Tonight I went to an organizational meeting in Palo Alto for volunteers for the Barack Obama presidential campaign.
It took me something like two months from when I first started thinking about getting involved (and signed up for an account on my.barackobama.com) before I actually got involved in doing something like this in person. I don't know if thats typical or not, but thinking back on it made me realize that there are probably tons of people who are interested in the presidential campaign but haven't yet made that step to volunteer.
Before I get on to describing the event itself, let me say that I had a blast tonight, and am really jazzed about getting more involved! So all of you out there who are looking in from the edges, trying to decide whether to get in the pool, jump on in! The water's warm!
The event tonight had about 60 people there, roughly 2/3 women. There were people of all ages, including around 5 high school kids, up to several folks who could have been in their 70s or 80s.
When we went around the room briefly introducing ourselves, I found that I was not alone in just getting involved. For a good 20 or 30 people, this was their first event with the Obama Campaign. A good 5 or 6 of us mentioned that this was our first political campaign event ever.
We also had a former Republican Mayor of Mountain View getting involved with his first race as a Democrat, and one admitted registered Republican.
The meeting consisted of both discussions about the structure of the grassroots Obama organization in California, and an update on the national campaign from the Northern California Obama campaign organizer. While the focus of the national campaign is on the 4 early states (Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina), there is a large grass-roots ramp-up ongoing in California and the rest of the February 5th states.
The polls from the 4 leading states are showing that we may end up without a clear leader coming out of January, so the landslide of states with primaries on February 5th may determine the winner.
The scale of the grassroots movement in California is incredible. Despite having only 2 national offices (as compared to something like 40 in Iowa), over 100,000 people have signed up to volunteer in California, with more signing up every day. There are a hard core of people that have been organizing this incredible force completely as volunteers, and now the national campaign is starting to get involved and utilize this force for highly targeted and organized phone banking, canvassing, etc.
It was amazing sitting in that room and feeling the groundswell of support for this momentous campaign. The people who had never been involved in politics before, inspired by Barack to get involved and try to make a difference. There was a feeling of comradery, of energy, and of a tremendous need. Barack Obama offers us a chance to change the direction of this country, away from division and partisanship, away from corruption and the rule of big business, and towards a future that we all want to live in.
A question I hear often... in fact, one I used to ask myself, is whether Barack is electable or not. Yes, we like his vision, we think he would be good, but is he electable?
The answer to this question is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If everyone who likes his vision, shares his vision, and grows from his vision votes from their heart, he will be elected. People want to elect someone who inspires them, who they believe in.
We all have our specific trigger issues, and for some especially vocal people those are all that matter. But I think most of us just want someone in government that we believe has a vision of our country that inspires us, and can get us to go there.
I don't know about the rest of you, but in the past I've often ended up settling for someone who's vision doesn't appall me, but this year we are blessed with someone inspirational.