This is it!
We're coming down to the final stretch and Barack Obama needs your help now, more than ever before!
Please bring your cell phone, a charger and a few fun friends who care about change and join with thousands of your neighbors in the largest ever-attempted phone bank effort in New York state history. The Obama campaign is hosting several of these "mega call centers" all over New York, so invite your friends and family to make calls to voters in key battleground states and change America for years to come.
Visit http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/nylastcall to find a location near you.
Andy Engelson, a father of two, an editor in Seattle, spent the first weekend in October canvassing for Obama in Ohio. Here's what he found... After flying into Columbus and driving three hours east, I arrived in Youngstown in the early evening. This is a former steel town, and enormous empty steel mills fill the Mahoning River Valley. Most of the city is perched on the hills above the valley, and evidence of a broken economy is everywhere: boarded-up businesses, crumbling homes, a nearly empty downtown. But the campaign office was a hub of activity--filled with local volunteers with union T-shirts, OSU Buckeye sweatshirts and Obama buttons. The volunteer coordinator (who works long, long hours) was a bubbly college student from Long Island. She quickly put me to work calling volunteers to set up door-to-door canvassing over the weekend. You may have heard about the strength of Obama's "ground game"--a vast grassroots network of volunteers. It is truly impressive. Both in Philadelphia (where I canvassed for Obama in April), and in Youngstown, everyone who volunteers is quickly trained, put to work and effusively thanked. Every person we call who is voting for Obama is asked to volunteer, and those who say yes get a follow-up call. During the next afternoon, I headed out to the local Wal-Mart, Home Depot, Target and other big-box stores to register voters. I had done this in Seattle, and in Youngstown I succeeded in signing up about a dozen new voters. Unfortunately, after a while, a cranky middle manager came out of Wal-Mart and told me "You can't gather signatures here!" I told her I was simply registering voters but she wasn't sympathetic. Too bad these companies, which profit so much from working people, don't want them to exercise their right to vote. The next day, it was into the neighborhoods to canvass. I was paired up with Beverly, a woman from Buffalo, who, like me, had arrived for the weekend to volunteer. She told me she has a 26-year old son, also named Andy, once ran for city council as a Republican, but is an avid supporter of Obama. She was particularly impressed with his leadership and speaking skills, and felt the need to convince others. She'd lost her own election, but it had given her experience going to door-to-door and talking to voters. A number of years ago, she was a Buffalo Bills cheerleader, and there's still a bit of that spirit in her as we went door to door in Youngstown urging people to vote for Obama. Youngstown is definitely in hard times. In many neighborhoods we visited, it seemed as if every other home was abandoned: broken windows, vines growing up the sides of the house or trees fallen in the yard from Hurricane Ike. There are still some jobs in Youngstown--GM has a plant not far from town--and you will find pockets of nice homes. But often, just across the street, you'll see the burned-out shell of a school or a group of men sitting on a doorstep drinking beer from 20-ounce cans in paper sacks. In Ohio, voters can go to any Board of Elections building and vote anytime between now and Nov. 4. The campaign was pushing this hard in order to get everyone eligible out to vote and reduce lines on election day. You may remember the news from 2004, when in parts of Ohio there were eight-hour lines at polling places. What I enjoy most about canvassing is talking to undecided voters. The conversations we had were positive, instructive and encouraging. Generally, these undecided voters are white, working class and over 60. One woman and I talked a good 10 minutes about the economy, about people not getting medical care because they don't have insurance, about the situation in Youngstown. People here are amazingly upbeat and friendly despite the circumstances. Occasionally, I'd meet less-than-friendly people. I also had one very negative confrontation. It was late in the day, and I knocked at the second-to-last house on my list. I heard a gruff "WHO IS IT?" from behind the door. I said I was a volunteer with the Obama campaign and inquired about a young voter on my list who lived there. Silence. So I said goodbye and left some campaign literature at the door. As I was walking back to the sidewalk, the man burst out a side door and literally came running at me, red in the face. A young black man was running up behind him, but unable to hold this guy back. Just inches from me, the man, a white man with a beard and shirt with a motorcycle logo, shouted "Who the HELL are you?" He was shaking with rage. I told him again who I was and after a brief pause he yelled at me,"Just keep walking! NOW!" I did just that, moving slowly away. I met up with Beverly, who'd been working another street, and we drove back to the campaign office in the fading light. It was scary to say the least. Had I flinched I think the guy would have struck me. What may have triggered the outburst was an incident in the neighborhood several days before. Two young African American men had posed as campaign workers just up the street, then robbed the home at gunpoint. So frustrating. Two stupid kids had hurt our efforts and inflamed racial tensions in this hard-hit town. Afterwards, we reported the encounter to the campaign office, and they agreed to stop canvassing in that immediate neighborhood. But nothing was going to stop me from going out the next day. On Sunday, I was invited by my hosts to attend a prayer breakfast at their church--the oldest African American church in Youngstown. Everyone was dressed in their finest, and the program featured members of churches talking about what had happened over the past year. There were presentations on what the church was doing in the community for children, for the elderly, and for those who were sick or homebound. A guest speaker joked about being riveted to CNN, and then talked about how many people in the community were worried about the future but were finding solace in the community of the church. There was plenty of singing, clapping, and a huge breakfast of eggs, sausage, bacon, biscuits, and grits. Afterwards, my host, Goldia, introduced me to the pastor, and, he shook my hand for at least a full minute. I was humbled to be so welcomed. Then back to the neighborhoods. We visited 200 or more homes over the course of the weekend. We talked to many undecideds, most of whom were worried about the economy. Youngstown is already dealing with a recession, they're already "ahead" of the country in that regard. In fact, many, of the voters on our lists had already moved away. Either they'd been unable to make payments or they'd left Youngstown for good. It's clear Youngstown's problems will not be fixed overnight. Perhaps there's not even much Obama can do outright. But I do think a fairer tax policy, some efforts to boost new energy industries, and getting more folks covered by health care is a start. The last eight years have not been good to this town. It reminded me how much is riding on this election. After a day knocking on doors in brilliant sunshine, Beverly returned to Buffalo and I spent the evening training a new volunteer, Ann, who had driven to Ohio from Los Angeles and would be volunteering in Youngstown until election day. If only I had the time to do that! I can't say enough about how people respond to one-on-one contact with volunteers. People are appreciative and want to talk about the issues and hear about your personal reasons for supporting Obama.
Even Republicans supporting McCain were appreciative. I talked to an older man named Jim while I was registering voters outside Walgreens. We had a friendly conversation. Even though he supported McCain, he thanked me for coming out from Seattle. It was those sorts of conversations that make me realize we are not as divided as the media portrays us. One of the things that draws me to Obama is that "agree to disagree" philosophy that has been missing from the national discourse for some time. And there's a real satisfaction when you make a connection. That happened back in Philadelphia, when an older woman took me into her home and confessed that she would vote for Obama (rather than Clinton) but didn't want her neighbors to know. She told me how, as a recently widowed woman, she was struggling to make ends meet. In tears, she told me how heating oil had cost her dearly the previous winter, and how she'd had to keep the thermostat below 60 to afford it. She'd voted for Reagan but was now more excited about the Obama campaign than any since Bobby Kennedy's in '68. She felt Obama actually gave a damn about people like her and was excited to see so many young people inspired by the campaign. And she was thankful, I think, that someone had taken the time to listen to her story. More than anything, though, this campaign has helped me. Helped me see what people are going through in places less fortunate than my own. Helped me see what issues are truly important to people. It has shown me that even in difficult times, people maintain a sense of humor and a friendliness that is truly inspiring. It also helped me meet people like Frank and his wife Mary. They are in their late 60s and have lived in Youngstown most of their lives. Frank suffered a stroke a few years ago so Mary asked if Beverly and I would come in and briefly talk to him: "It would mean so much to him. He can understand everything you say, but he can't say anything." We came into the home, and Mary introduced us as two volunteers working for the Obama campaign. "Frank, they've come here to visit you and ask if you're going to support Obama. What do you think of Obama, Frank?"
Sitting at the kitchen table in a wheelchair with his head cocked to one side, he eyed us for a long moment. Then he slowly raised his hand and formed his shaking fingers into an OK sign.
http://ny.barackobama.com/NYlastcall
I keep chiming the bell of pessimism (it's a very low, scary bell), but it's with reason. The debate last night was an Obama win. He's up in the polls and the electoral college projections. Biden's back on the trail today. Even FOX says Florida's in play and leaning heavily toward Obama. But there are ways that this can all still fall apart, and they're all centered on the Big Day itself. It all comes down to this: Obama can't win if people don't show up. There are three frightening ways for this to happen, and it's worth it to talk about them now, because, unlike Sarah Palin, I believe we need to know the causes in order to decide on a solution to a problem. So here goes. First, the closer Obama gets to a major, comfortable victory, the more likely people are to stay home. It's a strange, converse piece of logic, but it has happened before. People see, oh, OK, Obama's doing fine, they lose that urgent feeling about the election and about voting, and they decide to stay home -- or to stay at work, more likely -- than to run to the polls on election day. When you hear about the way that rain can have an effect on voter turnout, that's part of this phenomenon. A voter who feels her candidate is in trouble will trek cross-town to cast that meaningful vote of support; a voter who feels her candidate has it all wrapped up will probably stay at her desk, keeping her shoes dry, instead. This is demonstrated year after year by the exit-poll effect, which networks keep saying they'll stop doing and, yes, shockingly, keep lying about. Second, the Obama campaign and the Democratic party in general are counting on huge voter turnout because they have registered a huge number of new voters this year. This is a wonderful effort which I applaud, but I think it's dangerous to count on these new voters for several reasons. (And here we go into subpoints):
Inside the Obama campaign, almost without anyone noticing, an insurgent generation of organizers has built the Progressive movement a brand new and potentially durable people's organization, in a dozen states, rooted at the neighborhood level.
The "New Organizers" have succeeded in building what many netroots-oriented campaigners have been dreaming about for a decade. Other recent attempts have failed because they were either so "top-down" and/or poorly-managed that they choked volunteer leadership and enthusiasm; or because they were so dogmatically fixated on pure peer-to-peer or "bottom-up" organizing that they rejected basic management, accountability and planning. The architects and builders of the Obama field campaign, on the other hand, have undogmatically mixed timeless traditions and discipline of good organizing with new technologies of decentralization and self-organization.
Win or lose, "The New Organizers" have already transformed thousands of communities—and revolutionized the way organizing itself will be understood and practiced for at least the next generation. Obama must continue to feed and lead the organization they have built—either as president or in opposition. If he doesn't, then the broader progressive movement needs to figure out how to pick this up, keep it going and spread it to all 50 states. For any of that to happen, the incredible organizing that has taken place this year inside Obama's campaign—and also here and there in Clinton's—needs to be thoroughly understood and celebrated. Toward that end, here are glimpses from several days of observations and interviews in Central and Southwest Ohio. This article focuses on the field program's innovative "neighborhood team" structure and the philosophy of volunteer management underlying it that is best summarized by the field campaign's ubiquitous motto: "Respect. Empower. Include."
In her job at a Middletown, Ohio, steel factory, Glenna Fisher managed the preparation and shipping of millions of pounds of steel per year until her retirement six years ago. But when she has volunteered for democratic campaigns in the past, no one ever asked her to do anything more complicated than calling voters with a script.
This year, the field organizer (FO) assigned to her town, Ryan Clay, had much bigger plans for her.
"He'd gotten my name from info I'd entered on the Obama website listing ways in which I'd be willing to volunteer," Glenna explained in the Hamilton office before a regular report-in with Ryan. "He called and we set up a time to meet at a local coffee shop."
One of the ways Ryan asked Glenna to help was recruiting other volunteers.
"And that Sunday, my church had a joint service with our sister church, a local African-American congregation. There I talked with a friend who gave me several names of people who also might be interested in volunteering with the campaign. I called Ryan and passed on those names and phone numbers," Glenna said.
Ryan was impressed, and continued to ask Glenna to try increasingly difficult tasks. She didn't know it, but she was being "tested" to see if she had what it took to be a neighborhood team leader (NTL).
After Glenna had proven her reliability and effectiveness, Ryan asked her for another special one-on-one meeting where he invited her to formally agree to become an NTL. He spelled out all of an NTL's responsibilities before allowing her to accept it and even gave her a binder spelling it all out in writing: She would work with him to recruit other team members such as coordinators for canvassing, phone banking and data management. Her team would be responsible for connecting with all of the Democratic and undecided voters within their "turf." Other volunteers who stepped forward in her area would not be managed by campaign staff, but by Glenna's team. As team leader, Glenna would report results to Ryan a couple times per week and would be held accountable for meeting specific goals by certain deadlines.
In 2004, it was unusual for volunteers to have persistent roles and responsibilities—both at the Kerry campaign and the independent field operation Americans Coming Together. That is the norm for electoral organizing campaigns, and perhaps organizing in general these days. In contrast, the Obama neighborhood team members are organizers themselves, sometimes working more or less as staff alongside the young FOs.
Patrick Frank, 21, joined the campaign as a volunteer, won an unpaid "Organizer Fellowship" and finally was hired as an FO in July. Having served as a volunteer on more than 10 political campaigns, Patrick contrasts his experience at Obama with the traditional organizing model he was used to:
"It's about empowering. When I was 16 I worked on a big governor's campaign. And we were reliable volunteers and we were putting in serious hours. I felt like we should have been leaders, but that never happened. They said, 'Do your call lists, knock on doors—let us do the thinking.' Now, on the Obama campaign, when I see people like me and my friends used to be, we turn them around and say, 'Well hey, here's how to be a community organizer. Let me help you be a community organizer.' And then they go out and they get people to be their coordinators. And then we tell those new coordinators, 'Build yourself a team and be organizers too.' There's no end to it."
And that's exactly what Patrick did with long-time Democratic activist Don Daiker, who told me at the Oxford campaign office, "I've succeeded in recruiting 4 organizers: one in charge of canvassing, one in charge of phone banking, one in charge of volunteer recruitment, and one in charge of data transcription and recording. So that's my team. And we're responsible for roughly a quarter of Oxford, excluding the campus. And on top of that, I've taken charge of organizing house parties in the area."
While it was Patrick's job to make sure that all of those coordinators had been sufficiently tested for reliability before they got their official position, Don was the one making the ask. Describing how he made the ask to his canvass coordinator, Anne Bailey: "I said, if you're really interested in doing more, meet me at the coffee house and we'll talk about it. So I met her there and I said, 'How would you like to be canvass coordinator?' And she said, 'What does that mean?' I described it and I said, 'I'll print it out for you—because the Obama people have a little manual and there's a section in it about how you do canvasing.' "
Team leaders like Don have some latitude to shape roles around individual personalities. While not everyone has a volunteer coordinator, Don created that role for retired high school English teacher Marilyn Elsley, one of his recruits who wanted to lead but wasn't comfortable with the canvassing coordinator position.
"Up here there's a sign up sheet for phone banking," Don said, pointing to a giant chart on the wall of the office, "And it's filling up. Marilyn calls the people, and then we fill them in here, and then the phone bank coordinator, Cynthia Durgan, sets up the phone bank and trains the callers. We'll be phone banking just about every day between now and November 4."
After visiting my fourth or fifth team, it was painfully clear that an enormous amount of power is unlocked by this incredibly simple act of distributing different roles to people who actually feel comfortable taking them on. And I say "painfully" because I couldn't stop thinking about all the union and electoral campaigns I've worked on where we did not do this.
I thought about Patrick's story from high school when I met Jacob Manser, a 16 year-old who is serving as the canvass coordinator for his neighborhood team in the heart of Columbus. The team's FO, Steph Lake, took me by the beginning of an afternoon phone bank that the team was coordinating. All the team members were playing their different roles: The team's volunteer coordinator, a semi-retired software developer named Robert Hughes had prepared the call lists in conjunction with the team's phone bank coordinator, Leslie Krivo-Kaufman, another high school student. Team leader Janeen Sands oversaw the whole event. And another volunteer, who was not even a team coordinator (yet) had donated her house for the event. Jacob helped out that day by collecting the data from the event. The team was still looking for a data coordinator and other members were sharing that role. Later that night, Steph and I stopped by his house to get the tallies (though volunteers organized by the team would do the actual data entry). They made the exchange in the street in front of Jacob's house, talking softly so as not to disturb any neighbors. It was about 10:00 PM—on a school night!
"Should I be worried about your grades?" I asked.
"I have a 4.2," he said.
"OK—I didn't even know that was possible," I admitted.
While the team structure dramatically increases volunteer productivity, it does so even more for the staff FOs.
Ryan, for example, has six teams covering a wide swath of rural and exurban Southwest Ohio. He said, "It's great—it's like having six offices around town."
He elaborated: "So many people lose elections because of the places you can't get to. This program allows Glenna's team, with just two or three weeks of VAN training to know how to cut turf, to know how to pull lists and put canvass packets together. So all that type of work that eats up so much time for organizers can be handled at the local level—at her place. That allows me to bounce around and find other team leaders. Since she's become a team leader and started taking care of her neighborhood, I've been able to go out and find four other team leaders—because I can rest assured that she's made the volunteer recruitment calls for her canvasses, and that she's made the confirmation calls. I might make a few calls at night—and if I find a new good volunteer I'll shoot Glenna an email saying, 'Call this person when you can.' But for the most part, it allows me to jump out of that neighborhood and spend time with another neighborhood that needs the help."
"So being able to play in every single street is really important and the teams are what let us do that," Ryan continued.
The Ohio campaign is attempting to build teams in 1,231 campaign-defined "neighborhoods," each covering eight to ten precincts. They are targeting virtually every inhabited square mile of the state. The campaign claimed to have teams in 65% of neighborhoods when I visited in early September. That's risen to 85% coverage at press time—and they are shooting for 100%. In contrast, the Kerry campaign effectively wrote off rural counties, and completely abandoned them in the final few weeks of the campaign in a last minute all-in shift to the cities.
It was a huge risk for the national field program to have paid staff take the time to methodically build volunteer teams instead of rushing directly to spend all their time running voter contact activities themselves. From the point of view of the conventional wisdom of much of the pre-Obama field organizing world, the campaign is actually taking two big risks: first they are risking everything on the effectiveness of masses of volunteers, then they are risking everything again by relying on volunteer teams to lead those masses. What if teams was just a bunch of hippy nonsense? What if it turned out there just weren't that many unpaid activists capable of running high-quality canvasses?
Jeremy Bird, the Ohio general election director and one of the driving forces behind making teams a national strategy, said, "We decided in terms of timeline that [our organizers] would not be measured by the amount of voter contacts they made in the summer—but instead by the number of volunteers that they were recruiting, training and testing. It was much more an infrastructure focus. So there would be no calls from Chicago saying, 'Why haven't you made more calls?!' Instead there would be calls saying, 'Where are your neighborhood team volunteers?' Or, if the numbers seemed high, 'Are they real?' It was a whole shift in mentality that was really, really good."
It is impossible to overstate how counter intuitive this slow-build approach was for Democrats. Even Regional Field Director for Southwest Ohio, Christen Linke Young—who I witnessed in 2004 pushing independently for just this strategy as an Ohio FO in Franklin County—said it was scary to take this patient approach:
"We had a whole month where, on our nightly calls with headquarters, we did not report our voter contact numbers. We only reported our leadership building. I definitely stayed on top of what our voter contact numbers looked like. But headquarters wasn't paying attention to how many voters we registered or how many doors we knocked that day—they were paying attention to how many one-on-one meetings we had, house meetings, neighborhood team leaders recruited, how many people we had convinced to come to this wonderful training in Columbus that we had. Yes, it was definitely scary to see how big our persuasion universe was and know that our first priority was not to just be tearing through that."
But Christen said the meticulous building has paid off: "And then last weekend we [teams in Christen's area] had 100 volunteers on Saturday canvassing—which is not something I ever would have thought was possible. And they knocked on 2,500 doors. And so you go: 'OK, it paid off, it worked.' We spent a month focusing on getting the pieces in place and now we can knock on 2,500 doors on the first Saturday in September. I'd love to count up how many canvasses we actually staged that day but I think most organizers had at least two canvasses—they were able to be in two places at once because they had recruited and trained leaders who could run their own canvasses and who could train other volunteers in persuasion."
When this story was finally ready to go to press, I called to get an update on Christen's numbers. Last weekend (October 4-5), the teams in her region knocked on 10,300 doors—and another 1,906 in the weekdays leading up to that. She mentioned a team that is canvassing now three times per week. They have dinner together every Tuesday night and breakfast every Saturday morning.
Christen said, "I feel like people are committing more time this election because there's a community thing going on, and they're part of something that's local and social. But we're also more effective at harnessing volunteers because the teams do a lot of the training and debriefing themselves—it scales well. Everyone who goes out canvassing comes back with at least one story of someone they impacted. The team leaders are trained to give people time to tell those stories, and so everyone gets a sense of progress and they learn from each other how to be more effective next time."
That's a totally different picture than what I saw in scores of Kerry offices in 2004: crowds of canvassers receiving minimal instruction before being sent to an unfamiliar neighborhood and rarely getting the chance to debrief with others as a group.
The long term planning and relationships that emerged in the process were the keys: "These are tested and trained leaders—we knew we could trust them, and they knew they could trust us. They knew that if we said we'd give them everything they needed to run their event, that we'd have it for them. So that when we said, 'recruit 15 people to be at your house on Sunday, but I'm not going to be there'—that they knew we'd adequately prepare them for that day."
Compared to 2004, the productivity of the field is on a whole different level, said Christen, "There wasn't even a special push last weekend to get those volunteers there. I remember in 2004 there was a huge push to knock on this many doors one weekend in Franklin county as part of a nationwide thing. We dropped everything for that. But here, it was just a normal Saturday. And it's just going to keep getting bigger each weekend."
Training for organizers—and for volunteers—was critical to the success of this unorthodox model. In Ohio, Jeremy insisted on getting the whole staff together for an intensive full-weekend training early in the program.
"When I got here, yeah, I was nervous," said Jeremy, "because most of these organizers had never done this [team building] before. We did two days—we got everyone together, we went to Oberlin."
That training was expensive, but Jeremy said, "We spent more money than they ever wanted us to. But training is the most important thing. So [in our field budget] I'll cut whatever you want—but having all of our organizers together and training them for a full weekend. A lot of campaigns say they do training but it's often like a two hour orientation. We wanted to make sure that ours was a real, interactive, in-depth training."
A similar training was held for the first wave of team leaders that had been recruited by late August—and two different volunteers who I spoke to about it literally choked up as they tried to describe how powerful an experience it was. Training for staff and teams continues every week. Just the day before I first met Don and Patrick, they had spent an afternoon with the whole team gathered, going over the big-picture campaign strategy right up through Election Day. Of course they took some time to beef up on voter contact basics too. While I was in Ohio, the whole paid staff came together regionally for a full-day session of sharing successes and trouble shooting problems. The campaign is fanatical about constant quality checking and continuous feedback.
Both staff and volunteers are unusually reflective and analytical regarding the team model and the organizing philosophy of "Respect. Empower. Include." Those words were plastered in hugh letters around almost every office I visited, and organizers will get carried away talking about those principles and how they are supported by various details of the organizing model they're practicing.
I think this is partly because the model is working, and so people are excited about it, and excited to think about it. But it's also because the leadership—models this methodological introspection in all the trainings they do in in their daily management of organizers.
Jeremy and other national leaders actually produced a 280 page manual spelling out the model after conducting hundreds of interviews with primary and caucus organizers as well as ploughing through thousands of survey responses from volunteers.
The field director Jackie Bray was driving around the state doing spot checks on the quality of local team structures when I was in Ohio. So I asked her to describe the field model in an email. I'm struck by two things about her response: first, how detailed and self-analytical it is; second, that it represents exactly the model I saw actually being practiced in the field—because I'm sorry to say it, but I'm just used to anyone with the title "director" being hopelessly out of touch with the reality of the ground. (Including myself in more than a couple past jobs!)
Jackie wrote: "When we identify a volunteer or a potential volunteer we always hold a one on one meeting. Movements aren't built on individual people—they are built on relationships. Then we ask our volunteers to make deeper commitments. We coach new volunteers and facilitate the process for folks who are old hat at this stuff through an organizing activity. Usually the organizing activity is hosting a house meeting but it can be hosting a community meeting or a faith forum or recruiting seven plus new volunteers to take the first step and come to our office. Once someone has succeeded at an organizing activity we ask them to try their hand at leading a voter contact activity. Mostly we are interested in how well they train fellow volunteers to make phone calls or knock on doors. Training is a huge part of quality control and we need our leaders to be good trainers. If a potential leader is a successful trainer then we meet with them again to ask them to take that next step and become a Team Coordinator or Team Leader. If at any moment in this process a volunteer isn't successful our organizers are trained to spend time coaching them through getting better. We are an inclusive team here and our goal is always to make people better."
All the organizers and team leaders I met were similarly reflective and highly aware that they were enacting a special model of electoral organizing. They actually sound like they're in a continuous state of shock at their own results and the power being unleashed by teams. A chill went down my spine one night—the good kind—when I was listening in on a nightly report-in conference call with 20 FOs at the Hamilton, Ohio, office. It was about 10:00 PM, and a new organizer was reporting in her daily voter contact numbers to Jackie.
FOs reporting inJackie asked her why that week they had been so much higher than the previous week. The young woman on the other end of the line—who I imagined calling from a car pulled over on the side of some far flung rural route—spoke with genuine amazement when she said, "It's the teams! It's these awesome team leaders! It's working! It's actually working!"
This high level of self-awareness regarding the organizing method seems to allow organizers to better adapt it to their own unique turf and personalities.
For example, field organizer Patrick Morrell has created a three-ring bound instruction manual all on his own that he gives to every member of his team. One of his team members, who is Ryan's housing provider (most field organizers are living in supporters' spare rooms), left her binder on Ryan's bed one night with a note saying, "Maybe you should take some notes."
Ryan's mainly working-class turf—or his own more flexible style—has led to a looser structure for his teams than Patrick's. Patrick's turf is a relatively well-off set of suburbs. Maybe because of that—or maybe because of his own detail-oriented personal style—his teams work in a highly-structured manner. Both organizers' teams are achieving their benchmarks on time.
Organizers like Patrick and Ryan who had very little campaign experience before Obama are already talking like experts, with insights worthy of a long career. Somehow in just a handful of short months, they have already distilled practice into theory that in turn feeds and improves their practice.
Patrick said, "I start by finding the team leader and then I work with them to find the coordinator folks—people who from my experience in working with people in volunteer activities and also people who they know in the neighborhood who are custom fit for different roles. Once that team is established then we have a sit-down meeting where we get everyone a binder, we go through it step by step, and make sure everyone is on the same page. And then it's very much me passing the torch—and I'm here for questions but the team is running the campaign at that point."
Ryan had his own wisdom on team building to contribute: "Don't pass the baton to someone until you get someone else running at your speed. It's important for organizers and team leaders to find that point where a new leader is running at the same speed—mentally, physically, time-wise, interest level, desire to win—all those things. You find that point, and then all of a sudden it hits you: they're running neck and neck with you and that's the time that you pass it off and move on to building the next new team."
Patrick Frank was a junior at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, when he started volunteering for the campaign. Now, as an FO, his turf now covers the university, and he has encouraged innovation. Sitting on the outskirts of a large campus rally that his teams had organized, he explained to me some of the modifications they were making to the teams model, "Rather than say we have X leadership roles to fill, we're creating leadership roles for as many leaders as we have. So we have people in charge of whatever they ARE. We are saying, 'What's your social network?' We say, 'OK, you're The Balcony Coordinator—your job is to go party at Balcony [a local bar] every weekend—like you do anyways—but now wear a Barack Obama button—and bring voter reg forms.' Or, 'Hey, you work at Brunos—when you go out on deliveries—as long as it's OK with your boss—ask people if they're registered. You're going to be our, um, pizza coordinator.' "
When Patrick was talking to me, a handful of team members were buzzing around the rally asking every student to sign in. The sign in sheet gave every person the option of indicating interest in becoming a leader. Free food would be served at the end of the rally, but you needed a little green sticker to get some. Of course, you got a sticker by signing in.
"There's no end to what you can do when you have the power to empower people as leaders on campus. It's beautiful. It's awe-inspiring," Patrick continued, pointing to the big event that was running itself without him having to worry about it or check on anything, "I mean look at this!"
We saw glimpses of the potential for this kind of organizing campaign in MoveOn's 2004 and 2006 volunteer operations, the Dean Campaign and even the Bush and Kerry campaigns. And there are great examples of this kind of organizing if you go back to the social movements of several decades ago. But the Obama campaign is the first in the Internet era to realize the dream of a disciplined, volunteer-driven, bottom-up-AND-top-down, distributed and massively scaleable organizing campaign. For anyone who knows how many times this has failed to happen, this is practically an apocryphal event. Marashal Ganz, who is an advisor to the national field campaign, and one of the main architects of the team model, said he's been waiting 40 years for it.
A well-run organizing campaign is the most beautiful thing in the world: people know what they're working for; they have little successes everyday; they prepare for problems ahead of time and have great fun attacking them when they happen. Everyone is in a state of constant euphoria. In the end, win or lose, you have built something that gives you hope for the future—hope that humanity can, as it turns out, work cooperatively towards a better future and succeed.
In the middle of a good organizing campaign, volunteers will stop and tell you that they are becoming better people. That's sounds cheesy, doesn't it? But I'll tell you, I wrote that line in a first draft of this article while waiting for my own neighborhood team meeting to start in Westport, Kansas City, Missouri. I looked at it and thought, "People won't buy that." I figured I'd delete it.
Then, at the end of our meeting, my neighborhood team leader, Jennifer Robinson, totally unprompted, told me: "I'm a different person than I was six weeks ago." I asked her to elaborate later. She said, "Now, I'm really asking: how can I be most effective in my community? I've realized that these things I've been doing as a volunteer organizer—well, I'm really good at them, I have a passion for this. I want to continue to find ways to actively make this place, my community, a better place. There's so much more than a regular job in this—and once you've had this, it's hard to go back to a regular job. I'm asking now: Can I look for permanent work as an organizer in service of my community? And that's a question I had not asked myself before the campaign. It never occurred to me that I could even ask that question."
Through the meeting, Jennifer had inspired and commanded the room of 50 new volunteers on top of her five team members who already had roles. Her seven year old daughter had been staring up at her with calm awe the whole time. Good organizing changes the world. In fact, it's what humanity is made out of. Every one of us is the product of centuries upon centuries of the struggle between good organizing and bad organizing. Barack Obama—through the most incredible, random, beautiful, twists of history—has brought good organizing back. God bless him and the army of volunteer and paid organizers who are making it real.
Over the past two days, my wife and I took time out of our busy lives to walk through the neighborhoods of our traditionally conservative town and go door to door talking to people about Obama. We were roughly following the script given to us by our Obama field operative, but we also encouraged dialog whenever someone had questions, was leaning in one direction or another, or just was willing to engage in discussion. We had a list, street by street, of registered Independents and Democrats who were thought to be undecided. And off we went.
Being a good TPM and general net junkie, I had lots of answers for people, of course, and could relate to people of just about any persuasion, except for the woman who told me she was voting McCain-Palin because Palin was a "mom." There was no further opening for discussion with this woman, who we had encountered smoking a cigarette on her front stoop. We left with a sinking feeling about this woman, who, thankfully, was not typical of the people we met.
In many ways, this was a very enriching experience, though we did smell more dog poop than I ever hope to encounter for the rest of my life, and we were greeted by barks and howls at just about every house. My wife was even bitten by a large, friendly-looking dog, but fortunately her reflexes were quick enough to extract her hand without damage, and we left the dog, and the house, alone. Oh, and I also stubbed my toe while looking up into a tree, but sturdy shoes prevented serious injury. (Insert ironic smiley face here)
I'm not trying to say that canvassing is dangerous or really unpleasant, but there we were traipsing through some downtrodden neighborhoods at times, and, well, the manicured lawns and flower gardens of the more "uptown" neighborhoods gave way to brown grass rubbed raw by the constant passing of canine feet and various types of junk and garbage that had been piled here and there.
Some houses were nicely taken care of, to be sure, but there were many where the people clearly had little time or inclination to worry about what the neighbors thought, and one in particular that actually creeped us out something fierce, with garbage, dog shit and flies everywhere. Though we bravely approached the door, we were thankful that nobody appeared to be home, not even the mysterious resident of a tent hiding under a tarp in the stinky front yard, complete with an orange extension cord running from the house.
The people we did meet, however, were varied and wonderful. We met a few adamant McCain supporters who would not even speak to us, but we also met people like the 93-year-old woman who was gracious and engaging, and praised us for doing what we were doing for Obama, even though she was going to vote for McCain because, "he knows what he's doing... you'll see." Still, she complimented my wife's sweater and told us stories of growing up in Misery (Missouri) under poorer-than-poor conditions.
We met lots of strong Obama supporters, too. Some who came right out and told us; others who sort of played coy, but ultimately admitted that Obama was the way they were going. We always felt a little thrill when we met these people, and would do a little inward happy dance.
We also met a few Hillary supporters, and in one case we were able to point them away from McCain and toward Rolling Stone. In fact, the Rolling Stone article about McCain proved to be an ace in the hole. Nobody, of any age, puckered their lips at the mention of Rolling Stone, and everyone we told about the article expressed sincere interest in reading it. We took that as a victory.
The other Hillary supporter was a guy who told us that when Obama didn't choose Hillary to be his running mate, he sealed the deal and lost this guy's vote. He wasn't interested in hearing that the policy differences between Obama and Hillary were negligible, while the difference between Hillary and McCain was of titanic proportions. He said, "I don't think this country is ready for a black president." I asked him, "Are you ready for a black president?" He answered, "Oh, it's not me. I'm fine with it, but this country isn't." Reminding him who was leading in the polls didn't seem to help, and he showed a clear interest in shutting the door and closing off any further discussion. We wished him a good day and move on.
One woman told us that she really liked Obama, but wasn't going to vote for him. "Why not," we both asked. "Because of his position on abortion," she said earnestly. "We just can't vote for him because of that. But we really like him, otherwise." Then there was the young man who answered the door in a "Got Jesus?" T-shirt. We thought we might be in trouble with him, but he surprised us. "I'm disabled, and on assistance from HUD," he told us. "I know that Obama cares about people like me, so I'm voting for him."
Overall, we loved meeting young people, because they were almost all for Obama. One man we met watering his sidewalk garden told us that not only was he for Obama, but his son was out canvassing in Montana, where he was going to school.
We met many people who were still undecided, and we had our best moments with them. Besides the Rolling Stone article, we were able to discuss Iraq and how Obama had been right about it all along, how McCain was right out in front for the war, what a disaster it was and how much safer we'd be with the guy who got it right the first time -- Obama -- than with Mr. "Bomb Bomb Bomb Iran." We talked about the economy and Republican free market trickle down bullshit and how the gap between the 'haves' and the 'have mores' versus the rest of us has widened dramatically under Bush, sometimes quoting numbers like one percent or half of one percent having like ninety percent of the wealth. Where's that at? We were talking to regular people, and they understood exactly what we were saying, because they feel it in their lives. I don't think any undecided voter we talked to was leaning toward McCain after we left.
The other group we encountered, and this was a large one, consisted of people who simply didn't think it mattered whether they voted or not. To them, it was all the same. Obama, McCain -- no appreciable difference. Even if they liked Obama, they didn't think electing him would change anything. Having had similar feelings often during the past few decades, I was able to relate to their apathy and feelings of disenfranchisement, but also to encourage them to consider the importance of this election and the remarkable gifts that Obama has already displayed -- his temperament, his ability to inspire, his obvious wisdom in matters that matter, and his incredible worldwide popularity. Sometimes we had to explain why it matters that the world likes us, but most people got that with little prodding. Still, I was never sure if we were successful at convincing the disenfranchised and the cynics that it mattered. That it really mattered. And, to be honest, ours is a very conservative area of Oregon, but Oregon will go for Obama. I have no doubt about it, despite the sadly intractable population here. In the truly battleground states, it would have mattered somewhat more, and maybe we would have been able to tell them so.
We always told people, "You will see lots of negative ads and attacks on Obama over the next few weeks. They will probably be lies and distortions." And people would nod and say, "I know. There's a lot of that," as if to say that it doesn't mean anything to them. They seemed to recognize who was the adult in the race and who was the child. I can't say that's true of everyone, but I'm encouraged to think that the negative spin and the lies and attacks are a turn-off, and Obama's consistency gives them confidence.
We met people on the street and talked to them randomly, and we found more Obama supporters than we had expected. So, even while McCain-Palin signs are springing up all over town, and Obama signs are being stolen regularly, so that you don't see many around, we know that there are people who feel as we do, and who are going to vote for the change we need.
Finally, we stopped at a house early in the day and a young man answered. The name on our list was for a woman, so we asked him first about his voting decisions. "I can't vote," he told us, with a bit of sadness. "I'm a felon." He was actually the second person we met in the two days who could not vote for that reason. They didn't seem like career criminals, and we both felt somewhat sad for them, because they clearly wanted to vote. But the young man told us that the lady of the house was at work and would be back later. We told him we'd try to return.
At the end of the day, our feet getting tired from walking and standing, we decided to return to that house and see if the young lady was back from work. She was. She was undecided, but leaning a little toward Obama. Rolling Stone. Obama is great. Check it out.
The woman smiled and said, "I think it's really cool that you came by here to talk to me and tell me about this. I'm really glad you did. I'll read the article in Rolling Stone, and I think I'll be voting for Obama."
Mission Accomplished.
And a rewarding experience for both of us -- highly recommended.
Last thoughts: I found that our best connection with people was understanding what was important to them. Sometimes it started with petting their dog or admiring their garden, but in the end, we asked them what mattered to them, and we could generally empathize. We found common ground with almost everyone, of every age. The economy and Iraq were clearly the two major issues, but there were others. Is Obama patriotic? Yes, he is. Is he too inexperienced? Not as we see it. (I always talk about the wisdom and clarity of The Audacity of Hope, Obama's clear understanding of Iraq when, apparently, his opponent was clueless and eager to go to war.) I found it surprisingly easy to connect with people, to listen to them, to care about their issues, and to tell them how and why I supported Barak Obama. Nothing else was required. Just honesty and a little mutual recognition that we're all in this together.
I have since learned, courtesy of my friends at TPM, that in Oregon, and in other states, felons who have served their time CAN vote. I have notified our state's Democratic leaders of this fact and asked them to be sure that field organizers and volunteers know that to be true and are armed with voter registration forms. I plan on revisiting those homes where I encountered people who believed their right to vote was forever prohibited by law.
Obama's grass-roots battalion vs. McCain's ragtag platoon In Wisconsin's blue-collar Paper Valley, the Democrats are banking on an outpouring of volunteers while the Republicans are left with fear itself. By Walter Shapiro (Salon)
Oct. 6, 2008 | GREEN BAY, Wis. -- Mid-morning Saturday, the Republican headquarters here in the fiercely contested northeast corner of Wisconsin reflected the somnolent air of the half-empty indoor mall in which it was located. A few Republican stalwarts wandered by to pick up McCain-Palin lawn signs and other GOP campaign paraphernalia. A signboard on the wall announced the target of "878 Doors" on which to knock, but it was evident that most of the canvassing -- the lifeblood of grass-roots organizing and get-out-the-vote drives -- would be done by pairs of high-school students too young to vote.
Two hours later, in contrast, the pulse rate was racing at the local Democratic headquarters as more than 70 political foot soldiers (most of them middle-aged) readied themselves for an afternoon of canvassing, phone calling and scrawling vote-for-Obama postcards to neighbors. On the sidewalk of the down-at-the-heels strip mall, Obama volunteers grilled lunchtime hamburgers and hot dogs as if this were an alcohol-free Packer tailgate party outside of Lambeau Field.
Sometimes in politics, the obvious can be more telling than the subtle. For all the glib talk about how Sarah Palin has energized the conservative base, it is hard to find evidence that the Republicans have papered over their enthusiasm gap here in Paper Valley, a moniker designating the dominant local industry in the Green Bay-Appleton area. "Our volunteer base is getting older and we're trying to turn that around, but it's not easy," concedes Tom Van Drasek, the Republican chairman of Brown County, of which Green Bay is the county seat. "McCain got started late here on the ground -- and we're struggling to catch up."
With the McCain campaign retreating from Michigan into Wisconsin (a state that John Kerry won by a paltry 11,000 votes in 2004), the Paper Valley is scorched-earth political terrain. According to the latest media-monitoring measurement by the University of Wisconsin Advertising Project, the Green Bay area was sixth in the nation in terms of the number of TV spots aired during the second week in September, even though it is the 69th largest media market in the country. John McCain and Barack Obama held Green Bay rallies four days apart in mid-September. As Mark Graul, a Republican strategist who ran the 2004 Bush campaign in Wisconsin, puts it, "John McCain has to win this congressional district [the 8th] by 10 points in order to win the state." (In 2004, George W. Bush defeated Kerry by 11 points in the heavily Catholic 8th; two-thirds of the district's electorate lives in the Green Bay-Appleton area).
Dan Kanninen, the Obama campaign's Wisconsin coordinator, underscored the importance of the Democrats' organizational edge in a state where Obama swamped Hillary Clinton by a 17-percentage-point margin in the mid-February primary. "The 2004 election," he said, "was a base-versus-base election, where they turned out their base and we turned out ours. But this campaign -- and we certainly still consider our base to be important -- is more about persuasion, and that's where our neighbor-to-neighbor advantage comes in."
But if there is a worrisome sign for Obama, it is personified by undecided voters like Matt Dallaire, a 34-year-old bus driver and part-time technical-school student who lives in Allouez, just south of Green Bay. I met Dallaire at his front door Saturday morning when he was visited by two earnest Preble High School students (17-year-old Zach Howard and Geri Sundstrom, 16) canvassing for McCain.
Dallaire explained that he was attracted by McCain's "values" but repelled by the Republican nominee's support of "amnesty" for illegal aliens. Dallaire, who is worried about the Wall Street whirlpool, also said without prompting, "I think Obama would clearly be better for the economy right now." So, I asked, if you are concerned about McCain's views on immigration and tilting toward Obama on the economy, why do you still consider yourself an undecided voter? "I get a lot of e-mails saying bad stuff about Obama," answered Dallaire, as he shook his head at the memory of some of the poison-pen charges, which he declined to specify. "It's crazy stuff. And it's all probably BS. But it makes me think twice."
McCain's hopes in Wisconsin (where he has trailed in every published statewide poll since the primaries) depend on think-twice voters like Dallaire. The underlying problem is not just race, although that is obviously a factor. Rather, it is all the cultural symbols that Palin was evoking when she sneered about Obama in Colorado this weekend, "This is not a man who sees America as you and I do." Graul, who is not associated with the McCain campaign, said, "Obama won the primary against Hillary based on personality. But that was before people started hearing things about Barack Obama. Small things. [Antoin] Rezko, Obama voting 'present' on tough votes in Illinois, his pastor. For the first time in Wisconsin, people are saying, 'Wait a minute' about Obama."
Even though most Wisconsin polls show the "undecided" vote in single digits, my strong (though anecdotal) impression is that such numbers understate the uncertainty lurking among the voters. Canvassing in Suamico, north of Green Bay, with Curt Andersen, a 62-year-old Obama supporter, we spoke with a barefoot woman in her 30s, who stood at the front door simultaneously trying to control her chocolate-brown Labrador and her young son. When Andersen asked whom she was supporting for president, she replied, "I honestly don't know." Then when I pressed for more detail, a look of pure agony crossed her face as she wailed, "I don't know and I can't verbalize it."
Democratic Rep. Steve Kagen, who won an upset victory in the traditionally Republican 8th District in 2006, expresses confidence that economic self-interest will trump the fear factor: "People can see through the distortions about Obama that will be raised -- whether it's race or whatever else will come next." But, at a point when the McCain campaign has signaled that things are about to get ugly, it may be naive to dismiss Republican efforts to accentuate the negative.
Over breakfast Saturday morning at Hoho's Cafe ("Old Fashioned Goodness") in the Democratic-leaning mill town of Kaukauna, 25-year-old Dan Rademaker offered the textbook, vote-your-wallet argument for Obama: "The reason that I don't care for McCain is that he is for the big companies -- not the little guy." But Rademaker, who is an electronics technician, admitted that he is a rarity among his 20-something friends because he intends to vote. But then, as he carefully drizzled a poached egg onto his toast with the precision of a surgeon prepping for an operation, Rademaker talked about his lone politically interested friend: "He's a liberal. But I don't know how racist he is. And that's a big part of it, though."
The Paper Valley is an area where economic discontent was bubbling to the surface long before the tidal wave hit the financial markets. Over the last decade, roughly one-third of the papermaking jobs in Wisconsin have vanished -- unionized jobs paying $60,000 a year, enough to afford a vacation cottage on a lake and a Harley. But few paper plant shutdowns have caused more shock and distress than this summer's closure of the Kimberly Mill in Kimberly, a town named after one of the founders of Kimberly-Clark and synonymous with papermaking for 120 years. The Kimberly Mill (owned by the NewPage Corp., a subsidiary of Cerberus Capital Management), which made glossy paper stock used in magazines, was a modern, seemingly profitable plant, which was shut down after the International Trade Commission (ITC) in Washington ruled that China was not illegally subsidizing below-cost paper imports.
The 600 out-of-work Kimberly employees, most of whom were represented by the Steelworkers, have become a potent political symbol in this corner of the state. "If Obama wins Wisconsin -- and I believe he will win -- it will be largely because of the fight that the millworkers are waging and the attention it gives to unfair trade laws," says Democratic state Rep. Tom Nelson from Kaukauna. That may be hyperbolic, but the Obama campaign has embraced the cause of the Kimberly workers. Andy Nirschl, the local union president, introduced Obama at a Labor Day rally in Milwaukee, and the Democratic nominee pointedly referred to the Kimberly Mill in his opening remarks in Green Bay three weeks later.
At the union hall across the street from the closed Kimberly Mill, Nirschl walked me to the window, pointed to what had been his workplace for 28 years and said, "Take a look at it. Does it look to you like it should be shut up? The No. 6 and No. 7 machines are the fastest in the U.S." Referring to a planned effort next year to reverse the ITC decision, Nirschl said, "If Obama doesn't win, I'll say the mill isn't going to open again. And if Obama wins, I'm pretty optimistic."
The contest in the Paper Valley and the other blue-collar battlegrounds of the Midwest is fast coming down to primal emotions like hope and fear, enthusiasm and apathy. Something major seems to be stirring when the Obama campaign can put a battalion on the streets of Brown County and the McCain forces have to counter with a ragtag platoon of high-school students. (Zach Howard, one of the McCain canvassers, did say with youthful idealism in his voice, "If I can change one vote, it's the same as voting myself.") But fear is a quality that should never be underestimated in politics -- whether it is an ill-defined unease about Obama or the anxiety triggered by the thought of four more years of Republican stewardship of the economy.
At this point the script diverges wildly; often, the answer will be a mumbled, "I'm sorry" and a click on the other end of the line, or perhaps "I don't want to say" and I note "refused" in the vote template, or perhaps the answer is "Obama" or "Don't worry, this is an Obama house." Or perhaps, and this is surprisingly infrequent, I get a definitive "McCain" and so I say "Thanks for your time - have a nice day." Always polite, and never ever argumentative or pushy.
That's the short version, but it doesn't usually go that way. First we ask any Obama supporters if they're aware of early voting (beginning October 20 in Florida) and if they need a ride to the polls. After providing the pertinent information, we duly note the answers for follow-up action. Then we ask if they want to volunteer. These are the calls that gladden our hearts, and we get quite a good number of them.
So far, so good, but it's the "undecided" response that gets challenging. I've heard some strange things at this point. There was the lady in Plantation, Florida, who assured me that "Obama plans to tax every person $10,000 and to give them three years to pay it or else!" When I tell her confidently that this is not the case, and in fact Obama proposes the opposite, the voice on the other end says she's still "not sure" since she had heard it from a "good source." During the primary, I had a conversation with a lady in Indiana who declared that "Obama is a Muslim" and she had received several e-mails to prove it. At that point, a reference to his membership in a Christian Church should have sufficed, but as with my Florida discussion, the lady said "I know what I know..." I often have to field questions about Obama's policies; one of the most unusual was the man who asked me about Obama's position on treating autistic children, something he cared deeply about since he had an autistic granddaughter. Thankfully, I was able to give him an answer since it turns out that Barack Obama has a detailed position on autism posted on his fabulous website.
But the most effective response to an undecided voter, the one that always gets an "I think I'm leaning to Obama," is to mention Governor Sarah Palin. She's the magic bullet. I have not talked to a single person who has a favorable opinion of her, not even among McCain supporters. In going door-to-door in Pennsylvania (my weekend activity), bringing up Palin is always met with a furrowed brow and a troubled look. The typical comment I hear is, "How could he have picked her? She really worries me!"
Nor have I ever come across either a caller or a voter door to door who is happy with how things are going in our country. No one is happy, whether Democrat, Republican or Independent. But while McCain supporters I've spoken to express equal unhappiness with the status-quo, sometimes they can be fiercely partisan and downright nasty. For instance, one McCain supporter in Pembroke Pines named Diana told me with a sneer, "He [Obama] doesn't salute the flag." Even though Diana told me she was unhappy with Bush, I realized there wasn't any point in arguing, so I rang off with the standard "have a nice day," and clicked "McCain supporter." Probably the most unpleasant conversation I've had to date was with Jessie, also of Pembroke Pines: "I think he's a socialist and I don't like his friends. Show me someone's friends and I'll tell you how they think," she said with sour satisfaction. Now, there are some phone bankers who would try to convince her otherwise, especially on the absurd "socialist" charge, but I knew Jessie was a "no sale" and answered, "thank you for talking to me and have a nice day." But Jessie had the last word, with "I hope YOU don't!"
It's rare to get abuse on the phone beyond a quick hang up, so after Jessie's call I had to stand up and tell the story to our phone bank chief, the very smart Roy Winnick, who is a paragon of energy and organization. Roy, who in real life is a well-respected biographer and historian, is the brains behind the daytime phone banking at Princeton Democratic Headquarters. As I mentioned in my last post, Princeton's dynamic campaign operation is always jammed with people making buttons, calling local volunteers, doing data entry and phone banking. They include people from all walks of life and positions, including high school students (we get lots of those), Princeton University students, and even a few of the many famous authors residing in the area. Everyone wants to help it seems.
But Jessie's bad wishes didn't compare to my adventures in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania, where a group of us from Princeton joined others canvassing door to door this Sunday. As I approached one door, a large black dog bounded out and jumped up on me, proceeding to literally "bump" me off the property while barking wildly. Thankfully the dog turned away when I hit the street. But that's an unusual occurrence, as most people are friendly out on the trail. There are just a few curt "no, thank you's", and enough polite challenges to keep us on our toes. Our lists are targeted, so we don't generally knock on Republican doors, but we've encountered several voters who say something to the effect that "I've been a Republican all my life, but I'm voting for Obama." My friend Philip, a Princeton Professor, had an interesting conversation with a man whose son is on his third tour in Iraq. The entire family, including his soldier son, is emphatically supporting Obama.
Today, we wearily finished our route of 50+ houses by trudging up the weedy driveway to a shabby porch of a house along a busy highway. I was prepared for a suspicious door-slam, but not for the clean-cut young man who welcomed me heartily and enthusiastically signed up as an Obama volunteer. It was a great finale to a satisfying day of hard campaigning.
There is no better way to directly help influence a campaign than canvassing door to door or phone banking. These activities allow even the lowest ranking member of a campaign to have a profound effect on the outcome - to make a difference. It's even possible to make calls directly from home as a member of Obama's National Phone Team. It's not easy work; it takes persistence and an ability to never take things personally. The truth is, despite Jessie's wish to the contrary, I find that every day I'm able to campaign is a very nice day indeed.
