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Entry: Goodbye to Politics Link: http://www.takimag.com/blogs/article/goodbye_to_politics#13593 Post contents: when my girlfriend went to vote at 7AM she called me afterward to let me know that all the candidates except Guiliani and Paul had supporters with signs at the polling place here. I was a bit dismayed about that but thought, well - all the RP folks are still in Concord and will be here soon. I went to vote around 10AM and found that there were still no Paul folks, nor Guiliani for that matter, at the poll. I had not planned this but went home and got my Ron Paul sign and went back to the polling place and stayed there, except for a lunch break and to walk my dog, until the polls closed at 8PM (most polls in NH closed by 7 but we were open till 8). I have to give a lot, and I mean a lot, of credit to the Hillary Clinton campaign effort. She had folks all over my small town of 16,000 and they were out all day and getting people to the polls. Obama had a similar effort going. Unfortunately, the Ron Paul campaign consists of 1000s of highly dedicated supporters here with insufficient support from the campaign Hqs. By that I mean they didn't organize, plan, or execute professionally. It was run "willy-nilly". And, with all the contributions donated, the ad money was not effectively used. Very amateurish constant rubbish on the radio to the point of annoyance, I thought. Was there any training provided to these dedicated folks? The thought probably was, "well, this is grassroots and let them run with it". Obama is grassroots as well but his staff understands how to effectively run a campaign and they ran it pretty well here. I had no illusions about Ron Paul winning here, I just wanted him to at least beat out Guiliani and latently Huckabee. That didn't happen and it's a damn shame. We had a record voter turnout here yesterday which shows the people are fed up with the status quo. Women especially were out in force. I spoke with several Edwards and Clinton supporters as I was in their midst. Surprisingly, or not I suppose, their impression of Ron Paul was very favorable, the only Republican they liked on any level. Edwards supporters sympathised with me on the "main stream media" is shutting both candidates out theme. As an aside, one small town here, Sutton, Population 20, has 3 people who will confirm they voted for Ron Paul but in the morning the computer count for Sutton shows zero votes. I don't think there was any hanky-panky here in Exeter, I noted 8 people who spoke to me on the way in saying they were voting for Paul (boy, was that discouraging for me) but in the end 167 folks here voted for him. Lesson I learned is that many many women are getting out to the polls to vote for Clinton. It's discouraging to me that they are doing so not because of a candidate's positions but soley due to Clinton being a woman. But, that's being simplistic a bit. The big issue for them is health care and so we go on living in the Nanny state. Alas, McCain, Romney, Guiliani, Huckabee or Thompson cannot beat Clinton. Paul can but the higher ups in his campaign need to learn some lessons fast and hard. You can not let 1000s of Paul supporters run willy-nilly all over a state without tragic consequences. Sent at: 2009 01 07