I’m at a Barack Obama campaign meetup in London. It’s in a cafe basement on Gloucester Rd, and a woman on the fundraising committee is telling me what needs- what we need to do- to help him win.

we need to get supporters around the world and hold rallies. the workers, you know. I nod, interested in whether this is going where I think it is. it is a shame that the pennsylvania primary is in april, because it would be best to do this on may day. but we need to get the workers around the world to come together. he is struggling with the white middle-class vote- the workers- in america. this would be very powerful and help him secure them.

Because it’s more fun when talking with the crazy and well-intentioned, I nod my head furiously. yes, I agree, the workers will come together. that is what laid-off pennsylvania steelworkers are seeking- an international movement of the workers. on may day.

She nods again and is ready to move on to the next topic, so obviously assured of the tactical and political brilliance of her plan that my agreement had been assumed as a given before I had even offered it.

A note, then-

If you are an American living abroad and you think that what a major Presidential candidate needs to do to shore up support among the white working-class is to tie him to a brand new international socialist movement that you are hoping will form in the next six weeks, you have probably been out of the country for too long to be of much real use.

But that’s kind of what I was there to see- is it possible to be of any real use to an American Presidential campaign from overseas? What sort of ideas do people have to help?

The answer is varied, which makes sense. A lot of the ideas are silly, designed to promote not the Obama campaign but the Obama campaign organization in London- the difference being that the former is led by Barack Obama and the latter is led by some horribly flaky woman who appears to have teleported to the Capitol directly from the Code Pink rally opposite the Marine recruiting center in Berkeley two hours before the meeting. But a lot of the ideas- and the people who presented them- are useful, definitely worth considering and worth executing.

These are the things that can be done for a Presidential campaign from abroad- fundraising, absentee voter registration, and phone-banking. Pretty much everything else is silly, with what I am certain are a few exceptions. But visibility rallies, and having a press office, and planning support obama events, and things like that- what is the point?

Well, I reckon the point is to get the people who affix themselves to any political campaign in order to have a new club, or because they want to be Barack Obama’s most specialist supporter in all of England- to get them out of the way, so they can focus on being visible and planning parties, while people who are a little more serious can do the things that are worth doing.

This is nothing new, of course- flaky, embarrassing people in political campaigns. I worked on the Nader campaign in Texas in 2000, and let me tell you if you ain’t already guessed- a bunch of fucking flakes there, preparing the room before the Big Man walked in by forcing out all of the negative vibes so he could relax for a few minutes before his speech without his aura changing colors. In fact, compared to Nader, the Obama campaign is pretty much a paragon of focus, but then I recognize that as a backhanded compliment.

I met some sharp, cool people with good ideas, and we all seemed to manage splitting off from the workers’ rallies people and the woman who had solicited a conference call from a campaign official in the Chicago office but who hadn’t bothered figuring out what his job was before he called, and who made me cringe by asking him that question right after he told us.

(oh, but it’s so easy to focus on the freaks! this is a gift to you, my conservative friends who want to talk about how crazy obama supporters are- you get the bolshevik woman up there, and also the one who reminded us that, as de facto representatives of the campaign, we ought to ask ourselves wwbod, which means what you think it does, before taking any action. you are welcome.)

That aside- the smart people were smart, and worth talking to, working with, worth keeping this association open. Because there is a lot that can be done, even from far away. There are a quarter of a million Americans living in the UK, and the pound is worth twice the dollar- yes, fundraising is a definite possibility. During the NCAA tournament there will be hundreds of American expats watching basketball in sports bars around London, and it will be an easy time to build an organization.

So that’s the good, with a bunch of the bad up there, too, because I am still me and relentless positivity would feel phony.

One thing that utterly fascinated me, though, was the number of non-Americans at the meeting. They probably made up nearly half of the group, which blew my fucking mind. I mean- can you imagine a room full of Americans in New York organizing for New Labour in the next UK general election? Mostly they were British, but there were a handful of North Africans and even a Scandinavian or two… it’s wild to see what an impact even the notion of an Obama Presidency has on the rest of the world.

So, yeah- an interesting group, that. About twenty minutes in I was trying to plan my escape, but it turned out to be worthwhile after I met the people who knew what they were doing. So long as the real mutants stay busy trying to get their rallies together, I think this could be a useful thing.