“I don’t get it, Dad. You voted for this guy?”
I’ll be canvassing Saturday and going out afterwards so I’m writing this Friday. I hear that people are sick of being called, so my plan is to just be a friendly, somewhat annoying, door knocker. It’s a role I think I’m suited to, in part thanks to my mordant sense of humor.
My daily freak-out today involved checking the weather. It initially appeared from the National Weather Service that the entire states of Wisconsin and Michigan would be drenched in rain on Tuesday, (update --now its not so bad, a bit less rain). Philly now looks OK. The Philly area hasn’t had any significant rainfall in nearly a month, so while I’ll be glad to see it, I’d rather not have it potentially depressing the vote on Election Day. So after working myself up into a spiraling frenzy about that I decided to work out the actual ramifications of inclement weather in my head.
By Tuesday a good portion of the country, maybe even 40%, will have already voted. Dems are leading the early vote pretty much everywhere they need to and if you believe Tom Bonier at Target Smart, the Republicans may be cannibalizing their own vote more than they can afford to, because they haven’t added many new voters. They’re focusing on young men who aren’t regular, reliable voters. And as the early voting data show, those young men aren’t (yet) much biting on what Trump and the GOP are feeding them. At least not enough to take the time to vote early or by mail.
From one standpoint, any adverse weather that affects an entire state would appear to impact both parties’ anticipated turnout equally. But if your goal is to get young, normally voting-averse men to turn out, a rainy Election day would seem to be — literally — a big damper on enthusiasm. Young white men have less of a reason to make themselves uncomfortable and go out in the rain because, well, they’re young white men. Despite the hysteria that Trump and Republicans have tried to drill into their heads, I don’t think most believe they have much of a pressing, personal reason to do the heavy lifting of actually getting out there and walking around neighborhoods to canvass, let alone take the steps to vote early. And I’m cautiously hopeful that attitude carries over on Tuesday, inclement weather or not.
What I found interesting was the fact that Dem seniors are also outpacing expectations in the early vote. Of course, they’re disgusted with Trump, but I’m hoping — there’s that word — that some Republican seniors have also just hit their saturation point with Trump. People over 50-60 and over have the advantage of a kind of “muscle memory” that I suspect keeps telling them “this is not normal.”
(As an aside, I’m surprised how seemingly ineffective Putin has been for his Republican party thus far in this cycle. I know his FSB is working overtime on their disinformation machine for Trump, but thus far it hasn’t seemed to that visible. Which puzzles me. Maybe I’m just not seeing it. But if there is one non-American who has an acute, personal, existential stake in this election, it’s Vlad. Maybe we’ll get a Putin-generated surprise over the weekend, but so far, he hasn’t been that overtly obvious, at least.
Anyway, to my main point — I’m pretty confident — not certain by any means, but its more than just “optimistic” — we are going to win this election. We have to keep working until the very end, though and some of us beyond that. We’ll see how the wind is blowing Tuesday night, but itwon’t be decided anywhere near then.
Back to canvassing Sunday. Hey, if people don’t answer the door, it’s OK. If I get those Ring Doorbell messages (I had one last week with an Arnold Schwarzenegger voice, saying “We are all voting. For Harris,”), that’s OK too. If they shout at me they’re voting for Trump, I’ll just smile and say, “OK Bye!”
We’ll get our voters out, period. As to the rest? Fuck ‘em. I ain’t knocking on their doors.
