"Chatting with the guy from Illinois with the funny name"

[beachmom]

Kossak and labor activist DawnT had a great story to tell from 4 years ago, when an unknown Barack Obama called her regarding a union survey:

Chatting with the guy from Illinois with the funny name

by dawnt

Sun Mar 16, 2008 at 11:36:21 PM PDT

Way back in 2004, I was working for a union. Part of my job was to create and manage a handful of websites. One of the websites was an online election center where we graded the policy positions of candidates running for state and national offices. We sent out probably 5,000 emails to candidates, and when they responded, I copy/pasted them into the database and gave them a grade. Usually some staffer sent us some boilerplate text that they didn't even bother to customize to our questions or our audience.

Once in a while, though, someone would call. Usually it was some crackpot who had no resources, no staff, no money, and no chance of winning whichever office he was running for (I say he only because I don't remember any of the crackpots being women).

One day, a guy in Illinois running for U.S. Senate called. Based on the fact that he picked up the phone to call me, I assumed he didn't have enough resources to hire any staff that could call me or send me an email. I assumed (like the fool I am) that he was a nobody on a fast train going nowhere. I was basing this assumption, of course, on the fact that everyone else who called was definitely on a fast train to nowhere.

This man from Illinois with the funny name understood labor issues better than any candidate I'd talked to. He understood these issues as well as any labor leader or activist I'd talked to. And what's more, even though I was doing the interview, I look back and realize that he controlled the conversation. We spent the entire 45-60ish minutes going through my questions, but he brought everything back to his key issue: reuniting the country.

...

The first question on the survey did not ask about the issues. It merely asked, "What's most important to you?" I think his answer will look familiar to you:

Uniting a polarized America. There are those who are preparing to divide us. I say to them, there is not a liberal America, and a conservative America, there is the United States of America.

That's a direct quote from the man himself. When I read these words now, I have heard them so many times that I can hear his voice as I read them. But something became clear to me when I saw these words in my notes. This is not something his speech writers wrote for him. These are his words. These are words that Barack Obama said. The guy from Illinois with the funny name said these words, word for word, back in 2004 to a person that thought he was nobody.

Read the rest here

Every day we will learn more things about our candidates. One of the hardest things for a politician to prove is that they are sincere, and only their record can give us any reassurance that they mean what they say. I think this diary is one more piece of evidence that we are dealing with the genuine article when it comes to Barack Obama.

[babylonsister]

1. Rec'd with thanks. There's that vision thing and the hands-on

effort. I like it!

[beachmom]

2. Thanks, Babylonsister. With all the negativity, I figured there was room

for at least ONE positive article.

[ThatBozGuy]

4. Thank you...Kick

[Coexist]

3. rec'd - because I almost left DU this am due to all the Wright threads

but decided to just Hide threads and kick the good ones!

[crispini]

5. Thanks for posting!

K&R

[ginnyinWI]

6. My sister-in-law has a personal story about an Obama call.

She lives in the Chicago area and is employed in healthcare (insurance processing for a hospital). During Obama's 2004 run for the Senate, she decided to call Obama's campaign headquarters and get some answers to some questions she had about Obama's stance on the issue. She called, the phone rang and Obama himself picked up! She was surprised to say the least--had expected to reach a staffer and get handed off to yet another staffer. Instead she found herself talking to her own State Senator who was running for the U.S. Senate that year. He proceeded to give her very well-informed answers to all of her questions and impressed her as very nice and exeptionally intelligent. She said that being able to give off the cuff answers as brilliantly as he did was what impressed her the most. But also the fact that he answered his own phone personally that day!

[beachmom]

12. No way, GinnyinWI!! What a cool story. Thanks for sharing it. nt

[frazzled]

7. Okay, here's a much smaller story, but one that affected me back when

I've done my fair share of contacting my senators (Kerry and Kennedy when I lived in Massachusetts, Durbin and Obama since moving here), to support or oppose thus and such legislaltion. I haven't had to do it all that often, because my senators usually could be trusted to vote correctly (with the exception of Kerry on the IWR). I am very familiar with the type of email I receive in return, if any.

Well, one day I got an email from WESPac asking to contact my senators regarding thus and such veteran's issue (can't remember), and I thought, okay, what the hell, I'll do that just to keep the issue on the burner. I never even expected a reply, and in fact, never got one from (my beloved) Dick Durbin, which was okay. I know he supports veterans affairs.

But all of a sudden one day, I got this email from Barack Obama. It was in June 2005, when he had been a senator for only six months, well before any talk of a presidential bid. I read it, and my first reaction was--gosh, this isn't like any email I've gotten from a senator or representative. I knew it couldn't have been personally written to me, but it felt kind of like it had been. (It talked about It my comments, and it apologized at the end for having taken some time to reply.) It not only addressed some very specific issues I had mentioned in my own email--but it did so in detail, in a way that did not speak in plaltitudes (I support veterans and will work hard for them!)--and, most important--in a way that did not speak down to me, that assumed I could understand some detailed and relatively complex matters. Here's that email. It was the first thing that made me think, "this guy is a bit diffrent." Maybe it won't seem different to you, but it was different from the form emails I'd received from my legislators before, if in nothing else but tone. I felt like I wasn't just getting a form letter, but that someone had sat down and actually thought about the real issues.

Dear :

Thank you for your message regarding our nation's commitment to its veterans. I agree that our country and its leaders must assign a higher priority to meeting the needs of America's veterans.

I may be new to Washington, but it did not take long to appreciate how poorly our government treats its veterans. That's why I sought a seat on the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, and I will use this position to be an advocate for meeting our commitments to our veterans.

As far as I am concerned, we have a long way to go in that regard, as your comments document. In just a few short months in the Senate, I have been amazed by what can appear to be the federal bureaucracy's callous disregard for America's veterans.

For example, my introduction to this situation came before I was sworn into office when I learned about the problems Illinois veterans are having with disability payments. It is simply unacceptable that an Illinois veteran receives $5,000 less in benefits than a comparable veteran in Puerto Rico. In January, I raised this issue directly with Secretary of Veterans Affairs James Nicholson, and he agreed to look into the situation immediately. A subsequent VA report confirmed these benefit discrepancies and indicated that VA regional offices do not have sufficient staff to thoroughly review veterans' claims. In the coming months, I will work to address the problems identified in the report.

The President's proposed budget also was a shot of cold water to veterans. It proposed a mere .04% increase in the VA budget from the Fiscal Year 2005, which is wholly inappropriate considering the fact that we are getting an increasingly high number of veterans returning from the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. The budget also called for a $9 million decrease in medical research, which is totally unsatisfactory given the trouble this government has had in the past adjusting to various diseases such as Agent Orange and Gulf War Syndrome, the symptoms of which do not appear for years. It also proposes cuts in nursing homes for long-term care and requires priority 7 and 8 veterans pay a $250 dollar user fee and that co-payments for medication increase from $7 to $15. Our veterans should not be left to personally finance medical care they were promised by their government.

While I understand and support the President's call for fiscal responsibility, I do not believe that funding valuable domestic priorities and restoring discipline to federal spending are mutually exclusive propositions. During Senate debate on the Federal budget, I cosponsored and voted for an amendment that would increase veterans' health care funding by $2.8 billion. I believe that this amendment better reflects the priorities of the American people than do many of the President's budget recommendations.

This fight is not over. As Congress prepares the final budget for 2006, I will work with my colleagues in the Senate and the leaders of veterans organizations in Illinois and Washington to resist the Administration's cutbacks and provide America's veterans with the benefits they need and deserve.

Finally, I want to apologize for the delay in my response. Quite frankly, it has taken a bit longer than I had anticipated to get caught up on the backlog of correspondence I inherited when I was sworn into office. I hope that this delay will not deter you from keeping in touch in the future.


Sincerely,

Barack Obama
United States Senator

[beachmom]

13. Well, at the minimum, Obama has excellent constituent services!

Great e-mail.

[hedgehog]

8. This is just so great to read on a Monday when I'm starting out the week

worried about paying bills. I'm trying to figure out how to say it without seeming to put Obama down, but this campaign is as much about us as it is about him! I'm sorry, but it seems Hillary's campaign is all about her!

[Yurovsky]

9. Thanks! K&R*

don't look here ...

[thevoiceofreason]

10. Excellent article and thanks for sharing.

[beachmom]

15. No problem. nt

[cooolandrew]

11. Yes, even in his book he speaks strong for unions and unity. He's the real deal folks.

[beachmom]

14. Yep, it is not just some catchy messaging he came up with for a presidential run.

It is what he believes whether it be running for State Senate, U.S. Senate, or POTUS.