I volunteered on Wed. May 28th to help Moveon with their Bush-McCain challenge in Boston Common. While I didn't get to take as many pictures as I had planned or would have liked to, I still wanted to make a diary to post my reflections and thoughts on the challenge and its general election implications.
Take the Bush-McCain challenge
Boston is of course not exactly the most fertile terrain for such a challenge, as most people here are virulently anti-bush and not particularly huge fans of McCain. Also, Boston Common is a spot of busy tourism, with many people too concerned with their trips to american historical sites to be concerned with the most important event with implications for the future of American History. It was difficult to attract people to take the challenge and many simply declared that they already knew that there were no differences between the two when approached. Of those who I gave the challenge to, few truly seemed surprised with the answers. Still, there were some gasps when people were told that McCain was rabidly pro-life and against a women's right to choose.
I also encountered more republicans than one would expect in Boston Common. One individual looked at literature we were handing out and merely nodded and said " I agree with all of those positions" as he walked away. Yet, many conservatives were eager to talk and discuss the issues. I had a delightful conversation with a student at nearby bunker hill community college. She was a conservative lesbian republican and we discussed social issues and religion at length. Hearing horror stories in the past from friends who had come out or were to terrified to come out to their conservative southern parents, it was delightful to hear that her parents had been fully receptive and understanding. She told me that she had voted for Bush in 2000 and 2004 but now fully regretted that choice and hated him throughly. Most importantly, she seemed impressed that democrats would be willing to engage in conversation and dialogue, having had a bad experience with bullying and vicious democrats at her high school who mocked her for being a conservative.
This dismay among even formerly staunch republicans with the direction of this country gives me great hope that Obama, as a candidate that inspires the greater essence of our nation's ideals and pushes us to actually unify and have a serious discussion on the issues, has a chance of making inroads on such voters. These are the individuals that will easily be peeled away if McCain can be identified as a bush clone. Overall, such experiences give me an amazing amount of hope that the part can prevail come November.
MoveOn is right on the mark with the idea of the Bush-McCain challenge. There are some things I would suggest for future improvement however, We turned away a lot of people who didn't realize we were actually liberals and trying to discredit McCain. this could be improved with large and more obvious signage at the table such as a much larger version of the infamous " hug" photograph. There was also a higher level of apathy and indifference than I expected considering the record breaking turnouts this primary process has engendered. Many people simply stated they could care less about the election process. A lot must be done to recapture the energy of an electorate that voted in february and has for months languished as this long primary progressed.
Symphonyofdissent
Daniel Ortner