To tell the truth, I haven't always been a Democrat. When I was a teenager, I rooted for Bush Senior in the 1988 presidential election. I cannot really explain myself, other to reference a childhood in a rural Illinois town and a religious upbringing that was, to be kind, smug, hypocritical, and holier-than-thou (it came as a particularly nasty shock when I realized that I would have been a target of the Mike Huckabee campaign). My parents were, and are, moderate to conservative on most social issues.
I voted for moderate Republicans like Governor Jim Edgar and Senator Fitzgerald, but I gradually moved to the left during my college years, and my dislike of the Republican Party turned into full-fledged loathing over the years of the Bush Administration.
And I did nothing about it.
Oh sure, I complained. I never missed an election day (as Heinlein once said, if you can't find someone to vote for, you can always find someone to vote against). I wrote vitriolic letters to my Congresswoman, a hollow shell named Judy Biggert (R, Illinois 13). I scanned political blogs, I shelled out a few dollars for Edwards and now Obama, but I never did anythng that demanded any particular effort on my part.
Over the past few weeks, since Super Tuesday, I have watched Obama speak a few times. I am 36, and do not get swept up easily, no matter how soaring the rhetoric. But one line has stayed with me:
"We are the ones we are waiting for."
That sunk home. And so I spoke with my boss this afternoon, knowing that his wife was involved in the Obama campaign here in Illinois. She told me where the local headquarters was. After work, I walked the three blocks (God bless working in downtown Chicago) and signed up to phone bank.
I called several dozen people in Wyoming. Only two answered the phone. Neither were interested in caucusing for Obama on March 8.
But I left messages on a lot of people's answering machines. I told them where to register and where to caucus. I left this evening feeling as if I had actually done something to help a Democrat get elected in November.
It felt good.
I'm going back tomorrow.