Yesterday, election day, I spent 3.5 hours in the Van Nuys, California Obama HQ (northern LA--the San Fernando Valley), calling people in Pennsylvania, Colorado, and then Nevada, checking to see if they voted, if they knew where their polling place was. This was session 9.
On Monday, I completed my eighth volunteering session for the Obama campaign. It's more than I've ever done for a political campaign before, I believe my efforts have helped a little, and I know I could have done far more. But here's the rundown:
A Sunday in late August: terrified by the polls showing McCain up by two points, I go to the Obama website, download a call sheet, and make twenty calls. As with most calling, there are a lot of "no answers." I speak to three live people. Two of them politely tell me I have the wrong number. The last guy I speak is a supporter of Obama, but he can't vote--he's a felon. "Well," I say, "if you're a former felon, you might actually be able to get your right to vote back." There is a sigh filled with disappointment. "Nah...current felon." But he says to me, "keep goin', man. Keep goin."
So I do. The next day, Monday morning, I don't have work, so I drive down on the freeway to the L.A. office. People are glad to see me there. The office is bustling. No one is nattering away about the polls. I spend two hours calling undecided voters in Nevada--again, I don't reach that many voters--I reach two Obama supporters; they're voting for him, reluctantly, but they will vote for him.
You grind it out, among all the no answers and wrong numbers. At the end of the day, it's a numbers game. Every ten or twenty calls = one personal contact. Every forty calls = one possible conversation with an undecided voter. You win by calling more people than the other guy. By getting more people to call on your behalf than the other guy.
Two weeks later, I'm free again. It's Saturday, and I get up early and drive a mile and a half down Ventura Blvd. to Encino Park. This Saturday call session is run by Todd. Todd is one of those people who's done way more than I have. Todd is very cool. Todd embodies the "respect, empower, organize" ethos and the can-do spirit of this campaign. He gives me a call sheet, and off I go. We are in a small park, seated at picnic tables, in sunny southern California, and it's beautiful.
The first time you call, you're always afraid. At least, I was. (And I've done this before--I called people on John Kerry's behalf in 2004, and called for Dave Loebsack in Iowa in 2006. On election day in 2006, I was calling all my friends in the afternoon when we ran out of call sheets to make sure they voted--I reached a friend, Jesse, who hadn't, he had forgotten and wouldn't have voted but for me. Dave Loebsack won in a stunning upset by 7,000 votes. I like to think 2 of those votes were mine.)
But you're thinking people are going to yell at you. I actually haven't encountered any yellers. The closest was a guy whose wife I was trying to reach who couldn't understand why being on the do-not-call list meant he still had to get these calls. He was also whining about the lateness of the call (8:54 PM Colorado time. Yeah, that's real late.) Doubtless a McCain supporter. People don't yell. They are, by and large, polite. And some of them, like Tyler--and the woman who referred to herself as "the black lady"--are gold.
I have made the calls, grinding through the no-answers and wrong numbers. This is my last call for the afternoon. It's 2:20 PM--some people have left (the session technically ended at 2, and they were here for all 4 hours. I didn't show up until 11:30.) Tyler is an undecided voter who is very slightly leaning Obama.
Tyler does not ask me about Bill Ayers, or Jeremiah Wright, or Obama being a Muslim. Tyler just wants to know the guy's economic policies. And I know some of these, because I am a political junkie. I tell him:
- tax cuts for anyone making under $250,000 a year--the theory being it'll stimulate the economy;
- Better regulation of the credit default swap market--the credit default swaps are the main thing that got us into the economic mess;
and
- Investment in infrastructure--repairing roads, building bridges. Directly creates jobs, stimulates the economy, and the repairs will help prevent bridge collapses like the one in Minnesota."
I also mention the blueprint for change, available online, which has many more Obama economic policies.
Tyler thanks me; he tells me "I'm almost definitely voting for Obama now."
This is what we live for.
That Monday, I drive out to the Van Nuys office--more calling, this time New Mexico. We've entered the early voting phase. It's 6 PM; there are several people there. It's my second visit to the office for calls. We struggle to determine how to record complicated answers--a woman swears her daughter will vote Obama (not good enough for the campaign's purposes; we need to hear it from the voter herself). A man says he's voting for Obama but then hangs up before we can ask him to vote early. Circle "1" (definite Obama) as well as "Refused"? But we make the calls. We grind it out.
That Friday, I tell a friend--a successful TV writer some years older than me--and his daughter, Lorie, whom I've just met that day--about my campaigning, and I tell them it's going on that Saturday. They're both showing up. This is what we call "a force multiplier."
The next day--Saturday, Todd is there again, running our little Encino satellite operation. I show up closer to 10 AM this time, and my friends join me. They are worried. I reassure them. No one's going to yell at them. Lorie lands an undecided voter--and she listens, and reassures. She's brilliant. (She doesn't think so, but I believe she reassured the voter very well.) And this is when I strike gold again, on the "can I ask who you're voting for?" question. We already know these are supporters. "Well, I'm a black lady and I'm voting for Obama." We talk for a few minutes, but it is the tone of her voice more than the words. The tone that I can't capture. It was one of unmitigated, barely suppressed delight. She sounded vibrant but quite a bit older--70s maybe--which means she may have never thought she'd see the day when some white guy would call her up to make sure she had cast her vote for a black man for President. And yeah, I volunteer for Obama for a whole lot of reasons that have nothing to do with race, but if you are 70+ you lived through a time when African-American men were hung from trees until they were dead for no reason at all, through a time when three volunteers trying to register African-American voters in 1964 in Philadelphia, Mississippi were murdered by a mob, none of whom were ever prosecuted, through a time when, to paraphrase the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a guy was shot to death for saying how great it would be if people of all races would be nice to each other for a change, and through a time when in 1980 a man was elected President in part by hinting that maybe what happened to those interlopers in Philadelphia, Mississippi really wasn't all that bad. (This man--oh, screw the cleverness, it's Ronald Reagan--also basically said the day after Martin Luther King was assassinated that sure, it was a tragedy, but he had it coming.) Long story short, she made my day.
This is Todd's last day--he's off to North Carolina. He tells Lorie & me to go to Las Vegas.
The next Monday, I go again to Van Nuys; I'm willing to call, but I'd rather do data entry. There's no chance, as you enter the data, that a piece of data will randomly decide to yell at you. But I do both. (The next day, I get a thank you call for my efforts from the campaign--a nice touch.)
And now we are at the night before the election, and we have Andy Lynch advising us. Andy is like us "a guy who shows up." The campaign is now an election--it's all about us getting more of our guys to the polls. So our scripts--as they did for early voting--have each voter's location on it. I again encounter a voter frustrated we are calling her so late (9:15 PM). 9:15 PM is not too late to get a reminder call about an election. I'm polite and apologetic to her on the phone, but I'm annoyed--is a 60-second-phone-call really that much of an inconvenience? Particularly from people who want to make sure you know where your polling place is? Ah well. Maybe she was having a bad day.
However, this bad taste is quickly washed out by something much more fun--recruiting volunteers for tomorrow. We'll be calling fellow Obama supporters, asking them to volunteer. The Van Nuys office will be open till the last poll closes--that means at least 8 PM our time, longer if the polls get held open elsewhere for long lines. I call someone who's already volunteered, who's watching the Steelers-Redskins game, but she says "Didn't you hear how I answered the phone?"
"No," I say, because the system we're using to call people is a little weird."
"Go Obama!" she says. "Go Obama!" I say. "I agree 100%."
My favorite call from yesterday--a man in Pennsylvania. "I've already voted for him!," he says. "I can't vote for him again--they won't let me!"
Part of Obama's genius is that he recognizes the country just doesn't want to play the Republicans' game anymore, and that he saw how to get other Americans to recognize this. I believe that Hillary Clinton, for all her many talents, could not have changed the game in the same way. Obama promises a new game, one of asking "which policies are best for the country?", rather than "who do you hate more?" I myself was skeptical. I underestimated Obama. I did not believe he could literally change the game. But he did.
We are all grinders now. Let us grind.