persuasion

The Obama people seem to be shifting into the persuasion phase of the campaign. Which is more difficult, I think, so it's good that we had a couple of months of the easier voter registration first.

Last Thursday I did my regular phone bank, calling volunteers and asking them to work this weekend, and then near the end of the evening they asked me to do some persuasion calls. Which were about as horrible as you might imagine phone banking to be. It's cold calling, asking people who they're voting for, trying to persuade them if they say undecided, and talking to them about early voting if they say Obama. People hung up on me, barked "How did you get my name?" etc. I can't say as I blame them; nobody likes cold calls, and it's a bit early to start. I did have one good call with an older gentleman who wanted me to mail him information about early voting.

The volunteer calls are so much easier because everyone on the list signed up at some point as a potential volunteer. Even if they don't really want to, they're aware that they put their own name on the call list. And most people do want to help. I did 2 hours of volunteer calling and felt great; after a half hour of persuasion calling I was done for. I ended up quitting fifteen minutes early because I just couldn't do it anymore.

Then this morning S. and I went out canvassing, and again it was persuasion rather than voter registration. We had to knock on doors, ask them who they're voting for, try to talk them around to Obama if they're undecided, and talk to them about early voting if they support Obama.

We met two women who said they were undecided, had supported Hillary, and were interested in Sarah Palin. Which was kind of a shocker to me. One of them even said she disagrees with Palin on all the issues, but she always likes to vote for a woman. Maybe McCain is right and we women really are stupid enough to vote for someone who's totally unqualified and opposes everything we believe in, just because she has a vagina.

I had spent all last night reading up on Palin and being appalled by what I learned, but I held my tongue with these women. I felt like it would look really bad if, right now when they're all excited about this news, someone in an Obama t-shirt shows up on their door and starts in on a tirade. "Did you know that before becoming governor two years ago, she was the part-time mayor of a town of 6,000 people? Did you know she fired the public safety commissioner for refusing to fire her ex-brother-in-law? Did you know she supports creationism in public schools? Did you know McCain only met her once before offering her the job? Did you know that a month ago she said she had no idea what a vice president does? Did you know that when asked her opinion about Iraq a year ago, she said she'd never thought about it? Did you know that if you look her up on ontheissues.org, she has no recorded statements ever on foreign policy, trade, government reform, immigration, jobs, technology, poverty, or the war?" So I just said something vague about hoping we can learn more about Palin.

S. tried the argument that an Obama administration would be much more positive towards women at all levels, but the voter seemed unswayed. Well she sounded kind of like a McCain supporter anyway despite her statement of liking for Hillary: she repeated a couple of Republican talking points while we were there. And she said "there's something about Obama I just don't like -- but it's not because he's black!" Right.

The nice thing about today's canvass was we got a packet of addresses really near my house. My part of town isn't ideal for canvassing, but being able to introduce myself as a neighbor was nice. I think it really did make people more willing to talk to us. I'd like to do that again.

In other news, TPM reports that McCain is now advertising in North Carolina. One of my main hopes with all this volunteering has always been that McCain would be scared into spending ad money to hang onto NC, taking those resources away from true battleground states like Ohio and New Mexico. Ha, haha.