If you are anything like me people have been coming up to you since the election and congratulating you.
People in my neighborhood stop me and say thanks for all the work I put in for the Obama campaign. They know me well because I knocked on all their doors too many times to remember.
I have emails from friends and family congratulating me for a successful effort working on behalf a candidate who actually won this time round.
My mom, of course, phoned and pretty much credited me with Obama's victory and encouraged me to run for office.
Let me tell you what I've told every one of them: I didn't do shit for Obama.
OK, sure, I worked pretty hard on his behalf for what pretty much seems like forever. I was on the Obama bandwagon before he declared his intentions to run. And when he did declare, I started, as many of you did, to organize.
I live in Seattle, one of the bluest cities in one of the bluest states, and that is a large part of the reason why I feel like I didn't really do anything meaningful to help the big O win. As our caucus day approached back in February I became an Obama precinct captain. I hosted Obama open houses and knocked on doors and dropped home-made flyers at every house in my precinct. By the time of the caucus I had identified a solid 25 to 30 Obama supporters who were sure to show up. I had no idea what to expect though. At the precinct caucuses we had over 150 people from my precinct show up. The vast majority were Obama supporters. Who were these people? Where did they all come from? Obama won 4 of the 5 delegates allocated to our precinct.
I was elected a delegate to the next level, and then the next -- though I did not run to be a state delegate to the DNC in Denver.
I am positive, however, that I had no impact on the outcome of the election even in my little corner of the world. People just kept coming out of the woodworks to support Obama. They were activated and animated all on their own and nothing I did or said seemed to make a difference or encourage anybody to do anything one way or another.
I read with rapt jealously all the DKOS diaries about grass roots activists like me who had meaningful encounters with the repair man, or the guys at the local garbage dump, or their right-wing conservative relatives, their in-laws, their parents, the members of the wedding party, and so on. I never had such an exchange with anyone. My family was in the tank for Obama from the get go. The people I met here and there were all already for Obama. Hell, that's one of the reasons I moved to Seattle in the first place. To rub shoulders more often with like-minded folks.
I wanted to have that searing conversation with a right-wing nut though or convince a wavering Republican to come over to our side. The opportunity just never presented itself. Occasionally I knocked on the door of an elderly McCain supporter. We invariably exchanged pleasantries and then went on our way.
The day of the election, I think, illustrates just how futile and inept all my efforts were on behalf of Obama campaign:
I had responsibility for this one precinct. I knocked on doors all morning with my son Dash in tow. After knocking on doors and finding pretty much everyone out I went home and called folks. Then I went back in the late afternoon to knock on doors again, this time with Dash and my daughter Maeve along for the ride. The afternoon was a disaster. Maeve fed Dash large chunks of her bagel (which I didn't see) and he nearly choked to death (really, not kidding). Then Dash had just had it with the stroller and had a tantrum. Then we got hit with a torrential down pour of rain and hail. Maeve kept pulling back Dash's canopy on the stroller so he would get soaked and all my canvass-walk lists got drenched in the rain. So there I was standing literally in the middle of this street in the dark yelling at Maeve to stop it and to behave with this small voice in my head somewhere thinking: "hey, you are really not presenting a good image of an Obama supporter right now." To top it off, I am pretty sure I did not help one person remember to vote or convince them to vote and nor did I help anyone get to the polls. I am fairly certain I was pretty much useless. Obama won Washington easily, of course, though it's a pretty good thing that they were not relying on me in any serious way.
So, a long time from now, when I am looking back on 2008 election and Maeve or Dash asks me what I did at such a historic moment in time I can say, in all truth and in complete honesty: I didn't do shit for Obama.