I spent the day canvassing and doing GOTV for Democrat Jerry McNerney in CA-11. As of this moment, he leads 51.7% to 48.4% over his opponent, with 43.9% of precincts reporting. Yesterday I did GOTV phone calling for several hours on his behalf. While my contribution is a negligible drop in the bucket--at most, producing 30-40 votes that would not have otherwise materialized, and even that's optimistic--the cumulative effect of hundreds of people like me may very well push this underdog over the top. I'm glad I got to do my part this time...I so much felt like I needed to do something.
The fact that it comes as part of a wave is all the more exciting. All across the nation I feel like what I've been thinking, what I've felt other Americans had to be thinking--that we needed a change, we need checks and balances--is being reflected. Finally, we will have an oppositional House--no more railroading of ill-conceived, arrogant, and venal ideas. And it looks as though we may get an opposition Senate too--oversight times two--though now a bloody recount has to get underway in Virginia.
Part of me is sad that I decided not to become a part of campaign work this season. How much would I have enjoyed to work on any of those campaigns, running myself ragged for months to come to this night and feel the exhiliration of winning. And what fantastic pathways might it have opened up. And yet, part of me is so very glad that I did not have to--that there were hundreds and thousands of others like me who did take up the work, who did the thankless, unglorious, tedious, and sometimes ugly task of winning an election.
And yet, it still feels like I was there for so much of it. Being a part of an online political community and eating up the blogs, I interacted with the people doing that ground work, with the candidates running for office, with the strategists planning the next move or framing, with the pundits spinning their versions, with the prognosticators measuring the future. It produces its own insular groupthink in a way--such that this wave doesn't feel like a surprise--but when I walked into the McNerney office today to find that there were nearly more volunteers than there was work to be done, when I read that turnout reached record levels across the nation, when I heard people talking about how important this election was, and often talking in non-partisan terms, that's when I realized that there's a real re-engagement going on. It's not a seismic shift--I can't say until I read what the final turnout numbers were--but maybe in my own limited experience I glimpsed a part of a greater turn in our political conversation and a slightly more vibrant American political life.
But that's just high-flying words, I'm sure. Tomorrow I'll wake up, read the final results for everything, adjust my perceptions, and be a little more optimistic that my government won't continue in its thoroughly embarassing ways.
We still got a long ways to go.
NOTE: Looks like libertarian candidates are siphoning Republican support and sending it to Dems in a lot of House races. The internal civil war on the Right is about to begin! w00t! [Insert my hope that grown-up, reality-based conservatives will flush the extremists and wackjobs after this, and that something resembling a constructive political dialogue will begin.]
PS: And with 73% of precinct reporting, McNerney leads 52-48! WOO!!!!!!!!!!!