the shuffling of feet, or rustling of impatience from the crowd as they stood during the long and unexpected biblical lesson.   It did not happen.

This moment, on MSNBC, as I write this I hear an announcer say Cruz is "drafting in Trump's wake", saying Trump-like things only with a bit more discipline.    No.  Cruz is grabbing a special audience.  And it is a big one.

Trump is secular.  Trump speaks to American identity.  Cruz speaks to Christian identity.   The two groups overlap, of course, but a voter oriented toward Trump issues, who is also a faithful churchgoing Christian accustomed to frequent scriptural references has their candidate.   "Tell your friends," Cruz concluded.   "You can have the power of ten," Cruz said, "by spreading the word."   There is a network of the devout that can spread under the radar and Cruz speaks directly to that group--in a rally.

There were a dozen cameras in the back of the room.   What Cruz says is not secret, and someone who watches a whole Youtube event will see it for himself.  But the news-Cruz is more like the New Hampshire Cruz: a Conservative Republican, not a Christian Republican.

MSNBC this morning is going on and on about Cruz's authenticity, questioning whether it is plausible that a Princeton, Harvard Law, Goldman-spouse like Cruz is credible being critical of the Establishment.   Joe Scarborough is wrong.  

Cruz is credible and genuine.   He criticizes the Republican and Washington establishments openly and fiercely.   No hedging.  No triangulating.  (Nothing careful or Hillary-like, as I referenced in yesterday's post.)  He is full-throated in saying "If the Washington establishment likes you, run for your life!!!"   He has thrown in his lot with cowboy boots and Duck Dynasty and traditional political conservative Christian churchgoers.  

Cruz is not holding a lifeline back to the Establishment.   He is says it right out there.   He is pro-gun.   He is pro-Christian.  He is absolutely against Planned Parenthood.  He is black and white, un-nuanced, and he has staked his ground, without compromise.   Cruz thinks there is a giant silent majority of people who think as he does and those are the votes he solicits.

Guest Blog by Thad Guyer: Inside Hillary's Mind

Peter Sage Introduction:   
I am posting this article by Thad Guyer because it creates an imagined cause for a characteristic I have noted in Hillary's campaign, beginning from my very first post in this blog over 100 entries ago.  Hillary, I said, seemed "lawyerly" in the speech she gave to a 150 donors at an event in Portland.  

My wife objected to the implied criticism, noting "She's a lawyer!"  My observation was that she came across as someone required to testify who was thoroughly coached and prepared by her attorney, saying things carefully, avoiding potential potholes or land mines.

Thad is a litigator, specializing in whistleblowers.  Litigators do high stakes message judo, so his observations on messages come from a practiced eye.

By Thad Guyer:

"Helping Hillary To the Stage"

Up Close once again is feeling the rifts in the Force, and asking readers “do you feel it?” Checking this blog is now in first place for me before I click my phone icons for New York Times, Washington Post and BBC. I’m an old liberal with habits searching for insights into what is happening in the politiverse. There is something happening that doesn’t lend itself to prediction because the rules of selection are not just changing, they are morphing and shape-shifting in response to the Force. Up Close could watch the television ads online, but that would be sterile and detached. Even to watch a TV ad, you have to be there in the milieu to feel it, like being among the native tongues to master the language and the culture that makes it intelligible. 

As I read these reports from the front, my mind wants parables and visions. I picture the Hillary tv ad that Up Close described and interpreted. Hillary too wants to speak in code, people will only listen to code now. Naming a specific enemy is risky business, her campaign staff tells her nervously, themselves no longer confident what to do or say. The vision takes hold. I see Hillary being led up the back stairs of a stump stage, hoping security can keep the reporters away. She mutters to herself “dishonest, they are so dishonest with their questions and soundbites”. Is this the first sign of Trump delirium, she asks herself.

“Remember mam, don’t name my religion as the enemy”, whispers Huma Abedin, vice chair of her campaign. “Never say ‘Islamic terrorism’ no matter how hard they push you. It would be better to lose than bow to that fear”.

“And honey, don’t name sexism toward women as an enemy, if you’re just talkin’ about wage parity”, her husband cautions, “because they’ll twist that into sex exploitation, and start asking again if you helped me shut up Lewinsky, Flowers and the others”.

Hillary is starting to resent the way the two clutch her arms, pushing and pulling.

“And for heavens sake”, Bill reminds her, “don’t say anything about gun ownership, guns are not the enemy, it’s the manufacturers, you can go after them, but not ownership”.

“Yes, your husband is right mam”, Huma chimes in, but avoiding eye contact with him, “don’t even talk about the mentally ill shooters because they will twist that around to Muslims as the enemy, do not go there”.

“And Wall Street, honey, remember they’re not the enemy”, Bill says as they approach the curtain ready to push her on to stage. “Don’t piss off that superpac again, you go after Bernie how he’s always yapping about Wall Street over and over, Bernie is the enemy on that one”.

Hillary turns to him and seethes, “oh, so I can name Bernie as the enemy?”

“No, no mam, no enemies, we have no enemies, remember that trouble you got in when you called Republicans the enemies”, Huma rebukes her boss. And to reassure herself, she adds “or they will turn that around to Muslims”. And Bill takes his last shot, “or turn it around to men who want to get women as the enemy”.

“So gun manufacturers, I can say they are the enemy”, exasperation in her voice. She hears only “no, man”, “no honey”, then in harmonic a cappella, “no enemies”.

She enters the stage fantasizing being like Trump, and saying what she wants about the press, liars, and enemies. “The gun manufactures”, she begins to a crowd of supporters, seeing even fewer 

Hillary Ad in South Carolina

TV ad in South Carolina

I saw something I was not seeing in Medford, Oregon:   a Hillary Clinton ad on TV.

There is a primary coming up and gun regulation is one area--probably the only area--where Hillary is more "liberal" than Bernie.

It is early morning in South Carolina and I am getting ready to attend a FreedomWorks seminar.   FreedomWorks is a group supporting the Freedom Coalition--the anti-establishment group in the US House of Representatives who pushed John Boehner out of the Speakership.   That is why I am here, watching campaign ads.)

It is a full-face closeup of Hillary talking directly to the viewer.   She says that we need to support President Obama's proposal to make gun manufacturers responsible for death from guns.   Here it is:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbEalLMQvOw

"It's time to pick a side."   It is interesting show she posits the choice:  it is between "the gun manufacturers" versus "President Obama."

Take a moment to think about who the division is NOT between.   It isn't between gun manufacturers and "the people" or "the victims" or "the children".   It is between them an "President Obama."   Obama is popular with Democrats.

And it isn't a battle against "gun owners" or "criminals with guns"; it is a war against "gun manufacturers."

Is this a good issue for Hillary?  Maybe, but i am out of touch.   Guns are everywhere in Southern Oregon and most Democrats I know are either comfortable with them personally or know friends who have them, and consider easy availability of guns to be a given, a fact of life.   Making gun manufacturers responsible may be a good way to finesse this, the equivalent of a war on tobacco not by restrictions on the smoker but on the liability of Phillip Morris.

Seduction into the La Brea Tar

Yesterday I made a modest proposal.  I said a candidate should attack Trump at his points of assumed strength.

I have witnessed the seduction of the Trump approach to the victim of the attack.  The whole idea of the Trumpian insult is to move the argument from some substantive point onto some personal item of belittlement, with the target essentially validating the point whatever he does.

If the target ignores it, they are "weak"--to their peril.   Dukakis and Kerry were each accused of being cowards, and their refusal to "dignify the insult" suggested they were avoiding the conflict-- and were therefore cowards.

However, if the target joins the battle they "dignify" the issue and make it a legitimate point of debate.   Now they are debating on a subject of the accuser's choosing.

Lose either way.

The best response is fast, public, obliteration of the accuser on the point.   We have seen this twice in this campaign.   Trump accused Carly Fiorina of being ugly.  She hit back with a debate comment and an ad celebrating her pride in every wrinkle in her 60 year old face.  It was a superb response, resonating with women, causing Trump to back off ("She's got a beautiful face.")   Briefly she skyrocketed in polls, and moved into a high tier candidate.   But it is a crowded field and she couldn't sustain the gain.   Watch the superb ad:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODfUOnw2x0g

                 

From "Faces" Ad

Bush's attack on Rubio's attendance was responded to immediately, hard, in the Republican debate with tens of millions watching, in a well practiced response undercutting Bush by saying "someone convinced you that attacking me is going to help you" making Rubio look independent and Bush a weak puppet.   Devastating.  Bush folded and Rubio moved up into the top tier where he has stayed.

But Trumpian attacks can work well.  They force candidates to argue and re-argue the point, moving them off message essentially in the weak position of asserting that they are not the belittled fraud Trump says they are.  Trump accuses Obama of being foreign born and today millions of Republicans think that it is maybe true, against all evidence.   Trump says Rubio sweats like a little boy and Rubio is creating ads showing himself happily drinking water, trying to make a joke out of the belittlement.  Trump has turned his focus onto Hillary by attacking Bill's sexual behavior.   Hillary and Bill are trying to figure out how to respond as both a feminist and Bill's wife.

I have witnessed how seductive it is to respond to the attack.  I made a brief version of yesterday's proposal on my Facebook page.   Someone took the bait.

Yesterday I said a candidate should deny Trump's claim of being smart, a great businessman, and a candidate good for working people.  I argued he just inherited money then has underperformed badly.  Say he is a loser and a fraud in business, bragging when he should be embarrassed for lousy performance.

Trump supporters feel the sting.   It challenges a key assumption Trump asserts, one that is essential to Trump's value proposition.

Someone took the bait, and is now arguing that Trump really did do OK, that real estate wasn't as good as the stock market, etc.   I see the power of moving the debate to this arena.  I now have the opportunity to accept the excuse of Trump's defender, that he actually did make money before he inherited it, and Trump was dealing in real estate only,  and throw it back, saying this proves that Trump is a bad businessman since he put his money in the wrong asset class, real estate not even an index fund.  Good.  Now we are arguing in the arena of why Trump picked loser investments.  

Just having that as the subject area of debate destroys the bedrock foundation for Trump's legitimacy.   Him being a good businessman is no longer an assumption, it is a question.  And there will be hundreds--indeed millions--of people who did better than Trump.  

If the debate continues and there is some basis for Trump having done pretty well there will be endless opportunities to show that he did way, way, way worse than other investors and investments, including ones that will seem passive and unimpressive.   He has massively underperformed  Warren Buffet of course, but also any factory worker in a Phillip Morris cigarette package assembly line who bought and held 5 shares of company stock.

Any response by Trump or his supporters prolongs the debate and weakens Trump.  It is the Trumpian method.   The accuser can always stay unsatisfied.   Obama's birth certificate was the official form, the "short form".   Not enough.   The newspaper reports of Obama's birth.  Maybe they were faked 50 years ago.   Hawaii presents the long form birth certificate.  It might be a forgery.  

The accusation that Trump is only half smart and a lousy businessman can never be refuted.   There will be thousands of people with better grades than Trump, even if he releases his transcripts, which he will not because they will almost certainly be shown to be mediocre.  And there will be endless ways to show that he underperformed millions of people in his investments.

Trump is uniquely vulnerable to a Trumpian attack because it is in Trump's nature to attack back, which will validate the issue and keep it on the table.   Plus, Trump uses Trumpian tactics.  He is a very effective bully, and people like to cut bullies down to size.

Let's see if any candidate "goes Trump" on Trump.

Taking Trump Down

My modest proposal for a Republican candidate in a death spiral. 

Hit Trump hard.   

Don't do it by whining about his tactics.  Instead use Trump tactics.  Do a "Trump" on him.  And copy the Swift Boat people.

The Swift Boat people back in 2004 criticized John Kerry at his point of strength, for having medals for courage and 3 Purple Heart medals.   They called him a coward and fraud, on behalf of a campaign for George Bush who sat out the Vietnam War in Texas and Alabama.     And it worked! The strategy was brilliant: complicate and confuse the public on the point of Kerry's greatest strength.   Where there is smoke there must be fire, so maybe Kerry wasn't a hero.   

The Trump formula is to attack and belittle: mock and demean.  Make it personal and insulting.   Carly is ugly and lousy at business!  Rosie O'Donnell is fat! ! Jeb is weak!  Christie hugged Obama!  Rubio sweats like a little boy!  Big questions on Cruz's nationality!

People generally like seeing a bully get his comeuppance.   I say this not as a data-driven scientist or a psychologist.   I cite the evidence of someone who watches TV.  Every single Columbo episode involves the comeuppance of a self-satisfied big shot attempting to get away with murder.  Think about your favorite shows.   Does the plot narrative involve the powerful bully winning again and again?  No.  It is about the worthy person bringing the bully to justice.   We don't get tired of that plot line.  

The tortoise beats the hare.   David beats Goliath.   Imagine yourself a screenwriter making a movie out of Goliath coming out onto the field, killing David quickly, then going back to lunch, same ol' same ol'.   It might be the commonplace outcome between the strong and the weak but it wouldn't be a story.

Someone should call him a LOSER

Time for someone to do a "Trump" on Trump.

Argue:   "Trump is low average smart.  He is an affirmative action admission to Wharton, where he was mediocre.  He had crap grades in high school and at Fordham.  He was mediocre at Wharton.   He got in because his father was filthy rich and his brother's best friend was on the Wharton admission committee!   Trump is a fraud, the Bernie Maddow of politics.  Stupid."

What is true??   1.  Trump admits he was a mediocre student, Wharton records do NOT show him graduating with any honors whatsoever.   2.  Trump was at Wharton only two years, having transferred from Fordham.   3.  Trump will not release his own school records, even though he demands that Obama do so.  What is he hiding???

Argue:    "Trump is a hypocrite.  He stands on the backs of working people holding them down.  He faked his 'bone spur' to get a medical exemption so some other kid would serve in his place.   He got into Wharton using rich-boy pull instead of some actually smart person getting that place.  He actually likes poor Mexicans coming to America in the "great big door" so they can work at low minimum wages at his golf courses, at the expense of American workers!  He opposes raising the minimum wage.  He exploits working people!"

What is true??  He did in fact get a high draft number but not until he stayed out of the draft with supposed heel bone spurs that he now cannot remember which foot it was in.  He got into Wharton because of friendly pull. Some draftee served in his place.  He took the place of someone else at Wharton.  He opposes a higher minimum wage and brags that he employs Mexicans, thus competing with real American workers taking their jobs and holding down their wages.   

Argue:   "Trump isn't successful.  He is a business loser!   He was born on home plate and thinks he made money!   If Trump had just invested the money he inherited in the SP500 index and sat back and did nothing at all he would be way, way richer than he is today.   No bankruptcies, no endless bragging.   He did  worse than if he had just bought an index fund--to say nothing of how he would have done if he actually had known something and bought Apple or just let Warren Buffet invest his money.  Trump destroyed capital rather than created it.   He is a loser.  Any Financial Advisor whose clients only did as well as Trump would have been run out of the business!"

What is true??  Trump was on the Forbes 400 list in 1982, with net worth of "over $200 million."  Trump said he was worth $500 million.   An index fund of the SP500 would have grown 40 times in that period, to about $20 billion dollars, TWICE what Trump says he is worth today.

The Trump formula is to attack and belittle.  Trump is vulnerable, and can be made to argue that--no, I really am smart, I really didn't take advantage of working people, a actually am good at business.   It puts the "where there's smoke there's fire" question onto Trump.   Maybe he isn't all that smart--and he hides the evidence that would show he is.   Maybe he has getting ahead thanks to privilege not merit.   And maybe he isn't a good businessman--just a stuck up rich boy.

Bernie Sanders has an opportunity here, if he will take it

Recommendations for who should make this argument:    Republican candidates with nothing to lose.   A Super Pac of any Republican candidate.   

Bernie Sanders could do it.   If Bernie takes on and takes down Trump, he will elevate to a "giant killer".   This totally repositions Sanders, a strong hero, tough enough to take on Putin and ISIS.  He would have done what Hillary couldn't do, what the Bush family couldn't do, what the combined media couldn't do, what no Republican could do. 

Or, any Super Pac associated with the Democratic Party could do it.  But in that case they should wait until Trump wins the nomination and THEN do it.   Colombo doesn't arrest the rich villain until the time is ripe. 

Guest Blog: Trump the Destroyer

Thad Guyer

Peter Sage Explains

This is a blog about political craftsmanship.  I am attempting to look closely at how politicians are doing their work by getting up close in campaign events.

Thad Guyer is an attorney specializing in whistleblower litigation.   Litigators attempt to strengthen their client's case and weaken the case of their opponents.   Sometimes their work can be brutal, bringing up issues that undermine the credibility and confidence of the opponent.   Everyone who has seen a courtroom drama on TV knows the phrase, "I object.  He is badgering the witness!"   Thad observes Donald Trump closely.  Trump may be the most brutally effective politician in my lifetime, demolishing his Republican opponents with bullying, insults,  indirection, and claims the press consider wild and unfounded but which find a receptive audience.  It is early.   Campaign leadership may change.  But for now Trump deserves close attention for how he does his work.   Here is another of Thad Guyer's descriptions and commentaries on Trump's craft.
                         Peter Sage



Thad Guyer's commentary:

Looking weak

Bush Surrenders Going Down with the SuperPac Ship

When I finished my read of this Up Close post, my vision was cleared, I could see that only Bush genuinely attacked Trump because Bush and his SuperPac have accepted it is over, all hope is lost, go down with the ship. "Bye, bye, low energy guy. Loser!". If you don't go out of your way to attack Trump, he has made clear that he won't go out of his way to attack you. That’s the deal, simple, easy to understand. Lindsey Graham, as he meanders away, takes a few more parting shots, sets the model for Bush, Trump won’t make you crawl, he never let you in the race. Weaklings with pea shooters aiming up from 0%-3%. "Such losers, oh such losers, so low energy, even the SuperPac millions couldn't put any fire in him, and stupid, isn’t stupid really the best word for him?"  

Only Cruz gets the honor of a Trump ad attack, striking at the "Cuban from Canada, is he even a citizen, and do evangelicals come from Cuba, who knows, maybe they do, let the courts decide after 2 or 3 years of litigation whether he's a citizen, maybe he is, who knows, someone will have to decide, is a Cuban born in Canada an America, who knows, let the evangelicals decide on his religion, he is a nice guy, but who really knows if he would stand up to the illegal immigrant invasion, he might, a Cuban Canadian, maybe he would, who knows." 

Trump released his television ad in Iowa three days before he paid a dime to air it. He told Morning Joe that his ad would be played by all the media thousands and thousands of times before he ever paid a dime to air it. The Washington Post, CNN, New York Times, ABC, everybody all of them, played the ad, inserted it in their print articles, denounced it, fact checked it to reveal those were actually Moroccan hordes storming Europe's borders not Hispanics coming across the Rio Grande, headlines "haha, Trump got it wrong, he doesn't know a Mexican from a Muslim, look at his ad, we have it for you in slow motion, look they are Muslims not Mexicans". But two articles down, and day after day, we read that 1,000 Muslim men attacked German women, that tens of thousands of Central Americans are bursting U.S. immigrant detention centers as judges order them released sooner than INS can do anything with them. The fact checkers play and replay the not yet aired Trump ad, the rally footage, their cameras glued to him as he taunts "the media, so dishonest, oh so dishonest, you can't believe how dishonest they are, look at them back there, they won't show you the audience, it doesn't fit their agenda to pan the energetic crowds that are 50/50 men and women, they like to talk about Hillary saying I'm a sexist, did you see that, her husband abused young interns in the White House and in the state house of Arkansas, so disgusting, really so disgusting, and she helped him call all those poor women liars, when we win, oh you will get bored of winning, smart is what we need, and Hillary, she belongs in jail, everyone knows she's a criminal, a liar, she belongs in jail, stupid, so stupid, so low energy, has a rally of 200 people and is so exhausted she has to go sleep for three days and put on a new pant suit, so low energy".

Bye Bye Jeb, you loser, go drink a sweet tea with Lindsey, and those other losers, what were their names, Perry, Jindal, that governor Walker or whatever, I can't remember, but anyway bye bye losers, so low energy, attack Trump and you go down, run your little ads, so stupid, oh so stupid, run your ads. And everyone, most all us love watching Trump, we love watching the losers meander away, we all remember the disgust with Bill and Hillary, we all know Bernie is whatever he is. We all know the media who told us he would be gone by now are stupid, wishful propagandists, we all know Trump is coming for Hillary, oh we all know it, we’re not stupid, we know it.

Oregon Event, Up Close

Oregon's Governor, Kate Brown, came to Medford to meet with Democrats.   What happens isn't rocket science, but it takes planning.   Here's what happens.

1.   You schedule a date, then cancel at the last minute.  The original time time in October coincided with the mass shooting in Roseburg.   Governor Brown was needed elsewhere.

Eliza Kauder, local MC, greets crowd

2.   You reschedule in Medford when it works for the Governor's schedule, a Friday night, January 8.   The time coincided with some other events in Medford so larger venues, including the Inn at the Commons, were unavailable.   So you pack people into a smaller venue holding only 185 crowded people and you turn people away.

3.   Local Democratic Party leaders serve as MC, pitching upcoming delegate selection events.   Eventually Democrats will have a convention in Philadelphia and the delegates don't just appear.  Local citizens are elected to those positions.  That gets explained, then people are directed to the website.

4.  Governor Brown enters and handshakes her way to a table where she sits with key dignitaries, including elected Democrats, State Rep. Peter Buckley and State Senator Alan Bates.

 Rep.Buckley, Sue Densmore Kate Brown, Ron Kramer

5.  Everyone eats, following going through a buffet line.   It is crowded.  The space is too small for the group.

Senator Alan Bates introduces Governor Brown

6.  Governor Brown is introduced by Senator Alan Bates, a friend and ally.  Bates says nice things about her leadership, telling a story how she was playful but tough with a sometimes difficult upstate Democrat, and how she was effective, courageous (in being a early adopter on marriage equality) and kind.  

Standing ovation to start speech

Speech well received

7.  She spoke for about 20 minutes.   She lauded policy victories (automatic voter registration with DMV licensing) and outlined a policy agenda for the upcoming session.   A higher minimum wage of unspecified amount got the largest applause.  Her speech was an outline of policy proposals, teeing up bills she plans on presenting to the legislature.  Help for small businesses.  Encourage family wage jobs,   Sick leave legislation.  More money for higher education scholarships.  It was policy, not poetry.  No soaring words about New American Centuries, nothing about Our Founders' Vision, no Cities on a Hill.  But she did get big applause by noting that California's Governor Brown planned on following Oregon's lead on automatic voter registration linked to DMV licenses.   Big applause for Oregon leadership.

8. Local Democratic chair introduces a final speaker--me.

Me, soliciting donations.

9.  Fundraise to pay for a year's office rent:  goal $8,000.  There is a bit of craft in this.  I stepped to the stage with $4,000 confirmed: pledges of $1,000 from Senator Bates, Rep. Buckley, local donor Herb and Deborah Rothschild, and from my wife and myself.   I consider it nearly essential for the person doing the ask to be a donor, setting an example.   We needed $4,000 from 185 people who had already paid to attend.  Local party leaders wondered if that was too much.   My hunch was that the ask was not big enough.   I said we needed to raise $4,000. Instantly another $1,000 came in from Laz Ayala, a businessman who is planning to file for a County Commissioner seat. Can we possibly raise $3,000, I asked.  Then $500, 250, and $100 contributions, started coming in.   We went well past the goal.  Success.

10.  Meeting ends and Kate Brown circulates doing one-on-one handshakes and selfies, greeting everyone who makes a point of seeing her.   Kate Brown is petite.  She makes full eye contact when greeting people.  She often does a two-hand handshake.   

SUMMARY:   This event had all the key elements of a successful event: local party building, recognition of local Democrats, successful speech by headliner, fundraising to take advantage of the crowd and enthusiasm, public recognition of the donors, meet-and-greet time for the headliner, photos by a very skilled local photographer, then posted to his Facebook page.

That is what grassroots politics look like, up close.    

Two hand handshake with Donors Laz and Carlie Ayala

Gratitude:  Thank you, Allen Hallmark, photographer, for taking these photos and posting them to Facebook and for permission to use them.   I have borrowed them to illustrate this blog.   Allen is a Vietnam vet, a former Mail Tribune reporter, a traveler, photographer, social media expert, and a local Democrat.