That was an unsettling evening for me because, bad as I am at lip-reading, I clearly saw WJC say "She's safe" to Bill Pascrell who was suddenly several shades paler than usual. I tried, later, to fight my way to the front of the crowd to ask him "Safe from what?" Being kind of small, I failed.
The next morning we all knew that a market in Peshawar had been bombed timed to coincide with Hillary's first official visit to Pakistan as Secretary of State. The death toll neared 100. That day, Hillary stood resolute and strong before the Pakistani people and reassured them.
She was as presidential that day as the Resolute Desk I still thought should have been hers.
Now she is once again asking us to hire her as our champion, and the word has gone out in New Jersey. Passaic County is strong on Clintons, and Tuesday evening the excitement at the VFW Hall in Clifton was palpable.
The Passaic County for Hillary crowd turned out big-time along with folks from Bergen, Essex, and Hudson Counties among others. The very rough and conservative estimate was 150. There could have been more. One participant came from Easton, PA!
Jenny Davis, the Grassroots Organizer for New Jersey, led the meeting, asked attendees to introduce themselves briefly, and took notes as people gave buzz-word reasons why they support Hillary for President.
I could not reduce my reasons to a single word or three. My reasons are the archive of this blog and more. So I just gave my URL. It is all here at Still4Hill.com. I am not sure I made it onto the roster, but that's OK.
Clifton Councilwomaan Lauren Murphy and Vice Chair Barbara Tanis of Passaic County Dems also
had a few words for the assembly.
Participants broke into small discussion groups for a time. Each group had a facilitator who took notes.
When the crowd reassembled some ideas were shared and folks were encouraged to sign up for action groups prior to leaving.
One particularly interesting, charming, knowledgeable, and funny person I was honored to meet was Dr. Bhmooz of Montclair. He is a nuclear physicist who told us that he has known Hillary since before Chelsea was born when he was involved in a nuclear energy project in Arkansas. He worked on her 2008 campaign, and thinks people do not really know how funny Hillary is. (Not a problem here.) His advice is for Hillary to market her great sense of humor. We agree!
Before the crowd dispersed, there was the compulsory group photo. It was impossible for me to get the whole group into one photo.
And, of course, we signed up!
All's well that ends well ... and BIG!
Note to Still4Hillers:
It's a little like freshman orientation at college. Everyone there has the same SAT and ACT scores as you (or higher) Their GPAs are as good as yours. Some have a similar roster of HS activities and many do not. Some graduated from Hillary HS in 2008 with you. Others - more than I expected - came from Barack Obama HS classes 2008 and 2012. More than I expected did not seem to be very social media savvy. They do not know what we have been doing online for the past seven years. They do not have that history. It is a gap that needs to be bridged.
And then ... there were a few a few young actionnaires who can't even vote yet. The early acceptance kids who always blow the rest of us away with their algorithms. They introduce themselves and you just go "Awwww ...." or anyway, I did.
