Campaign Watch I – Michelle, Oprah, Maria, and Jesse….and Mickey Hart

I have several very nice social justice stories waiting in the wings, but I’ve resigned myself to the fact that they will have to wait until Super Tuesday fever is over.

And there is also the matter of Obama fever, and whether it will be strong enough by Tuesday to equal or surpass Hillary Clinton’s early lead in California and other key states. Both Obama and Clinton have drawn ardent supporters. Talk Left, a legal/political site I like and respect, is firmly and passionately in the Hillary camp. Yet if I am merely to judge by the emails I’ve been getting in the past 48 hours, both from individuals and organizations, the Obama tide is rising very fast.

MoveOn asked its members to vote for the candidate they preferred, and seventy percent went for Obama, so that’s where MoveOn is now throwing its weight. On a more local level, I get emails from groups like the Northeast Democratic Club of Los Angeles, which is also supporting Obama. Correction: Turns out some of their main members are, but they aren’t officially.)

Plus there are the side shows, like the viral wildfire going on with the Yes We Can music video. The video, featuring a song based on Obama’s New Hampshire speech and written by Will I Am of the Black Eyed Peas, was produced by Jesse Dylan (Bob’s eldest son) and released this weekend. Within 48 hours it has become it’s own mini-phenom.

UPDATE: And of course the Deadheads For Obama concert, which is sold out, but evidently features a live simulcast.

UPDATE 2: Kevin Roderick at LA OBSERVED notes that a tipster told him that Scarlett Johanson is making recorded calls for Obama. I can affirm this as true since I’ve been the recipient of one of those calls.

I didn’t attend the Obama rally at UCLA’s Pauley Pavilion on Sunday—that’s the event that featured Oprah, Michelle Obama, Caroline Kennedy and a surprise, last-minute, drop-in endorsement from Maria Shriver—but I’ve been getting plenty of notes from those who did attend. One of them was from my novelist/author friend Aimee Liu. Aimee is a normally sober-minded person and an elegant writer. Yet, when she came back from a day of canvassing for Obama followed by her morning at Pauley Pavilion, she was a fevered as everybody else. Here’s what she reported:

“Michelle Obama is one of the most impressive human beings I have ever heard or seen,” wrote Aimee. “She pointed out that Barack has been seasoned by a lifetime of people telling him he ‘can’t.’ From the Southerners who condemned his white mother and her black children, to the Ivy League establishment at Princeton, to the white Chicago pols who fought his entry into state politics. He proved them all wrong and has been ready from Day One for every challenge he has taken on.

“She also pointed out that his global upbringing and personal connections to Asia and Africa, and to multiple faiths, give him a knowledge base and sensitivity to international affairs that are unique to American history. His name and his race are, in fact, tremendous advantages in engaging the trust of other nations around the world and in repairing the shredded image of America in the world’s eyes. These, to me, are the strongest reasons we should all support his candidacy.

“She pointed out that his campaign is filled with every dimension of America — from the young to the elderly, every color, gender, political party, every faith. A 93-year-old Korean-American woman who had joined the US Navy in 1942 spoke up to emphasize this point. But I had already witnessed this diversity in those who walked beside me yesterday when I canvassed for him. My co-walker’s husband is a lifelong Republican who has registered Independent for the first time, so he can vote for Obama.

“These are just some of the reasons Maria Shriver made her surprise endorsement,” Aimee wrote. “‘If Barack Obama were a state,” she said, ‘ he would be California. He’s brilliant, a leader, a creative innovator, a bold intellect, the embodiment of diversity, dreams, hope, and change.’

“‘WE are the change we’ve been waiting for,’ Maria Shriver said. ‘But it has taken Obama to awaken us, to realize this change, and to show us the way to make it happen. This is what it means when ten thousand people yell “YES WE CAN!'”

Aside from the obviously atypical nature of Shriver’s endorsement, her words were typical of the sort of evangelical enthusiasm for Obama’s candidacy that appears to be spreading. Will it translate into enough delegates for Obama to stay even with or pass HRC? Hard to say. And that questions begs another: if Obama loses, what then? Where will all this fevered fervor go?