I was particularly useless last night at the campaign office, but then, nothing much was happening other than ticket-issuance for today's Bush 41 event on campus. The phonebankers had burned through the entire calling list about a half-hour after I arrived on the scene, not that anyone in their right mind would ever put me on a phone bank. One good thing about the Republican way of politicking? One single calling operation, instead of a smallish party operation and dozens of uncoordinated 527, 501(c)3, and unidentifiable "nonpartisan" GOTV outfits, all of them calling everybody two or three or four or a dozen times. They’ll start in on the phonebanking again this weekend, with a focus on uncertain voters, and explicit get-out-the-vote agendas. I think.

The Halloween parade was marching through State College, right in front of the campaign office. It's been years since I saw one - when did the marching band start dressing in costume? We had folks with costumed kids in tow come in and out of the office all night, including a particularly cute little boy costuming as Dubya who came specifically to pose with the Bush standup cutout for a photograph.

Somebody told the underemployed volunteers to start blowing up balloons, for what purpose, nobody was quite sure. So, while one of the organizers was agitating for "cleaning up clutter", we were busy adding to the clutter by blowing up dozens and dozens of balloons, which accumulated in the under-utilized back section of the office. Eventually, we shovelled them all behind a desk at the back of the building, only popping a half-dozen or so in the process. There was some old Rendell material back there, from the last time the Democrats used that storefront for their campaign office.