Wish I could write an inspirational door hanger story tonight, but I'm just too damn tired. But it's good out there everyone.
I want to relax after two 12-hour days of canvassing this weekend. My little boy, my inspiration, hung over 100 door knockers today, and kept going, even though he had a fever. Never complained once.
But now that he's tucked in bed, something's nagging me as I watch these pundits try to predict Pennsylvania.
So far, haven't heard much that matches what I've seen on the canvass trail these past few months. So allow me to add my two cents.
Okay, I am no political analyst. But I think I have talked to a lot of potential voters out there, spending over 100 hours knocking on doors in Pennsylvania - every weekend for over the past two months.
Here's my gut feeling on what I think may happen on Tuesday:
When we first started knocking on doors, we found some people were apathetic - saw no real difference between the two candidates.
Many of those scoffed and brushed us off with the "they're all crooks" attitude and said they wouldn't bother to vote because it would make no difference for them. I even wrote Another Inspirational Canvass Story about it back in September.
Then all of a sudden, things changed. We started seeing more strong division, probably around the time Palin got picked as the VP candidate and did her show at the Republican convention.
We did see overwhelming support for Obama every trip. EVERY trip. But too, we saw more people coming out for McCain. I got worried there for a few weeks.
But what disappeared was anyone who said they wouldn't vote. I'd bet we went for two solid months without one person telling us they weren't voting. Not one.
And then it seemed very recently, maybe in the past two weeks - we have had more and more people telling us they wouldn't be voting.
These were the people I've come to suspect would have voted for McCain, but they are just too disgusted to vote for him.
They have been pretty open with us with their reasons for initially supporting McCain and then deciding to skip voting. They've also spewed some racism as their argument for voting against Obama. (It seems since Palin came on board, it's become more acceptable to openly talk about their racist feelings, and they do.)
Some have said they can't vote for Obama because they believe the smears, but they are quick to add too, they can't stomach voting for McCain. Others don't mention race, and say they wanted to vote for McCain for many different reasons, but will stay home on Tuesday
The reason these potential McCain supporters give for staying home? McCain's poor choice of Palin, as well as the nonsense of his campaign, like Joe the Plumber and 'my fellow prisoners'. And then there's his sound fundamentals of the economy...
The disgust with McCain started with Palin's interview with Charlie Gibson, snowballed after her interview with Katie Couric, and just has not stopped rolling and swelling until potential McCain/Palin voters have just flown off the snowball with each turn.
These are reasonably intelligent people we've been talking to here in the Northeast part of Pennsylvania. They may not be college-educated, but the majority are reasonable people, who may have racist tendencies or watch too much Fox News, but who also have half a brain.
So they have decided to stay home and not vote.
Here are the numbers from one canvass a few days ago (keep in mind that these people were all hit at least one time before and were undecided):
42 Doors Knocked
21 Obama
8 not voting
2 McCain
11 Not Home.
So around 26 percent of the contacts we made would not be voting, and these were people who - on the first or second contacts - were voting, but were marked 'undecided."
My gut analysis? The undecideds have either gone one way or another: to full support of Obama, or will stay home to avoid voting for either.
And from talking to hundreds of people over the past few months on the canvass trail, my gut also tells me that McCain is targeting this 26 percent now.
But what McCain might not know is that the majority of these undecideds have already decided to stay home.
And I wonder how many of the people we initially checked as "McCain supporter" on our first pass have now decided to either support Obama or stay home. Not sure anyone's been back to check on them again.
So sometimes silence is truly golden.