Obama backers plan Texas phone barrage
Texans who've made up their minds between the two Democratic presidential contenders, who don't want to hear anything more about the campaign or who simply don't care to chat with strangers best head for the hills this Sunday.
That's because the political arm of MoveOn.org, the liberal online advocacy group that is nothing if not energetic, plans to swamp the state with telephone phone calls that day urging support for their candidate of choice, Barack Obama.
Most of the incoming rings apparently will come in the evening, in conjunction with close to 2,000 "Yes We Can" house parties the group is convening across the country. Overall, according to a MoveOn release sent out today, its members, "armed with cell phones," aim to make over 400,000 calls to Texas to help Obama prevail in the state's Tuesday primary.
Before the nighttime calling begins, folks at the parties will get a political pep talk from key Obama backers -- Sen. Ted Kennedy, liberal talk show radio host (and one-time Texas pol) Jim Hightower, and actress Halle Berry.
Unclear from the MoveOn announcement is whether any of that trio will be part of the massive phone bank. Too bad; we'd guess a call from Berry would be mighty persuasive for a fair number of males.
-- Don Frederick
[UPDATE -- A couple of readers pointed out, appropriately, that our original headline for this item, "Obama backers set to jam Texas phone lines," might be open to a nefarious interpretation, given the dirty tricks scandal that featured a Republican official a few years ago in New Hamphire. We agree, so we changed the head. And we very much appreciate the input.].
Andrew Malcolm's immigrant parents repeatedly stressed the importance of active participation in a democracy. Early lessons included learning the alphabetical list of states by watching televised roll calls of national political conventions. That childhood exposure led to a lifelong fascination with politics, including 40-plus years of covering them and a brief stint practicing them as press secretary to Laura Bush in 1999-2000. A veteran foreign and national correspondent, Malcolm served on the Times Editorial Board and was a Pulitzer finalist in 2004. He is the author of 10 nonfiction books and father of four.
Johanna Neuman is a veteran Washington correspondent for both The Los Angeles Times and USA Today, having covered presidents and politics as far back as Ronald Reagan. A former president of the White House Correspondents Assn., she authored a book on media and foreign policy, “Lights, Camera, Wars.” Most recently she was co-author of the 
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I don't think 'jam' is the appropriate word for GOTV calls, especially after the republicans' New Hampshire phone jamming scandal in 2004. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/16/AR2006051601712.html
Posted by: bkrnrcrd | February 27, 2008 at 02:56 PM