As a NE resident now and ex-Center City-ite, I'm front row center to the goings on up here in Krajewskiville.

The Northeast is a smidge over 20 times the size of Center City from Vine to Pine. It's also not 100% suburbia like many folks who live downtown think it to be. There are neighborhoods which are mostly white, some which are mostly minority, and relatively none who are upper-class. This is the only area of town predominately populated (still) with middle class working residents, many working for the City [especially Police and Fire], and it's the only area of town that has a modicum of GOP support.

- The older residents up here are skeptical/jealous of the welfare programs which provide income to nearby North Philadelphia. Talk with any NE resident who has lived up here for more than 15 years or anybody who grew up here and continues to live in this area.

- Northeast Philadelphia residents, middle class and poor, are united in their distrust of City Hall. They feel most of their tax money is redirected to Center City and the urban slums, and little of that wealth is returned to Northeast Philadelphia by the way of public works projects. That resentment is what prompted Joan to create the CLIP program, which serves the Northeast. For some city services like street cleaning and graffiti removal, neighborhood associations (like Mayfair, Tacony, Holmesburg, Rhawnhurst) have stepped in to provide those services since the City can't/won't do them; but they operate solely through grants whereas the privately managed Center City District has assessment authority over the participating business owners.

- Racial tension still plagues the Northeast. Look at the last voting results. Much of the Northeast rallied behind Tom Knox, not Nutter. They overlooked Knox's alliance with Ms. Blackwell and voted off skin color alone. Brady wasn't a viable candidate even with the union connections, so they opted for the only remaining white person available. Like Nutter's backyard was Nortwest Philly, Brady is/was not well liked up here in Northeast Philly and his support base is mostly scattered wards below Carpenter Street to the stadiums. Nutter was not even an option considering that Nutter has no experience with the Northeast and its problems and Nutter didn't campaign up here save for a few small appearances.

To put it mildly, if Hillary was carrying the ticket, she would carry all of Northeast Philadelphia without question. But now that's not an option--you're seeing a largely white and older crowd either not participating or leaning towards McCain, which makes up a sizeable chunk of the Northeast population.

The Northeast is a harder study since this area is political-party mixed, leans conservative (including the Democrats up here and also in the mixed-race wards), is older, has lots of single family property owners with children, is more Catholic than elsewhere, and everything opposite of what self-named progressives would consider progressive.

Perhaps, I posit that these folk might not gravitate towards Obama due to his race, but instead are simply more attracted to McCain purely because of his age. The Palin thing could also be more appealing to seniors, as the senior population is more female than it is male.

When Gov. Rendell unabashedly comes on TV and tells the pundits how vexed Pennsylvania is about voting for someone who is not white--he's not making this stuff up. Remember, Michael Nutter is the only mayor ever to have overwhelming white support. And we're considered the more "progressive" part of the state.

Whether or not Rendell's comments caused Obama's primary defeat in PA is up for debate, but if you want to look at the Northeast demographically as a unit; honestly, I would compare us to Pittsburgh.

Obama definitely DOES have the support of more mixed-race Northeast neighborhoods like Frankford, Northwood and Wissinoming and parts of Tacony and Mayfair, but I don't see Obama banners north of those areas. There aren't any Obama signs or Obama people campaigning anywhere near where I live and I'm in an area that's about 1/3 white, 1/3 black, and 1/3 latino/asian and all working-class or lower.

Will people look at their pocketbooks and disappearing piggybanks and life savings and vote accordingly? We didn't vote with our wallets in 2004 when the economy was a top issue then. We let ourselves get distracted with the fictitious Karl Rovesque debate over gay marriage.

As far as conservatives go, conservative voters tend to change their political views to the center or to left when they lose their income and employment. Maybe we will see a change when unemployment shoots up this month, as it is forecast to do.

1. Philly Against McCain is canvassing every weekend till election day in areas Clinton carried in the primary (South Philly and North East Philly). If anyone is interested in helping in the effort, to quote James Brown please, please, please contact YPP's own Sam Durso at samuel_durso(at symbol)gmail.com. We need more bodies to knock on doors. A lot.

2. NE Philly Democratic Party officials who heard Obama is not paying for e-day work are misinformed. In the primary with the mayor and governor working for Clinton the Obama camp was not hiring street workers through the ward system, though it was hiring some street workers independently from what I read. As the official nominee and the endorsed candidate of the Democratic Party, there will be the funds for e-day work through the usual conduits. Its kind of sad if that appears to be the only reason some Dem Party folks would work to elect their nominee instead of McCain - a guy who who has consistently backed "right to work" laws, who got 0% from the League of Conservation Voters for his voting record last year and took over $1 million from big oil, who fought consistently privatize Social Security, who has a 0% voting record from Planned Parenthood and says he wants to appoint "Scalia clones" to the US Supreme court, who beat the drum for deregulation of Wall Street right up until last week even as it has almost brought the collapse of our economy.

If the only reason NE Philly Dem ward officials would work to get Obama and Biden into the White House is the promise of a few bucks on e-day - well thats kind of pathetic in my view - but they should rest assured - if they work, they will get paid as per usual from what has been reported in the newspapers.
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.

Lorraine Bednarek, Democratic leader of the 64th Ward, in Northeast Philadelphia, may not vote for her party's candidate.

"To be honest, I'm not sure," Bednarek said in a phone interview when asked if she would vote for Obama. "I've always voted Democrat. That's why this election is very difficult for me."

Ward leaders have far less influence on presidential elections than they do on local races, but Bednarek's disaffection may be symptomatic of the challenge the ticket faces in the Northeast.

Bednarek said that she feels resistance to Obama from ward committee members and Democratic voters, and doesn't think it's about his race or background.

"I think he's relatively unknown, and it's hard for people to identify with him," Bednarek said. "I guess everyone's trying to find more about him and the issues. He's promising a lot of things and he's not saying who's going to end up paying for them."

Bednarek was a Hillary Clinton delegate to the Democratic convention, and Clinton overwhelmingly won her ward in the April primary.

"I supported Hillary because she had specific ideas and plans, and they were all on her Web site," Bednarek said. "Obama tends to be more abstract."

Asked if she'd visited Obama's Web site, Bednarek said, "Not really, not lately."

What explains this curious phenomena?

Here's a theory.

"I'm hearing a lot of people saying, 'He's too young, he's too inexperienced,' " said Philadelphia AFL-CIO President Pat Eiding. "What they're really saying is, 'He's black.' "

More from the same article.

Meanwhile, the Associated Press reported over the weekend that an AP-Yahoo News poll found that deep-seated racial misgivings could cost Obama the White House if the election is close.

The poll found that one-third of white Democrats harbor negative views toward blacks - many calling them "lazy," "violent" or responsible for their own troubles. The poll, conducted with Stanford University, suggests that the percentage of voters who may turn away from Obama because of his race could easily be larger than the final difference between the presidential candidates in 2004 - about 2.5 percentage points.

Mark Sawyer, director of the Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity and Politics at UCLA, told the Daily News that those casting racially motivated votes against Obama might cite his inexperience, or say he's too arrogant, or too liberal.

"There's evidence that suggests whites perceive black candidates as more liberal than they are really are," Sawyer said.

Sawyer said that his analysis of a wide range of opinion surveys and other data suggests that Obama suffers "a gap of four or five points that might be related to race."

So how do you overcome this? How do you convince people to vote on the issues not the melanin? One thing can make a difference - one on one contact i.e. canvassing. Eiding again.

"When I'm talking in a union meeting, the first issue I put out is, 'In case you haven't noticed, Barack Obama is black,' " Eiding said. "Then I say, 'Now let's talk about your issues, your lives, your kids. Close your eyes and listen to what's being said in this campaign.' "

Eiding said that he urges other labor leaders to have such conversations.

"We need to do this one-on-one, not in rallies, not with megaphones," Eiding said. "I tell them they need to go to their members directly, let them hear about this from experienced people who know the issues."

Again, if you care about this election canvassing folks like Lorraine Bednarek is the one thing you can do to most effect this election. Contact samuel_durso(at symbol)gmail.com if you will have time for a few hours for Philly Against McCain next weekend. Or if you feel like reaching out to Bednarek directly . . .

Committee of 70 has contact info.

-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.

I personally view wardleaders as "elected officials"and fair game because after all - they are "elected officials". As an aside, I always wondered why doesn't the DCC give them all official emails at this point.
-Sean
MrLuigi, my cat, actually only types half as badly as I do.

Actually, I am not so worried about this... the Obama campaign is run by big-city Democratic ward-system operatives from Chicago, they are probably used to this situation. There are cranky old racist white people there too, and they clean up there.

However! American presidential elections as we all know are won and lost in the suburbs! And that's what worries me!

I don't understand for the life of me why they are wasting time and money on ID or even god forbid persuasion canvasses in Ward 2 when they should be loading all those people up into a shiny flotilla of Philly CarShare Mini Coopers and driving their asses out to Media or Springfield Township to knock on doors out there and spread the gospel! We already had a 6-week registration drive - the longest in the country. The last thing you need in the suburbs is accidentally registering racists!

Pennsylvania cannot be won on rowhouse knock knock knock and drag drag drag drag alone, and with the amount of money the Obama campaign is blowing on TV ads with silly chewing-gum-jingle music, I can't see how, on November 4, they will still have in the bank the whopping 35-40 percent of their campaign budget that they will need to spend in the most massive Election Day operation ever. Unless of course all those unemployed investment bankers decide to see the light and write checks to the Campaign for Spare Change.

There is always hope.

rant over, back to healthcare...
Hannah