In my opinion, the most important objective in this election is to pry Rick Santorum from his Senate seat. While there are many miserable bastards in both the House and the Senate, few rival the atavistic thinking and nasty rhetoric of Santorum. Furthermore, he ranks third in the Republican leadership of the Senate. With Frist retiring, were Santorum to remain in the Senate, he would become even more powerful. The United States will unquestionably be better off without Santorum in the Senate.
The Democratic Party has offered Bob Casey, Jr., as Santorum's opponent. Casey is not the perfect candidate from the point of view of liberal me. He's pro-life; he's pro-gun; he's against gay marriage. But nonetheless, he will do, if for no other reason because he will caucus with the Democrats and, Lord willing, help to bring about a sane Senate leadership in the next Congress.
I want Casey to win this election. Being a resident of Pennsylvania, I want to display my support for Casey with a lawn sign, or even two. I think it's important for me to do so given that a distressingly large number of my neighbors have Santorum lawn signs. (Heck, a spontaneously generated Santorum sign has been sighted in Texas, of all places.) I have seen only very few Casey signs. However, obtaining a Casey lawn sign in these parts turns out to be much harder than I ever imagined it would be.
I live in Erie County, PA. I like to call it the Siberia of Pennsylvania, and not just because of the lake-effect snow. It's remote from Harrisburg (the state capital), and just about any other population center in Pennsylvania. Everybody in the state seems to forget that we're here. Tom Ridge comes from this area, and so just about every piece of public land or monument is named after him. Despite this, Erie County leans a little bit to the left. The City of Erie is a rust belt city, and it still has a few moving pieces of its old Democratic machine operating. Kerry won Erie County in 2004. As such, Casey has the potential to do well here.
So, a few weeks ago I went to the headquarters of the Democratic Party in the City of Erie, and asked for a couple Casey lawn signs. "We ran out." Will there be any more coming in before the election? "Don't know." So I got a "Rendell for Governor" lawn sign, of which there were many piles, and a Casey bumper sticker, which I had to wheedle out of them. Apparently, they had so few Casey bumper stickers, they were unwilling to give them to just anybody. It just seemed very strange that an organization that is presumably dedicated to promoting the candidates of the Democratic Party in general, and the one nominee for the most important race in the country in particular, would have almost nothing available to promote that candidate. I went away frustrated.
It occurred to me that, if Erie was out of Casey lawn signs, perhaps I could look into finding them in another county nearby. I contacted a friend in Meadville, in Crawford County to the south, to see if she could locate a Casey lawn sign there. Eventually, she replied that the Democrats of Crawford County were all out of them too. In fact, they had only gotten 100! Now, granted, Crawford County is very rural, and hence very conservative. But surely, you would think that there are more than 100 Democrats in the entire county who would be willing to display a lawn sign!
So, given that there appeared to be no actual Casey lawn signs obtainable within a 50 mile radius, I resorted to the internet. My friend in Meadville referred me to http://www.bobcaseystore.com where I discovered I could buy lawn signs for $7.50 a piece. As I've already given the Casey campaign substantially more than that, I figure I can spring for a little more. But I find the necessity of having to buy lawn signs to be very strange. I have never had to pay for candidate lawn signs before, and I can only wonder what kind of conspiracy of dunces has made it this difficult to get Casey lawn signs in northwestern Pennsylvania. Is it the Casey Campaign itself? Does their strategy boil down to get-out-the-vote in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, and the devil take the rest? If so, I think it's very short-sighted, particularly given that Erie County is predominantly Democratic. Something more akin to Dean's 50-state strategy applied to rural Pennsylvania would be much more productive. Is it the fault of the Democratic Party organizations in the counties? Do they order stuff from the candidates, and were they short-sighted this time around? As someone who just wants to plug the Democratic candidate, I don't really care that much what the problem is; I just want it to get fixed.
Obviously, this election is not going to be won on whether or not I get two crummy lawn signs. Given the rumors that, nationally, the Republican Party has abandoned the Santorum campaign, and that Santorum has not aired any TV ads today, and that Casey has dominated in the polls from even before he was nominated, maybe I really don't need to do anything other than vote. But you'd think that some Democratic operative somewhere would make it easy for someone like me to show support for a candidate. No wonder the Democrats have lost so many elections.