A Few Steps On the Campaign Trail

I spent the first half of today "getting out the vote" for Barack Obama.

I realize that this has been something of a popular topic in thinky media sources recently, so I thought I'd go one up on them and publish my first-hand account. I will also admit, in the nature of full disclosure, that I am writing at this time on a wave of what our Victorian forebears would dismiss as "enthusiasm."

I would contend that my enthusiasm is not unreasonable. I canvassed today in the swinginest swing district of the swing state of Ohio, in the county with the highest poverty rate in the state, and I did it over the same ground that I covered for the same candidate during the primary election.

Canvassing, for those who prefer to sleep in, involves getting a regional media pack containing fliers for distribution, a script or talking points, a list of names and addresses for registered voters, and maps, then knocking on every door on the list and engaging whomever opens it. The mass use of this practice, for those who prefer not to follow politics, has been a hallmark of the Obama style of campaigning.

During the primary, it was a difficult business. People, obviously home, refused to answer their doors. Many who did answer their doors, dismissed us with relative indifference, if not mild hostility. This, after all, is Real America, where churches still win votes for candidates railing against the evils of alcohol and gambling. Needless to say, there is a strong tradition of conservative voting. A few people shooed us off their porch last March with choice words about voting for racial minorities. Certainly, there were Obama supporters, but I would say they amounted to, at best and including some very liberal neighborhoods, half the doors we knocked on.

All of which made today a revelation. Maybe all the door-knocking practice has refined our style. Maybe it was the absurdly pleasant 60 degree sunshine. Certainly, my small canvassing "team" was well past needing the talking points provided by the campaign, and that no doubt helps. In any event, at least 3 out of every 4 people we spoke to eventually expressed their support for Obama. Those who didn't, weren't even rude about it. They answered the door, took the fliers, chatted for a minute, sheepishly admitted they were for McCain, and sort of backed away. Even the folks for whom 11am was Miller time, and who pointed out that they didn't vote because everyone in Washington was a lying bastard who would burn in hell, seemed happy to discuss that interesting perspective with us.

The best part of today was the ten minutes I spent engaging a man in conversation who was still so angry over Hillary's defeat that he was going to vote for McCain.
I still can't quite believe that he existed. It was like seeing bigfoot- you know what you saw, you've seen the sketchy photos, but damn, seriously? I pointed out that if he supported Hillary's policies, Omaba was much closer to them than McPalin ever would be. I pointed out that in a state Bush won in 04 by an average of 9 votes per precinct, swing state voters could ill afford protest votes. We wondered aloud, together, how someone who'd voted for Democrats his whole life could possibly support 4 more years like the eight we'd just been through. In the end he shook my hand, said I reminded him of his son-in-law, and promised to think it all over again. Who knows how he'll actually vote. I have mostly convinced myself that if I had that conversation back, I could have been a little bit more aggressive, and I could have flipped him.

Either way, today was fantastic. I couldn't have had a better experience if I'd been running for something myself. I guess this is the merest taste of how it feels to ride on presidential coattails? It is also, no doubt, the fruit of people winnowing down the canvassing lists to people who were mostly either favorable, or at least undecided, with regard to Obama. Still, today was qualitatively different from the experience of doing this job 8 months ago. I guess that's my slice of political America, on 1 November 2008, with 3 days to go.