I arrived a bit late than usual Saturday morning at the Berkeley County Democratic Executive Committee Headquarters because I knew it'd be a long day with the chili cookoff beginning at 3 p.m.
I also had skipped breakfast, but fortunately someone (I'm sorry I forget who or I'd credit her) brought fresh donuts and had coffee made.
Meshea Poore (pictured at right) was in from Charleston giving a recruitment speech to numerous leaders in the community so they can learn to recruit more volunteers and organize GOTV efforts. Clem had raved about Meshea after meeting her at the DNC in Denver and from the way she gets people "Fired up! Ready to go!" you can just tell she's going to be a rising star in the West Virginia Democratic Party.
We need that because West Virginia is in PLAY (Pollster: McCain 47.8, Obama 43.2.)
There was a good size crowd at the Berkeley County HQ. Ken Collinson was working his cellphone and I waited until he finished, then the two of us paired up and canvassed Precinct 8.
Precinct 8 is a solid, middleclass precinct, predominantly white and about two or three blocks down from more affluent homes. I recall canvassing parts of Precinct 8 for John Kerry in 2004 with mixed results.
Saturday, was a very good day, however, for Sen. Barack Obama. One of the first houses we hit was one of those older, working class white women that we were told over and over by the traditional media and some national bloggers would never vote for Barack Obama. Our knock woke her from a nap, but she was good spirited about it because she'd spent a good part of the work week volunteering as a phonebanker at the Campaign for Change HQ for Barack Obama and Anne Barth.
One of our next homes was a working class white man in his 60s. He too was for Barack Obama and wanted a lawn sign for him. Ken said he'd drop one off.
Another house, an 87 year old white woman. I was thinking we'd done pretty good up to that point, but we couldn't count on keeping all of our older Dems. Nevertheless, I gave my usual introduction and asked, "Do you know if the election were held today if you'd be support Democratic candidate Barack Obama or ..." when she interrupted me.
"Obama," she said firmly. "Anne Barth, too?" I asked. She nodded.
So it went. We did hit a pair of hard trodden women in a house where the couple on our list had moved from. The one frowned when we said we were canvassing for Obama and Barth. The other said she was leaning McCain. I told her the two of us were local volunteers for Obama. "Has anyone cared enough about John McCain here to come and ask you for your vote?" I asked her.
No one had.
So it went though. Obama. Obama. Obama. We ended up talking too long to a mother and her daughter (mother leaning Obama, daughter not sure who she is voting for), but it was good conversation and I'm not just saying that because I encouraged them to visit West Virginia Blue (Hi, if you're reading.)
Here's one of those "tells" that gave me such a good feeling. In any walk list you're going to have people who have moved and so you don't know who is living there, if they're a D, a Nonaffiliated, or an R. In nearly every case, the new people at the address were for Obama.
We canvassed for several hours and then went back to HQ. John Christenson made an excellent chili (VFW ended up winning. Though it was a good chili, I didn't think it was as good as John's, but it was one of the better ones. We did have about 10 times the number of people at the BCDA's "Season for Change" booth than the Capito for Congress booth. And yet another Saturday went by that it looked like no one was in the Capito HQ across the street. I guess when you have 3 volunteers only, you can't cook chili and register voters, phonebank, canvass, pass out campaign literature and lawn signs at the same time.