McHale was a muckety-muck with the Louisiana Young Democrats when I was active in the national organization back in the 1990’s. He was an entertaining speaker (the rural Louisiana accent helped, could have never carried it off with a Yat), and was the only guy I ever met that knew the lyrics to “Every Man a King.” McHale was instrumental in bringing the YDA convention to New Orleans in 1995, a tumultuous affair that was interrupted by Hurricane Iris and where I and two delegates from Alaska were mugged outside of the police station on Basin Street.

I encountered McHale later at the 1996 Democratic Convention, where he was handing out buttons with the slogan “New Orleans 2000.”

“You should wear this, Ted. Since you had so much fun at the YD convention, doncha think we should have our next Democratic Convention in New Orleans?”

“I got mugged and we got hit by a hurricane.”

“Oh, we’ve fixed all that.”

The words weren’t so tragically ironic at the time.

Anyway, I’m glad to see McHale still active and ornery. When you gonna run for Governor, Mike?

Back in 1998, Cole was doing election day organizing for Ronnie Shows, the Democratic candidate for congress in his district. The election was hard fought and, as usual in Mississippi, Democrats needed to get out the African American vote. To help out with this, Cole rented buses to help bring African American voters from the smaller communities in the district to the polls.

Election day morning, Cole overheard a conversation between two leaders of the local Republican party:

“Did you see what they are doing? They are bringing in blacks from New Orleans to vote!”

Cole found this funny, but he couldn’t figure out why they’d think such a thing. Later, he saw the license plates on the busses: they were from Louisiana.

Of course, sometimes people can be so blinded by their own paranoia that they can convince themselves of all sorts of delusional scenarios with even less evidence.

Raúl Grijalva had a health care town hall in Yuma yesterday. Grijalva answered questions, and it seemed to be a success. However, a the venue was small and some folks couldn’t get in. So, of course, this leads to the paranoid charges, this from John Mitchell, quoted in the Yuma Daily Sun:

This is a small venue (Yuma Regional Corporate Center), and many of the people inside who are pro-reform he had bused in. They unloaded them off of the bus this morning and marched them in to get seats before everyone else got seats.

The article also referenced charges that supporters were being paid. Paid? Paid by whom? Judging by the usual comments on the Star message boards, calls to Grijalva’s office and charges being leveled by protestors against people I know that went to the event, the villain is ACORN. Yep, the omnipresent, omnipotent ACORN. Yeah.

I love the way that conservative activists have made these guys into some nefarious super-villain group on the level of SPECTRE or AIM, but I’m a little lost on how much ACORN has actually gotten done. I like the fact that y’all are so scared of them, but I wish they could be at least half the political force that right-wing shouters make them out to be.

Maybe there’s a little bit of projection here given how much corporate money has gone into groups like Freedom Works, or maybe these guys spend so much time talking to each other that they can’t imagine that anyone would support health care reform without being on the take.

By the way, I asked if there were any people being bussed in. It seems funny, since so many charged that these people were being bussed in from California. Given that San Diego and Los Angeles are four or five hours away, where from? El Centro? Calexico? It would have been easier to bus them in from other parts of Arizona, doncha think? Never mind, this isn’t supposed to make sense.

Anyhow, I asked if anyone was bussed in and I was told that there were people brought up from San Luís and Somerton, and some of them may have been in vans. These people came up from local senior centers. The Somerton Senior Center: the best known ACORN cell in the Southwest. Be very, very afraid.

Another symptom of the same problem was the silliness that happened at the DNC two years ago when the Young Democrats of America tried to assert themselves. It also is part of the broader problem of the relationships between paid staff and activists.

May 8, 2008 (Washington, DC) — MrSuper.org is a website which was created in March to debunk myths, offer insight and answer questions about the 2008 Democratic nomination process for President. The author, who has been posting under the pseudonym “Mr. Super” will announce his identity today.

The site was created by Edward Espinoza, an undeclared Superdelegate and elected DNC Member from California and a former Field Director to 2008 Presidential Candidate Bill Richardson.

The site gained the immediate attention of several political media outlets covering the web, being included in a story by Abbi Tatton on CNN, as well as serving as the subject of magazine articles published in The Nation and The American Prospect. It was recently mentioned in a San Jose Mercury News article, and the site has also been featured on other blogs including Democratic Convention Watch, TAPPED – the blog of the American Prospect, and has received mentions on DailyKos, Ben Smith’s blog at Politico.com and a number of other political blogs. All featured stories are listed on a page within the blog under a link labeled “In The News.”

So, why author the site anonymously? “I stand by everything I’ve written on the site – but I didn’t want the site to be about me, I wanted it to be about the topic of Superdelegates,” said Espinoza. “I put this together under the premise that it would be a public service and no personal gain to be made – there would be no advertising to earn money from and no name recognition for the author.”

Up until now readers have suggested that Mr. Super is a member of Congress, others think that Mr. Super is a senior member of the DNC. Because the author has participated in three national conventions and works as a political consultant, he carries experience that is normally associated with more elder members of the Party. Mr. Espinoza, age 35, is not currently affiliated with any federal campaign, has been on the ground in seven primary states this season.

Several notable items from the site include the author’s repeated notion that “there are no undecided Superdelegates – only undeclared ones,” thereby giving some insight into the shell game of presidential nominating politics. He has provides background on details pertaining to Florida and Michigan as well as offers insight as to why some Superdelegates remain undeclared.

At this time, the site rarely strays from the subject of Superdelegates – with the exception of a segment entitled “Friday Veepstakes” in which the possibilities of potential presidential running mates are espoused upon. On May 7th the site registered more than 5,826 visitors.

Edward Espinoza is a political and public relations strategist from Long Beach. He is the former President of the California Young Democrats and frequent guest on CNN. He is the author of a February 25 opinion piece published in Politico entitled “Superdelegates use powers for good, not evil” and is regularly quoted in the LA Times and other notable publications.

Alumni and long time members of the Arizona Young Democrats also know Espinoza as the ringleader of the lamentably gone Lat Pac.

Instead of being happy that we registered these folks and brought them the names, we were told by a staffer, “College students? They don’t vote.” Never mind that they registered so that they could vote in that upcomming election.

Unfortunately, I see the same attitude in Dana’s latest post over at Democratic Diva. She talks about Hillary Clinton’s strength among older women, and dismisses Barack Obama’s strength among younger voters since she seems to think they won’t vote anyway.

Not only is this attitude short sighted, it doesn’t seem to have been the attitude of Clinton’s campaign in Iowa or New Hampshire. In New Hampshire, Clinton did better than Obama among young professional and working women precicely because her campaign did a better job working this group than Obama did (whereas in Iowa, Obama’s campaign specifically reached out to this group and he carried it).

God help us if Clinton’s Arizona campaign is counting on certain people not voting.