Reflections of a Democrat Abroad

BRUSSELS: As the Democrats Abroad EMEA* Caucus gathered in this city dear to my heart, I saw a face that was familiar but unseen in five years—indeed, last seen during my hospital stay there in 2003. I walked across the Crowne Plaza Hotel ballroom, and was greeted with a hug and a hearty “Welcome Home.”

“Welcome Home” is funny terminology to use at a Democrats Abroad (DA) gathering. But as the all-too-short two days of proceedings unfolded last weekend, the welcome was one not simply a recognition of my return to Europe’s capital, but to much of what resonates, motivates and inspires me.

Living overseas is not a normal state for an American. Mention of it to stateside friends and relatives usually evokes either starry-eyed wonderment, wistful comments about a solitary trip to Ireland or Israel in one’s late fifties, or accusatory tirades about one’s lack of patriotism, family loyalty or outright sanity. So two days in a roomful of fellow expatriated Gringos—mostly spent, mercifully, among fellow supporters of Senator Barack Obama, the next President of the United States—produced feelings of heimishness~ I had rarely experienced in many years.

For the most part, the home-feeling came from being among a spontaneous gathering of peers, kindred spirits and ideological fellow travelers. I did sense I was a bit to the right of the group because of my varying degrees of support of most recent and anticipated wars, and my tendency to support Europe’s Liberal parties even though they represent the most conservative option in countries where the political spectrum would otherwise spread from socialist to Stalinist. But there were few ideological notes sounded during the all-consuming Delegate Selection Process, where what seemed to be 860 people out of the 140 in attendance pleaded for the assembled throng to give them one of four coveted Obama seats at the Democratic National Convention in Denver.

But the lack of ideological rancour did not forestall the emergence of strident factionalism as the speeches ended and the real fun got underway. I had been told by the chair of the Netherlands DA chapter, Bob Bragar, that the way the caucuses had worked at the previous regional caucus at Edinburgh in 2004 was that the big countries (UK, FR, GER) would make a slate in the hotel bar the night before and settle the matter early. So when I saw my old friend stand up after the speeches and yell out “SMALL COUNTRY COALITION!”, I knew it was show time.

In the back corner of the ballroom were caucus delegates and other attendees from Belgium, Switzerland, Austria, Denmark, South Africa, Sweden, Luxembourg, Turkey, Lebanon and Israel, as well as the Riviera and Alsace, which had declared their autonomy from France for the duration of the weekend. Stunningly, most of the Dutch delegation followed me, perhaps because of my purposeful stride or perhaps because of my recognizable ultra-bright orange Dutch national soccer team jersey, the presence of which in the corner gave them an idea that this coalition was where we were meant to be.

Quick decisions were made, as the intent became clear to band together to elect as many small country delegates a possible, and in so doing, avenge the atrocity that Edinburgh must have been—if only because it was remembered with such intensity. The first decision was to have the assembled group narrow their own supported group of candidates to match the four available seats. The second which was implicit, was that the group would operate on a one delegate-one vote basis, even though the countries had different voting strengths. I noticed this but made no comment—it made our Netherlands delegation the biggest voting bloc in Coalition matters even though we had fewer actual votes per person than the other countries.

The putative Denver delegates raised their hands and amassed in the front. Quickly, with ruthless precision, the group was asked to vote for two candidates of each gender until a majority of folks backed two of each. The decisions were tough—a selection of any four random Obama caucus delegates for Denver would have yielded four members of America’s best and brightest—articulate, intelligent, passionate and humane individuals who could step to the dais or in front of a camera and tell their own story, that of Barack Obama and that of us Dems Abroad.

But the Small Country Coalition’s choices were fearsome. My chairman, Bob Bragar, an Amsterdam lawyer and board member of the Love Exiles Foundation who would repeatedly refer to me as his ‘campaign manager’ throughout the weekend (when the terms ‘floor general’ and ‘enforcer’ would have resonated more deeply) was selected for the men, as was an impressive young democracy activist from Lebanon. The women included a dynamite former Illinois legislator from South Africa who was my seat-neighbor for the proceedings and a woman from Sweden who graciously yielded her place as the horsetrading began in earnest.

While things did not look good for the Coalition at the end of day one, a calculation error led to the throwing out of the previous ballot’s results. I was a little upset because I actually liked the apparent a lot and thought the Coalition had overplayed its hand, but when it became apparent that the motion not to accept the previous ballot’s results had a chance, I did the political equivalent of calling a time out and obtained a crucial five minute recess. The Coalition reassembled. We evaluated our options, And we decided to go for it.

The maneuver worked, and we had a fresh ballot, and a chance to cut one last backroom deal. While the Coalition had chosen the Lebanese candidate over Bob for the final ballot if we needed to give up the second slot for leverage, an offer from Germany came through to support both of our male candidates and our surviving female candidate in return for supporting their female candidate. After the initial shock of encountering a generous deal from Germany of all places, we took the final ballots. A half hour of counting ensued. And then the results were announced.

The combined slate roared through. The\ little countries’ choo-choo was pulled to victory by the German InterCity Express.

To be fair, I found the whole factionalism a bit gratuitous and mindless, but having been raised on near-fist-fights with pro-lifers at California Republican Party conventions in the early 1990s during my brief and ugly career as a pro-choice GOP political consultant, it was action and I hadn’t been the thick of that kind of action in many years. But I also know that no one was really going to take the loss of a delegate seat in Denver that hard. The real action for Democrats Abroad isn’t in Denver—it’s in getting Barack Obama the votes of overseas Americans when he gets the nomination. But the Democrats Abroad caucus was nonetheless a homecoming—even when I live many miles away from what others would call my “home”.

(* common 'across-the-pond' shorthand for Europe, Middle East and Africa, or what G.W. Bush more simply calls ‘Abroad’)

(` Yiddish term meaning ‘home-like’, but more evocative of ‘being among one’s own peeps’)

Champions without Stars

When Alando Tucker and Kammron Taylor left the Wisconsin Badgers in 2007, very few observers thought much of the Badgers’ chances for 2008. But thanks to the ability of Coach Bo Ryan to elicit extraordinary team performance from players who are good rather than exceptional, the Wisconsin Badgers go into the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s annual Basketball Tournament (The Tournament) with regular season and conference tournament titles from the eleven-member Big Ten Conference, and with a ten game winning streak.

The Badgers have no stars this year, no one like Tucker who will likely make the pros. More than six players have scored more than 10 points in a game, an impressive achievement given that only five players are on the floor at any one time. But they withstood a fierce challenge from Indiana’s Purdue University in the regular season race, and from regular-season underachiever Illinois in the tournament to emerge on top.

As a die-hard Badger, I say: Thank you Bo Ryan and Let’s Win The Tournament!

Single Again

I might as well be brief and blunt—after a holiday-period interlude that finally went off the boil, I’m back to being single. If you—or someone you know—is pleasant, intelligent, and can deal with a short roundish Jewish guy who likes Barack, Belgium, and Blogging, and lives 3 hours or less from Schiphol Airport, please let me know.

If they’re curious—forward the link to this blog—I am nothing if not transparent. :)

The Sweet Taste of Sourness

Finally, it’s rare that I review regular-strength (5% and under) brews. But one that is truly remarkable is one I had in Delft’s Locus Publicus while waiting for the nearby Chinese place to open for dinner.

It had been years since I’d had a Rodenbach, the dark-red, super-sour Flemish ale. But with black-bean sauce approaching, the idea of a beer whose punch is in the acidity department appealed over the brews I normally prefer as late night tipples. And Rodenbach didn’t disappoint. The sourness overpowered for an instant but gave way to a balance between acidic and caramel flavors. I never thought of Rodenbach as an aperitif, but boy it works. And it’s one of the most available of the Belgian beers outside of the low countries.

Until April, that’s FlightKL18!

Denk Obama, Eet Obama: The Presidential Race from the NL

As part of my acculturation to this land of flatness, wetness, and slowly abating winter darkness, I loaded dozens of Dutch-language songs onto my MP3 player, including an album of songs to root on the “Oranje”, the Dutch national football side as they pressed into World Cup 2006. One such song was “Nederland is Oranje” by iconic pop star Guus Meeuwis.

I reference this because the word ‘Oranje’ sounds a little like the word ‘Obama’, the name of the candidate I am rooting on to the White House in a competition I described to my Italian boss as “a combination of the soccer World Cup, the England-Australia Ashes Test Cricket Match (which took about as long as the New Mexico Democratic Caucus), and the pre-steroids Tour de France.

“Ik praat oranje, denk oranje, eet oranje, drink oranje” goes the line from the Meeuwis tune. As my thoughts move increasingly westward on the eve of Wisconsin’s primary, the tune morphs into “praat Obama, denk Obama, eet Obama, drink Obama.”

The US presidential race has become compelling theatre—the young articulate, African-American Senator from Illinois Barack Obama building a lead over the erstwhile First Lady, Hillary Clinton, for whom the nomination race was expected to be a coronation instead of a state-by-state come-from-behind jihad.

Without going into the complexities of the Presidential selection process and the alternatives for Clinton to attempt to seize victory in the face of voter repudiation, what has been amazing is how this American expat has been able to be completely plugged into what is happening and to have outlets to participate meaningfully.

I’ve made two $100 donations to the Obama campaign. My view is that while I need the money worse than the Obama campaign does, those contributions have bought me seats in the arena. I’m no longer a disconnected supporter living in a foreign country—I’m a contributor, just as much as anyone in Des Moines, Springfield, Madison or Scarsdale is.

I’m an Obama voter—having voted in the Democrats Abroad Global Primary—and my vote is going to make a difference in the delegate count.

I’m running to be an Obama caucus delegate—reprising a role I played for the last serious insurgent to seek the Democratic nomination, Gary Hart in 1984 as a regional caucus delegate in Madison, Wisconsin.

I’m contacting my friends in the upcoming primary states and engaging them about why the positives a vote for Obama is worth setting aside the kind of concerns being raised by Hillary Clinton and her team, with some degree of success.

But mostly, I’m a fan, and as a fan who used to run political campaigns for a living, the amount of entertainment and stimulation I’m getting from this campaign is unbelievable. The Internet is certainly a source—the ability to log on and read articles suggesting alternative strategies or analyzing the complexities underneath the behavior of different demographic groups is a real plus. YouTube has been a particular revelation—letting me mainline Obama’s numerous recent victory speeches and, when the spirit strikes me, to fire up the excellent “I’ve Got a Crush on Obama” by “Obama Girl.”

Part of the stimulation though comes from being a rare person with an actual vote in a sea of highly interested, and often perplexed bystanders. Several months ago, I had a conversation with a particularly formidable client who was questioning Obama’s electability, particularly relative to Hillary Clinton. My reply—focusing on the new spirit of insurgency in a Democratic electorate tired of losing—wasn’t particularly convincing. With more open minded Europeans, the conversations have ranged from the elementary (this is how a caucus works) to the wide-rangingly geopolitical.

Interestingly, with discount telephone services and telephone numbers supplied by the candidate, I could conceivably phone bank into Ohio or Texas this weekend if I feel like it, just as I’d be doing if I was back in the States. Even though I’m physically the furthest I’ve been from a competitive race for the Presidency, the race is at my fingertips, twenty four hours a day.

Wemberley: Tottenham v. Chelsea

Today’s edition of FlightKL18 finds me six days away from the realization of a dream—to see my beloved Tottenham Hotspur English football/soccer team capture a bit of Cup Glory at Sunday’s final of the League Cup against favored Chelsea at London’s reconstructed Wembley Stadium.

A Chelsea-Tottenham matchup is mouthwatering on a number of levels. First, there’s a form of dyslexic Semitism permeating the contest. Tottenham’s supporters call ourselves The Yid Army, and Chelsea’s support has long had an element of anti-Jewishness to it, which hasn’t completely abated despite the club’s acquisition of a Jewish Russian billionaire oligarch named Roman Abramovich who has turned the club into a full-time job. Abramovich’s replacement of popular Portuguese manager Jose Mourinho with former Israeli National Team Coach Avraham Grant did him no favors with the neo-Nazi element of his club’s support.

Despite Chelsea’s considerable on-field success in the Abramovich era, where the club stockpiled the world’s most expensive players to rot on the bench while winning titles and performing competitively in the prestigious European Champion League, Spurs supporters consider Chelsea an upstart and parvenu unworthy of proper scorn. A recent chant by 3000 visiting Chelsea supporters of “We Hate Tottenham!” provoked an instinctive reply by the 33,000 Tottenham faithful at the club’s White Hart Lane ground. The reply: “We hate ARSENAL! We hate ARSENAL!” showing that the club’s true rival, the Hated Arsenal Scum, held that position without challenge or threat from the Chelsea posers.

On the base of sheer surplus talent, Chelsea enters the match heavy favorites even if fielding an all-substitute team. But Tottenham has some wind at its back, most notably the previous-round demolition of the Hated Arsenal Scum 5-1, and the adrenaline of a cup final makes outcomes unpredictable. I’ll be at an English or Irish pub in The Hague with my 1999 Spurs Away jersey—from the year we last hoisted this particular cup.

PS: The motto of Tottenham Hotspur is “Audere est Facere”—To dare is to do. Kind of fits me, eh?

Mechelen--Quest for the Emperor

Needing a lift and a change of scenery after being dumped by text-message in mid week a few weeks back, I hop on a southbound train to Belgium, opting to spend a half day and an evening in the historic city of Mechelen, midway between Antwerp and Brussels.

A city of 80,000, Mechelen's charm is that it is historic and attractive, possessing a full range of architectural styles (the big aesthetic difference between Belgium and the far more uniform cities of Holland), in a compact package unjustifiably if welcomely bereft of tourists.

Mechelen has my single favorite intersection in all of Europe: Onze Lieve Vrouwe (Dutch for "our dear lady") and Graaf van Egmont. An art nouveau pharmacy presides over a junction containing a plaza, traditional Flemish buildings and a view down an ever-so-typically. European pedestrian street leading to the city's towering cathedral, seat of Belgium's Catholic Church.

Below my favorite intersection in all of Europe lies the Kleine Keizer, a comfortable "taverne" (bar-restaurant in Belgian parlance), serving Primus, my favorite of Belgium's basic lagers. (Half pint, Eur 1.60)

So fortified, an hour long quest for one of my top five Belgian beers-the corked 750ml bottle of the locally brewed Grand Cru of the Emperor which I found at 't Ankertje, a shop/bar offering the products of Mechelen's legendary Anker Brewery (Vismarkt 20)..

For the uninitiated, Grand Cru of the Emperor is best compared in flavor to the 'caramel' in a good creme caramel-not obscenely sweet but ethereally so with an ever-so-slight tinge of burntness to the flavor. At 10 % on the open-ended richter scale it is not for children, but a small glass conveys the flavor and power of this regal brew. I purchase three, but opt for the Gouden Carolus Tripel in a half-pint chalice for a mid afternoon pull. It is more vanilla than caramel in tone and taste, with a slight savoriness from the yeast.

Following the docking at 't Ankertje, one of the true joys of Mechelen ensued-an aimless walk through the residential streets that spin away from the Cathedral. In these streets, one can be forgiven for thinking one is back in the 17th century. These precincts are very similar to comparable streets in Brugge, except for the dearth of tourists and the abundance of locals going about their business. There are also few pubs and shops, so after an hour or so, the centre beckons with its combination of authentic and not so authhentic dining and watering venues.

One venue that I visited that was strange was the Celtic Pub off the main square, which bore more resemblance to an English Tea Room than a proper pseudo-Irish boozer. But they had Corsendonk Bruin on tap, which was enough to lure me in when the main neighbor bars were stocking Inbev's insipid and ubiquitous Leffe, Jupiler and Stella Artois.

The Corsendonk was worth the decor. Kahlua like in color, with a kind of caramel-coffee roundness and slightly ciderlike acidity, it was a perfect brew to watch twilght take hold of the Grote Markt, Mechelen's main square and one of the finest such public places in the Benelux.

As it was still before 6, I felt compelled to get one more beer before dinner-this one on the Grote Markt itself at a venue called the Oase. I have a policy in the Benelux of opting first for beers I'd never had or heard of, and the Oase delivered in style with Sint Gummarus Dubbel, a strong dark beer with a flawless burnt-caramel color and flavor.

Dinner, unusually for Belgium, failed to match the beers that preceded it, as the markt-side venue I'd long patronised has run out of its fish and fowl specials (and, no, I don't eat pork or rabbit, thank you very much). I thus found myself questing for a sole that would prove to disappoint. A bit more forethought would have yielded a tastier repast in this city of generally fine eateries, but I achieved what I'd sought in this classic city-a reunion with The Emperor.