I've spent the last two days in Palm Beach County, volunteering for the Kerry campaign. It's crystal clear to me that going into this election, South Florida is burning -- with a desire to evict Bush from the White House.
I flew in on Friday night, and reported to Kerry/Edwards HQ in West Palm Beach on Saturday morning. A couple hundred people were there already, many volunteers like myself (and many volunteers from out of town). I knew there were other New Yorkers coming down for this (I'd met some at the airport the night before); as I was signing in that morning, fellow New Yorker and DailyKos regular Rina spotted me. In short order, I joined her and her two friends, and set out to do some canvassing.
The four of us spent a few hours knocking on doors in Royal Palm Beach. The neighborhood was middle-class, slightly scruffy after the recent hurricanes, and incredibly diverse, as so much of this area is. Of the people we spoke to, almost all were committed Kerry voters (out of several dozen, there was one felon who couldn't vote, and two Bush voters).
That afternoon, we did a couple hours of "visibility work" outside the Supervisor of Elections' office, one of the county's eight early voting locations. This could well be ground zero for Florida election controversy (how ironic that the county emergency operations center is in the same complex).
It was there that I really started to feel the groundswell. We arrived half an hour before the polls closed, to find at least 400 people in line to vote. An hour after the official close, about 250 were still waiting, and the poll workers were still letting them in to cast ballots. (And Theresa LePore said the other day that she was stunned at the lines for early voting? Guess she hadn't looked out her office window.)
We stood the required 200+ feet away, and waved Kerry/Edwards signs to the cars passing by along Military Trail. A Bush/Cheney contingent did the same down the street. But the people driving by were overwhelmingly honking, waving, and giving thumbs-up to us. Whether in brand-new Jaguars and Escalades, broken-down old Chevys and Toyotas, pickup trucks, or delivery vans, drivers and passengers were cheering for Kerry about five times as often as for Bush.
Again I was struck by the diversity of "our" people - white, black, Hispanic, male, female, old, young. One of our curbside group was a 76-year-old white woman with a walker; another was a young black mother with her two elementary-schoolers.
And the Republicans? Every car bearing Bush stickers or giving us the thumbs-down was filled with white folks. Besides the dirty looks, we got a little name-calling; one contingent of frat boys in an SUV cussed us out and spit at us. (But confounding stereotypes, there were other frat boys cheering for Kerry, and a number of young and old veterans for Kerry as well. One very vocal young guy with an "Iraq Vet for Kerry" sign spent some time with us, leading chants of "Fire the liar!" and "Three more days!")
I took pictures of the voting lines and our visibility group, but haven't been able to track down a USB cable yet to upload them - stay tuned.
Today (Sunday), we went out canvassing again, this time taking twice as many voter lists as yesterday. We drove over to Riviera Beach, an African-American neighborhood, and met an amazing variety of folks during four or five hours of walking and talking. There was one solitary Republican, a Jehovah's Witness whose religion forbids voting, and a recent immigrant who was not a citizen. Otherwise, the people we spoke to were 100% in Kerry's corner.
One of my favorites was the 85-year-old lady who cackled with glee when we handed her a "Beat Bush" button. We also gave her one of our standard handouts, a "Voter's Bill of Rights" card; Rina said, "If anyone gives you any trouble at the polling place, just whip this out." She made a fist and said, "If they do, I'll whip this out!"
Another was the young tough-looking guy about 19 or 20, with gold teeth and wild hair, working on his car. These were his exact words: "Yeah, I be voting for Kerry. And all my homeboys on the street, they be voting for him too. I got my Vote or Die shirt from P. Diddy; I'm ready to go." After we left his house (and he'd promised us that five other family members would also be voting Kerry), I turned to Rina and said, "The Republicans have no idea what's coming. No idea at all."
Not all of Florida is like Palm Beach; this is a heavily Dem county where people take the events of 2000 extremely personally. But if the level of pent-up energy among "our" voters in the rest of the state is anything close to what it is here, then I have no doubt at all that on November 2, Florida will be solid blue.
More commentary at The Situation Room