Late yesterday afternoon, while waiting for our Cary HQ's Campaign for Change database server to overcome some serious technological peril, I pounded out a quick diary asking people to come canvass in Cary, North Carolina.
Within an hour, we had enough Kossacks come to our office on East Chatham Street to put together two canvass crews. One woman came because her son in Virginia sent her an email with the diary attached and begged her to come to the office to canvass. She came within minutes, clutching the printed email, and asked where she should go.
I later had to update the diary and send people to precincts in Raleigh, because we had all the canvassers we needed in Cary.
You don't think it mattered? Think again.
We don't know yet who's won North Carolina. But we won Wake County. And we are within a whisper of having won North Carolina -- a state that 16 weeks ago was 20 points down and that had been given up for redder than dead.
You don't think it mattered? Here are some of the precincts we desperately needed yesterday, and here are the votes in those precincts:
04-01: Obama 408 McCain 407
04-04: Obama 274 McCain 290
04-14: Obama 315 McCain 397
04-16: Obama 434 McCain 433
04-20: Obama 528 McCain 477
We won those precincts by one vote each. One vote. Because someone came and knocked on doors and got people to leave their cozy homes on a rainy afternoon and vote.
Great leapin' Jehosephat on a Segway.
Thank you for coming to Cary and later, after a diary update, coming to Raleigh and canvassing until the polls closed. Thanks, too, to those who went to polling locations and passed out umbrellas and juice boxes, juggled kittens, sang big band classics, and did whatever it took to keep people in line long enough to cast their ballots.
Amazing. All y'all are amazing.
And, Lair, if you're reading, you are a rock star. You built a technological castle out of nothing more than a bunch of Commodore 64s, some popsicle sticks, and a handful of gumdrops. Maybe a unicorn, I'm not sure. But you definitely didn't have a lot to work with. Yet you did it. Thank you.