{"id":38797161,"date":"2004-01-19T12:44:00","date_gmt":"2004-01-19T12:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.casey.com\/2004\/01\/dubuque-diary-4.html"},"modified":"2013-04-13T04:05:39","modified_gmt":"2013-04-13T04:05:39","slug":"200401dubuque-diary-4-html","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/2004\/01\/19\/200401dubuque-diary-4-html\/","title":{"rendered":"Dubuque Diary – Day Four"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Image-2AFB93C94A1E11D8\"<\/a>It was a cold morning in Dubuque today. The Telegraph Herald put the day’s expected high temp at a bitter 17 degrees. Yesterday was overcast with icy sidewalks, but today the sun was shining, not that it offered anything more than light today.<\/p>\n

The word was that Tom Harkin, Iowa’s popular Democratic Senator, would be at Dean’s Dubuque Headquarters today to rally us Storm Troopers for another day on the streets. The HQ was abuzz with activity, as volunteers moved tables, hung streamers, and prepared a stage from which Sen. Harkin could speak.<\/p>\n

During my eight years working in the United States Senate, I had plenty of opportunities to see many Senators at work from a front row seat, and my opinions of them would grow or suffer. My opinion of Senator Harkin only ever grew, he’s a smart and impressive politician, and I was thrilled when he recently announced his decision to endorse Howard Dean. He spoke to us about that decision, about how he couldn’t sit on the sidelines, and about how after his review of the field that he felt Dean had the best chance at sending George Bush packing. It was a rousing speech that achieved it’s goal of pumping up the orange-hatted volunteers for another day of retail politics.<\/p>\n

Pairing up again with my partner Rick from yesterday, and another volunteer from Wisconsin named Robert, we’re assigned to go to the westurn suburb of Asbury. It’s really bitter cold outside. After we divvy up our first batch of streets and I’ve walked a couple of block, I noticed an unusual crackly feeling on my face. It was beardsicles. With each breath I exhaled, more moisture would collect and freeze immediately on my mustache and beard, my own personal facial ice machine.<\/p>\n

As before, many people aren’t home, and we leave a door hanger with information about their caucus location. The weather seems to work to my advantage at some doors that are opened. When people hear I’ve come all the way from Virginia just to knock on doors and encouraging Iowans to vote, they seem to feel I deserve at least a hearing. And my beardsicles must give me a particularly pitiful look. Often I’m invited inside to step out of the cold, and when I do, the fast temperature change causes my glasses to fog up quickly. I’m my own walking atmosphere.<\/p>\n

Step by step, door by door, we work through out walk lists. Talking to people, leaving them information about Dean and about the Caucus. The cold can’t slow us. By late afternoon, we’ve knocked on about 300 doors. Exhausted, cold, and hungry, we loaded up and headed back to headquarters with great satisfaction for our work accomplished today.<\/p>\n

A burger and beer is my reward at a local brew pub. I see the end of one football game, and the beginning of another, before heading back to my room to peal off my frozen clothes and hunker down for the evening.<\/p>\n

The Caucus is tomorrow. Tonight’s TV poll says that Kerry and Edwards have surged ahead of Dean and Gephardt. But finally, tomorrow, the only real poll that matters will take place. And it won’t be the media pundits deciding the winner, it will be Iowa Democrats, it will be real voters. I feel good in knowing that I reached as many of them as I could.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was a cold morning in Dubuque today. The Telegraph Herald put the day’s expected high temp at a bitter 17 degrees. Yesterday was overcast with icy sidewalks, but today the sun was shining, not that it offered anything more than light today. The…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38797161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-travel"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3mOvc-2CMUF","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38797161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38797161"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38797161\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":173354670,"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38797161\/revisions\/173354670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38797161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38797161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casey.life\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38797161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}