Little Red Island in a Deep Blue Sea

After work last Thursday, I headed down to J&M’s Cafe & Cardroom in Seattle's Pioneer Square observe and interview people watching John McCain’s acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention. The event was a convention-watching party organized by Peter Cowman of MoveRed.org, a King-County-based G.O.P. youth group. While folks at the bar were watching the Giants-Redskins game, about thirty-two others gathered at the tables in the back, where Fox News’ convention coverage ran continuously on four big flatscreen TVs. I counted 20 men and 12 women sitting sitting at the tables, I’d say ranging in age from twenty to fifty, all of them white, most of them conservative Republicans. Steve Beren, the G.O.P.’s 7th district congressional candidate, handed out campaign flyers. One independent sat sipping his beer in a corner. All of them were there to hear what McCain had to say.

Most of you reading this probably know me well enough to ask what in the hell I was doing there. The answer is, as I said, to observe and interview: I’d signed up to cover the event for OffTheBus, the Huffington Posts’s “citizen (i.e., volunteer) journalist” blogging site. This was my first OTB “assignment.” An extremely truncated summary of what I heard there can be found at the site. My full account is below:

Arriving about an hour before McCain was scheduled to speak, I managed to interview twelve convention-watchers about what they considered the most important issues in this campaign, what they thought of McCain and of Sarah Palin, and how they felt the race was going. After the speech, I asked the same people for their reactions, in particular whether McCain’s words or performance changed anything for them. Everyone I interviewed spoke for attribution.

( Your correspondent visits a little red island in Seattle's deep blue sea )

X-posted to ljdemocrats