Sunday morning café
October 13, 2024
The Comment section is open.
For those readers returning to email after observing Yom Kippur, I recommend checking out yesterday’s newsletter, Make a plan for Election Night and beyond.
The image below is of the Flame Nebula, which is 1,350 light-years from Earth and has a diameter of 7 light-years. It is part of the Orion Molecular Cloud Complex, parts of which can be seen in the right border of the image. Enjoy!
Each Saturday my husband and I set up a votefromabroad.org table at the very busy and touristy open air market in the small French town where we live. Votefromabroad.org (VFA) is a Democrats Abroad (an official part of the Democratic Party) website. Registration is quick and easy. We have a HARRIS/WALZ sign on the wall above us, a large sign on the table with a Register-to-Vote verbiage and the votefromabroad.org QR code. We have an equally large sign in French asking if they know Americans to tell about votefromabroad.org. A small American flag and a small French flag stick up from the appropriate sign.
* Roughly 10% of adult Americans living abroad (about 6.5 million) voted in the 2020 election. Democrats Abroad is aiming to change that dramatically. Here is what happens at the market:
* The lady that owns the cafe where we have set up for months is greatly enthusiastic and supports our taking up one of her tables for the hours we are there.
* Each Saturday we have found several Americans who live abroad who are not registered and who take our VFA cards or bookmarks and promise to register.
* The passing French and European tourists give broad smiles, thumbs up, stop to talk about their incredulity that any Americans can support Trump, have their kids look at us, and take our pictures, especially since we started donning our Harris/Walz tee shirts. We’re another tourist attraction!
* We have encountered only one American (who said he never votes) who supported Trump. It is estimated that 80% of those living abroad are Democrats.
* Yesterday, October 12, for the first time, every American we talked to, some living overseas and some tourists, had emphatically told us they have already voted or, in the case of a couple tourists, will vote when they get home. All for Harris.
* We were especially gratified that two separate groups of students who walked by told us they have already voted from abroad! We need them!
* In 2020, approximately 18,000 overseas voters from Georgia and approximately 18,000 from Arizona gave Biden the margin of victory in those States. I hope our Get-Out-the-Vote efforts will massively improve on these numbers in every State of the Union!
* Members of Democrats Abroad around the world are phone banking, texting and postcard writing as well. Here in France we contacted 10,000 voters by phone or text and continue our outreach to Americans in other European countries. The enthusiasm is so palpable! We WILL make a difference in this election.
The editors of The New Yorker wrote in their endorsement of Kamala Harris that "Close to ninety million women have registered to vote this November, and historical data show that women have favored Democrats over Republicans in every general election since 1992." Assuming those are new registrants, of course, if say 2/3 of them vote for Harris, and at least she gets the votes Joe got in 2020 (81 million) that would be a slam dunk. Most of them might not be in "swing" states but that is a heck of a lot of new voters. Hoping for signs to base hope on. My local PO told me that all the postcard stamps were sold out because there has been such a run on them in my state of NC. I'd say that's a good sign too.