"I wish everyone saw her like I did - I Love Hillary" - comment from Jen, young woman in Portland Starbucks

My day started out very early on Saturday, May 17th when I caught a 6:30am flight to Portland with my fellow Hillstar supporter, Chris.

At the Portland baggage claim area, we ran into Dolores Huertas, the sister of Ceasar Chavez and past leader of the united migrant farm workers union, a huge Hillary Supporter. She was there working on Hillary's campaign. As we were talking to her, who should walk by but Chelsea Clinton!!

Chris said "Chelsea?" She turned to us and came over and said "Hi  - I like your outfit" (we both had on our Hillary T-shirts).  I gave her a hug and kiss, we asked her "What are you doing?" She replied "I'm not sure, I'm suppose to go to Planned Parenthood and then to a triathalon to greet them as the come through the finish line." She looked a little tired, her shirt was rumpled, hair a bit messy and she had a large starbucks coffee in her hand. "So, what are you doing?" she asked us and we told her we weren't sure either, but we were heading into the Portland office to see what needed to be done. "Oh, that's great" she said and we said our good-byes and that we would probably all see each other later.

We picked up our rental car and headed into downtown Portland. It was an extremely hot day and we were asked to head down to the Farmer's Market along the water front and talk to people about Hillary.  We did that, but weren't having much luck because most people were from out of state, or not even registered. The few we did meet, had already decided on Obama. Portland is certainly Obama-demographics: liberal, hippie-types and lots of college students. I knew these next few days would be a real challenge.

Instead of wasting our time here, we headed over to Clackamas Park, a suburb of Portland to the Bill and Chelsea Rally.

The outside temperature on our car read 103 degrees!!! ouch!!!  My friend, Polly, called to tell me she was on her way to see Chelsea at a triathalon (a-ha the one Chelsea mentioned) near Bend, Oregon.

In the meantime, Chris and I volunteered to direct traffic and stand at the entrance of the park with our Clinton signs.

When Bill Clinton finally showed up, we wiggled our way towards the front. He gave a GREAT speech, talked for over an hour.  During his speech, Chelsea showed up and joined him on stage.

Watch the videos and pictures: here, here, and here.

Some of the things that Bill spoke about was shared prosperity and how the middle class in America is shrinking because the last 7 years have given most of the tax benefits to the wealthiest Americans. In the meantime, the middle class has been going backwards, incomes shrinking, and the poor have gotten poorer. He likened it to 3rd world dictatorship in South America.

He asked the crowd if they wondered whatever happened to the contaminated toys from China story. He explained that it has been quickly overlooked because we are beholden to the Chinese since we have borrowed so much money from them. He says it's like "going to your bank and wanting to slap the Bank President across the face" - but you know you won't do that. Why? "Because he may not give you the loan you need." He talked about how we borrow money from China to pay the Saudis for oil. How Hillary's plan to take on Opec and create green collar jobs to provide incentives to come up with alternative fuels. "If we had cars that got 100 miles to the gallon, you wouldn't care what the price of oil was."

Bill also talked about how Hillary can "still win this thing". She is closing the gap on the pledged delegates, she now leads in the popular vote, and - most important- every poll shows how she can beat McCain. This is the argument that needs to be made to the Super Delegates.

After he was done with his speech, he came into the crowd for pictures.  Chris got her photo autographed. We saw Chelsea again and spoke. She signed a picture I had and we got our photo taken with her.

It had been a long, hot day - so we made our way back to Chris' brother's home on beautiful Lake Oswego, where we were staying.

Over the next couple days - we pounded the pavements of Portland and the surrounding areas on behalf of Hillary.

We hit the Farmer's Markets in the suburbs of Milwaukee and Hillsboro - far more friendlier crowds of people for Hillary. We met an adorable older woman, 88 years old to be exact, who was in her wheelchair at an outdoor market taunting everyone around her to "get your ballots in for Hillary". One older man said he had gotten his in, but she challenged him "are you sure?". Both her wheelchair and her son's wheelchair had big Hillary signs all over them.

In between our tasks, we would head into the Portland headquarters and do phone banking for awhile. Oregon has a vote-by-mail system, many voters had already sent in their ballots, our goal was to locate those that had not and were still deciding. At this point it was too late to mail in their ballots and so we had to be sure they understood that they needed to return their ballots to a nearby ballot drop-off location, and let them know where these were.

On Monday morning, we headed over to the Portland Zoo with our Hillary signs, a crowd was gathering because Chelsea was going to be there. Once again, we saw her - she said "Hi guys!" when she saw Chris and I (again).  She asked me "how's it going?" "Good" I responded and I wished her "Good Luck" with the vote on Tuesday.

You can see the video and pictures of Chelsea at the Zoo Hillary Headquarters in Portland here.

Chris and I were interviewed by the local media, Chris' remark of "Only Hillary can beat McCain, Barack can't win" was played all over the local news that evening. We laughed as that became our mantra - "Barack can't win!".....

In the afternoon, we visited the trendy area of Portland, called Nob Hill and went up and down the street with our Hillary signs talking to people about why they should vote for Hillary. One man called us "Demoncrats" and said he was 'votin' for McCain'.  At a nearby hospital, we went inside - I had an idea of yelling out "anyone here need health insurance?" in the lobby which was packed with sick people. However, the man behind the counter checking people in said we couldn't do that!! A nurse behind him scolded him and said "why can't they? half those people in there don't have insurance and at least Hillary is offering that!". He got defensive and said it wasn't his rule, it was the union's rule.

We went outside and talked to a nurse who wanted to understand the difference between Hillary's healthcare plan and Obama's (she was leaning Obama) - we explained the differences and she seemed to change her view towards Hillary. She gladly accepted our "Nurses for Hillary" buttons to hand out to her colleages.

I must say, that even though the crowds in Portland were a difficult group - I was happy to return to 'sanctuary' of Lake Oswego each evening. Especially one night when we went for a boat ride out on the Lake. The weather was fantastic, the scenery was awesome, the company was great. This took the pressure off of the realization that it did not look too promising for Hillary.

On Tuesday, the last day to vote - Chris and I headed into the Portland office to help with last minute phone banking and to head out and canvas in the downtown Portland area. This was much more difficult than the canvasing in Pennsylvania. First off, it was mostly apartments - difficult to get into and to find people that were home. In the random ones we did find home, most had already voted and most had voted for Obama.

We were desperate for a Starbucks by late afternoon and so we headed to a nearby one and ordered a mint chocolate frappacino!!! Delicious. We had all our Hillary gear on, along with our signs and after a few disappointing encounters with voters for Obama, it was refreshing to run into first an older couple that lived in Portland and were huge Hillary supporters. The woman said "I sure hope Hillary can pull this off somehow". We discussed how the elite male DNC party members had it in for her. "why?" I kept asking. The woman said "why do you think? isn't it obvious?" silence. "She's a woman, dear. These men don't want a woman as President." Her words just hung there.

After they left we ran into another young couple, Jen and her boyfriend. Jen said to me "I wish everyone could see Hillary the way I do - I love her." Her boyfriend loved her too. In Jen's eyes, Hillary was her hero. Jen was busy working for a democratic nominee running for Attorney General - she didn't think he was going to win, so she said she would head over to Hillary's Portland headquarters later in the evening to watch the returns and celebrate with like-minded Hillary lovers.

It was an interesting observation, but we were meeting more and more democrats who were supporting Hillary and said they would not support Obama if he won. We heard this from Jen and her boyfriend, but also from alot of the volunteers at Hillary's headquarters.

Overall, the day was a difficult one. First came the news that Ted Kennedy had been diagnosed with a brain tumor, the weather had also changed to much cooler and raining on and off. Back at the headquarters, more phone banking and the news crew was there.

The campaign asked us to go out and observe the ballot box drop off place at a library in Multnomah county from 6-8pm.

The last ballot could be dropped off at 8pm, but no later.

We headed out there, parked our car in the lot next to the ballot boxes and watched as car after car pulled up and dropped off their ballots. We took off all our Hillary pins and labels and signs as we were told that this was not allowed.

I really thought this was going to be a piece of cake as everything was so organized.  We were practically falling asleep in the car, listening to a local radio station that had interviewed Hillary earlier about what she likes to eat "chocolate", what about ice cream? "chocolate - fudge - chocolate". As Hillary went on and on about chocolate, all I could think of was how much I wanted another chocolate mint frappacino from Starbucks. "What's your favorite TV show?" the interviewer was asking, Hillary replied she couldn't miss "Grey's Anatomy". As I was dozing off I noticed, out of the corner of my eye, a young girl that walked up to the ballot box with a thick pile of ballots in her hand and she put them into the ballot box.

I ignored this until she came back a few minutes later with a bunch more. Then I jumped out of the car and went up to her "what are you doing?" I was quite accusatory, especially when I saw she had a big OBAMA button on her shirt. She claimed she was helping people to get through the line more quickly. I told her "no, no, no you can't do that". I told her it was illegal for her to wear her obama button and for her to collect the ballots. She got a little beligerent and said "who are you?". I told her I was a volunteer for Hillary's campaign and that she was disobeying all the rules.  I saw Chris on the phone in the background making a call to the legal hotline to report this. Suddenly, the girl took off.

Meanwhile the woman who had been directing traffic into the library came over to talk to us and said that she had been doing this all day and that she told her to leave, but she wouldn't. She couldn't leave her traffic post, so she didn't know who to report it to. A sheriff showed up and Chris and the traffic woman reported it to him.  A little while later, I saw the Obama girl go into the library, I didn't think anything of it until traffic woman told me there was a ballot box drop off in there as well. I high tailed it into the library, but couldn't find Obama-girl anywhere. I told the library woman about Obama-girl and she said she would keep an eye out and report her if she came back.

We were dishing politics with the traffic girl who recently moved to Oregon from Alabama. She told us she had no clue why anyone would vote for "O-bama - isn't he a muslim?".....

Around 7:30pm the "official" ballot poll workers showed up and at 7:45pm, there was still a long line of cars coming in. There was an Obama precinct captain that came up and we all agreed that the clock on the front of the library (which was running slow) would be the "official" clock we all use to call "time" at 8:00pm.

It seemed like most of the cars were gonna make it in by 8pm. Then at 8pm on the dot, the poll worker got behind the last car and followed it to the ballot box.

There were a few cars that came in around 8:05pm and later, their ballots were collected, but would not count. The Obama precinct capt thought the poll workers should tell those people that their votes wouldn't count, but they were instructed that they did not have to reveal this because it says right on the ballot that your vote won't count if it isn't in by 8pm. Furthermore, these elderly women said they did not want to get into a fight with someone. The Obama precinct Captain thought that was unfair. I argued with him, if you care so much about votes counting then perhaps you can convince your team to count the votes in Michigan and Florida.

When we got into our car around 8:30pm or so - they had already called Oregon for Obama! Geez. Don't even wait for all the ballots do be counted!!!  But our disappointment was offset by the extremely LARGE 35% victory Hillary had, once again, in Kentucky.

When we got back to our sanctuary in Lake Oswego, Chris' brother told us we were on the news again!!! He saw us at Hillary's campaign headquarters earlier in the day.

We had a glass of wine and watched the finale of Dancing with the Stars. It did not go unnoticed that, finally, a woman won this competition!!! Could this be an Omen? I couldn't help but mentally compare the similarities: Kristi Yamaguchi was clearly the best dancer, had the best techniques and did the best job - but it was possible that she would be overshadowed by the younger, handsome, african-american football player, who was far more popular.  But, in the end, the voters chose the better dancer........

Let's just hope the Super Delegates will too.