It's the day before election day; before I depart for my third day of canvassing in pursuit of a blue Ohio, I'll note a few details of my busy, busy day yesterday.
First: people rave about microtargeting, and it's awesome. The main microtargeting program is called "Sage," and it has rapidly become a verb (along the lines of "Google") meaning "to find a voter using Sage." People Sage themselves, their families and friends, even Senate candidates (Mike DeWine is in a category unlikely to be a Brown voter.)
However, microtargeting is only a recipe. The ingredients are volunteers and plenty of 'em, and the cooking process is canvassing.
Yesterday I got my clipboard from Erica at Cranley HQ and knocked on about 200 doors in the North College Hill neighborhood, a working-class area to the north of Cincinnati's heart. Then I returned to tally my results. Like many a person at the HQ, I'm coming down with a little something: lots of activity and little sleep, long hours walking around outdoors, and constant contact with a flow of people makes a campaign in its final days into a petri dish. Immune systems are racing against time.
The immune system is an apt metaphor for the role of Democratic campaign volunteers in Ohio. A nasty sicknes has infected the body politic (it must have been something they ate in the last six years or so). The fight to get rid of it produces the usual symptoms: sniffles, fevers, negative campaign ads. (If you haven't seen the NRCC's awful "7 Year Olds!" anti-Cranley ad, do yourself a favor and do so now.)
After I bid a very fond farewell to Team Cranley (hopefully followed up by a congratulatory call tomorrow night), I hopped in the car and headed up I-71 to Lorain County, where my roommate is helping run Sherrod Brown's canvass operations. No rest for the weary: although I arrived at 9:00 at night, I was put straight to work printing out precinct maps for those delightfully targeted Sage lists. The office is coordinating canvassing in Oberlin, Elyria and Lorain, so if you're around there, join us!
And so today we work and work, tomorrow we work and work some more, and tomorrow night as the polls close at 7:30, we get to see just what kind of cake we baked. I am hoping it will be delicious.