Recently in Politics Category

On Monday Georg, S and I went to a Senate candidate forum sponsored by DFO (Durham for Obama). They invited all the Democratic candidates to attend and four showed up: Elaine Marshall, Ken Lewis, Cal Cunningham and Marcus Williams. Each candidate got to make a short speech, then they answered questions (all submitted in advance) and then closing speeches.

It was fun to go to a DFO event again. I saw lots of people I knew, though most of them were volunteering so I only greeted a few. I felt kinda guilty that I hadn't volunteered! To be perfectly honest, I've been avoiding politics. I didn't know they needed volunteers because I haven't looked in my "politics" email box for weeks. I didn't even know about the event until S. asked us if we were going.

I wasn't expecting substance from the candidates at this event, and I didn't get any. It's not a forum where they're going to talk about hard truths or specific plans. Their campaign statements were all very similar, and mostly boiled down to "babies should eat!"* What I wanted to find out was which candidate felt credible, gave a good speech, seemed like they'd be able to handle Burr in a debate. My thumbnail impressions, for what it's worth:

Elaine Marshall: better than I expected. I went into it thinking she was a boring candidate, pragmatic and uninspiring. But she was lively and enthusiastic. Not perfect -- she had a good story about her youth which she told twice -- though I'll be comfortable with her if she wins the primary.

Ken Lewis: was a somewhat flat speaker, didn't seem to wake up until the very end. He told a great story in the closing statement though, about his grandmother who had lived to be a hundred, and the changes that had occurred in America in her lifetime. It was the only genuinely moving moment of the entire evening, and if he had been like that all night I'd be firmly in his camp. On the other hand, he has no legislative experience. And he was the only candidate to slam the others (in his closing speech) which seemed like a sour note to me. Still, I'll be comfortable with him if he wins the primary.

Cal Cunningham: I went there wanting to support Cunningham, wanting him to give me a reason. Unfortunately, he was a terrible speaker. He might be the most sincere, most earnest guy in the world in real life, but on the stage there was something completely phony, Mitt Romney-ish about him. When he told his big story in the closing statement -- it was about seeing his family for the first time after returning from duty in Iraq -- it sounded so contrived that all three of us rolled our eyes. Maybe it was just us, and the general public wouldn't be so put off by him. However, based on my impression I think he would be a disaster as a candidate.

Marcus Williams: By far the best speaker, and clearly the least qualified. He connected with the audience every time he spoke. If only we could have a candidate with Marshall's experience and Williams' demeanor!

At the end of the night we all voted for our preferred candidate. The idea was that DFO would endorse the winner, but as it turned out they set the bar too high -- 70% needed for an endorsement -- so they didn't endorse. Ken Lewis won the vote with a simple majority.

*The first political comedy I ever saw was when Al Franken hosted nightly coverage of the 1992 conventions on Comedy Central. I think it must have been 1992 because I remember he did a hilarious parody of the video introducing Al Gore and his family. Anyway Franken had a panel there to talk about the speeches, and one of the panelists was Chris Rock. Every time someone said an empty platitude (which was constantly) Rock would shout "Babies should eat!" Ever since, when I watch a content-free political speech that's what I hear in my head. Chris Rock saying "Babies should eat!" over and over.

I come up for air after a long work day and discover that this morning, Rudy "A Noun, A Verb and 9/11" Giuliani said that there were no domestic terror attacks during George Bush's presidency.

Without 9/11, what is Rudy ever going to talk about?

Went to be early last night because I wasn't feeling well. Woke up this morning, went right to TPM, saw a headline that Cao (R-LA) was the sole Republican to vote for health care reform, and didn't have to look up who he is* or why he voted that way.** This may be a sign that I'm thinking too much about politics.

*He ran against William Jefferson, aka "Cold Cash," aka "$90,000 stuffed in a freezer," who was under indictment on election day but not yet convicted. His district is so deeply blue that my guess is a Democrat even slightly less corrupt than Jefferson would have been able to hold the seat.

**I imagine he would like to remain in office and realizes that he probably won't be running against someone with a freezer full of money next year, and this is a pretty dramatic statement that he will go against his party to support the views of his constituents.

"According to a source briefed on White House-Senate health care negotiations, the public option's saving grace was its political popularity with the Democratic base. The source described the back and forth between Senate health care principals and the White House as a "sort of stare down where the two sides were saying, 'you be the face of pulling it out.'" --TPM, 10/28

So maybe all those Saturday mornings spent collecting petitions, and the phone calls to my reps, and the visit to Price's office, weren't a waste of time after all. Cool.

OFA has a big call day today, trying to get 100,000 calls to Congress in one day. They have a bunch of call parties tonight and I was feeling guilty about not signing up for one. I'm happy to call my reps, but I don't really want to phone bank regular people and ask them to call.

Since I didn't go to a call party tonight, I called my reps again this afternoon. Price and Hagan's offices were fine. I told the staffer I had been following the debate all summer, asked them to thank their boss, and got confirmation that they still support the public option. Hagan's office took my name & my town; Price's did not.

I actually had a pleasant conversation with Burr's staffer. He started out by saying flatly that Burr does not support the bill. I've had a lot of mealy-mouthed letters from senators, and I appreciated his honest answer so much that I tried to engage, which was probably a mistake. I asked the staffer what Burr would do instead, and he said that Burr prefers a plan of tax cuts and preventing the pre-existing condition exclusion. I replied "well my understanding is that the current bill does prevent exclusion based on pre-existing conditions," and he fell back on repeating a bunch of jargon without saying anything. He sounded a little flummoxed. Maybe he wasn't prepared to go off script. Most callers probably just want to vent & don't actually try to have a conversation about the merits of the bill.

While he was babbling he said something to the effect that Burr's main objection was to the public option. So I asked, "if the current bill came to a vote without the public option, would the senator vote for it?" At this point he started totally bullshitting me. He said something vague, I can't remember the exact wording, but something like "the senator wants to see every American have access to health care," which was clearly designed to make me think he was saying "yes, Burr would vote for a public option-less bill." Which is obviously false. Burr will never, ever vote for the bill. He voted against the Franken amendment for god's sake. The guy is so deep into "Party of No" territory he'll vote for rape if it means voting against the Democrats.

At this point I realized that the conversation was a waste of my time so I wished him a nice day and hung up. At least it was a pleasant waste of time. I thought about bringing up the Franken amendment but decided against it, because the subject makes me so angry that I would have started yelling at the staffer. Maybe I should write a letter instead.

In retaliation for voting in favor of health care reform, RedState.com is organizing a campaign to mail rock salt to Olympia Snowe.

I think she's supposed to accidently pour the salt on herself and then melt like the Wicked Witch of the West? Or something? Whatever, I'm all for "activism" that wastes the time and money of angry wingnuts. If she gets enough salt, Snowe can donate it to poor municipalities in Maine which have trouble paying for ice removal. And if not, she can always make ice cream! Wouldn't it be great if she gave away ice cream at campaign appearances, courtesy of RedState.com. Everyone loves homemade ice cream, frozen with wingnut salt and seasoned with wingnut tears.

(thanks to Balloon Juice for the link.)

By now you've probably heard that Congresswoman Lynn Jenkins of Kansas just gave a speech in which she said ""Republicans are struggling right now to find the great white hope. I suggest to any of you who are concerned about that, who are Republican, there are some great young Republican minds in Washington." She mentioned three Republicans who happen to be white, and might be the "great white hope" to defeat the Democrats and Barack Obama. (thanks to Lee for the link.)

As you know Bob, the phrase "great white hope" first became popular as a rallying cry against Jack Johnson, the first black heavyweight boxing champion. White boxing fans mounted a campaign to find a white boxer capable of defeating Johnson. It was explicitly racist: the goal of the "great white hope" was to return the championship to a white boxer and prove the superiority of whites. James Jeffries, the original great white hope, said "I am going into this fight for the sole purpose of proving that a white man is better than a Negro." There was a play about it in the late 60s, which was made into a movie starring James Earl Jones as Johnson.

Honestly, I don't think Jenkins intended to say something racist. I don't think she meant to say that Republicans need to find a white man strong enough to defeat Obama and return the presidency to white hands where it belongs. Even though that is precisely what "great white hope" means.

If it wasn't intentional, why did Jenkins say something so racist? I think she's just that clueless. Not only did she not know what the term meant, but it never occurred to her that when talking about opposing the first black president, the term "great white hope" might be a bad idea. I think she simply never thought about what she was saying, and she has the luxury -- the privilege, you might say -- of not having to think about it if she doesn't want to. As Ta-Nehisi Coates said, "when you don't practice talking to people who aren't like you, you tend to not be very good at it."

Granted that the word choice may have been a mistake, I have to encourage Republicans on their quest to find the great white hope. I think they should put all their energy into it, and make it their rallying cry. What could go wrong? If they can guarantee the same outcome (Jack Johnson kicked James Jeffries' ass) I'll even volunteer to help.

Got home from my show just now and discovered comment spam on this morning's post about the health care table at the farmer's market. 11 paragraphs of ranting about how bad our health care system is, how badly we need reform, and how evil Republicans are. Not one word in the comment was a response to my post. It didn't sound like he had even read my post.

Needless to say I didn't approve the comment. My guess is the guy is searching blogs for the phrase "health care reform" and posting that same comment everywhere. Annoying people who are already on your side is a curious tactic. I wonder if he'll post another spam comment to this entry?

[The show was fun by the way. 4 hours because I was subbing for the person after me. I started with an hour of songs about heat and sunshine. I'm pretty tired now.]

What does it take to get me off my ass? I guess it takes a death threat against a local pol I like and respect.

Yesterday morning I volunteered for the first time since the election. Durham for Obama (the political group in need of a new name) runs a table at the farmer's market every Saturday morning. I worked from 8 to 10 am.

The woman running these events was a bigtime volunteer last fall, and also one of the sweetest people I've ever met. I also saw a couple of friends from the campaign who were shopping at the market. One of them sort of sheepishly apologized to me for not continuing to volunteer after the election. I tried to explain to her that this was the first thing I'd done, otherwise I'd been completely out of it too, but she was so busy being embarrassed that I don't think she heard me. She worked really hard last fall -- she basically kept the campaign office clean and organized and running, every day for months -- and I don't think she has to apologize for wanting her life back now. She told me that she had spent the entire spring & summer trying to repair her garden which had been totally neglected last year. I know how that is!

At the table we had a glossy flyer from Organizing for American which was pretty much content free, an information-dense flyer from DFO about what "public option" actually means (hint: it doesn't mean Obama will be serving Soylent Grandma at state dinners), a flyer with suggested actions for potential volunteers, and a bunch of flyers on how to get assistance for people who need help paying for health care. It was interesting to see that we gave away lots of the info-dense flyer and almost none of the glossy one. I think people want facts, not hype. (I even forgot to take one of the glossy flyers for my own collection of campaign materials.)

The main point of the table was a petition in support of a national public option. This was so much easier than the work we were doing last fall. The farmer's market is probably the friendliest territory in all of Durham, and it showed. All we had to do was say "Petition in support of health care reform?" and most people were like "Where do I sign!! Give me a pen!!"

I was worried beforehand that I wouldn't know enough about health care reform to work the table. What if someone asked me a question I didn't know the answer to? Well I shouldn't have worried. I'm no expert on health care, but I've been paying attention and I easily knew enough to answer the questions I got. The most common question was from people who were confused by the screaming on TV and didn't understand the difference between public option and nationalized medicine. As soon as we explained it they were happy and signed the petition. "Oh, that's all? What's all the fuss about?" was a common reaction.

Only one person approached the table in order to give us a hard time, and he wasn't aggressive, just smug. We smiled and told him to have a good day and he went away. A couple of people snarked at us while they were waiting for their spouses to sign the petition. (In both cases the spouses told them to can it. It must be hard to be married to someone who mocks your principles right in front of you.)

The weirdest reaction we got was from two men (separate, not together) who refused to sign because they wouldn't support anything less than full-on nationalized medicine. They were the only people all morning who were outright hostile. I didn't understand their anger. It was kind like saying "Help! I'm drowning!" "Here's a life raft" "Fuck you, I want a yacht! Keep your stupid life raft!" The current health care situation in America is untenable. I'm willing to support reform that isn't perfect if it will be better than what we have now.

You might be thinking to yourself that a petition sounds like a waste of time and energy. And I wouldn't totally disagree with that. But during the two hours that I was there, we gave real information to people who were frightened & confused by the bullshit on the news. We recruited a bunch of people to call their representatives. We recruited two people to visit Kay Hagan's Raleigh office. And we gave information on public assistance to a man who had just lost his health insurance and didn't know how he was going to pay for health care. Plus I got to see some of my old friends from the campaign again. A morning well spent!

Now is the time for signing up to be a poll worker! I just got a call today from the chief judge of my precinct to confirm that I would be there this November. In Durham County, all you have to do is attend a 2 hour training session a couple of weeks before the election, show up the night before to set up, and then be at the polling place all day on election day. It's not hard or scary work: I had to take people's names, look them up in a book and give them an ATV (authorization to vote) form. Anything out of the ordinary was referred to the chief judge.

If you're interested, just call your local board of elections and tell them you want to be a poll worker. Considering the record turnout expected this year, I'm sure they'll be glad to have you.

I just saw a speech at the convention that didn't end with "God bless you all, and God bless America!" Warner's speech ended "God bless you all, and thank you very much!"

Why does he hate America?

S. and I went to Obama's town hall meeting in Raleigh tonight. S. was amazing and waited in line for an hour yesterday to get us the tickets. We arrived separately, I got there first and wasn't allowed to save a seat for her. But then she got there just in time to be seated on the bleachers near the big flag, and luckily I was able to join her there. We were farther away than my first seat, but since we were elevated a bit it was much easier to see. I think if I had stayed at the first seat, I would have spent the entire town hall staring at the backs of people's heads and feeling frustrated.

The configuration of the audience was a bit of a surprise. Most of the audience was on two sides of the hall, and the press were on the other two sides, with a small number of VIP spectators sitting in front of them (the cameras were on a platform so the VIPs didn't block their view). I guess they do it that way so that Obama can be filmed with a lot of people behind him. But it means that he had his back to about half of the audience whenever he faced the cameras. He did walk around a lot so as to face all directions. Still it was kind of odd to see him turn towards the cameras, away from us, and continue gesturing and talking to an audience that wasn't there. I guess I only found it odd because I'd never seen a live stump speech before.

Obama connected with the audience immediately -- of course it was a sympathetic audience, but still it seemed like he hit just the right note many times. He was serious at times, inspired many cheers and standing ovations, and funny other times: like once he sneezed, then joked about having caught a cold from his daughter's friends because seven-year-olds "have a lot of germs" and therefore we should all wash our hands after shaking hands with him.

He gave a speech first, and then answered audience questions. We were both very surprised that the "town hall" format meant apparently random people raising their hands and being called on to ask whatever question they wanted. Some of the questions were silly, some very relevant, and none of them appeared to have been pre-vetted. I'm so used to the Bush administration approach, where every interaction is carefully stage-managed, that it was a big change to see a major political figure answering random questions. (I could be wrong about this of course, it's possible that the whole thing was staged. But I think if so, they would have chosen the questions more carefully to lead into Obama's talking points. A few of these questions were really off the wall and just sounded so unscripted.) I suspect the last question may have been an exception: the question, from a homeless veteran, was just so perfect that it made me wonder. I'm sure the guy is completely sincere; I just wouldn't be surprised if staffers had heard his story in advance and decided that he'd be a good way to end the town hall.

The hall, and the line to get in, were swarming with volunteers asking people to register to vote or to sign up as volunteers. And I must say, if I weren't already volunteering I would have signed up today. The meeting left both S. and I feeling fired up and ready to get back to work. We were so enthused that we didn't realize how hungry we were until we got back to the car after the speech was over. We stopped for a great dinner at Tyler's on the way home. And then I got home and found out that Spencer had called me about phone banking again! Just in time to take advantage of my excitement about volunteering. I'm glad he called because I need to find out the events we're promoting this week. But in general I'd rather do email than phone calls, because I can save the email messages as reminders of what I've signed up to do. He seems like a phone guy though, so I may not be able to convince him to email me instead.

I listened to the first half of the Gonzales testimony today. I wasn't near a radio and wasn't able to listen to the second half. Because I am a glutton for punishment, this disappointed me.

Actually the hearing wasn't punishment at all. The Senate hearings I've heard before are generally spittle-inflected rage from the opposing party and sycophantic cuddles from friendly party. Not so today; even the Republicans were down on Gonzales. The only friendly questioner I heard was Orrin Hatch. His questions were in the typical line of "Isn't it true, sir, that you like puppies and rainbows and are dreamy?" Everyone else had taken a rare blow from the clue stick. It was particularly satisfying to hear Specter rip him a new one.

It seems like everyone can agree on hating Gonzales and the damage he's done to the justice system. He even brings together the angry Libertarian and yellow-dog Democrat who argue at lunch every day in my office. Gonzales is a uniter!

If you want to watch Gonzales being read the riot act, Talking Points Memo has video clips of the highlights.

If you're trying to cut through the PR bullshit and find out what the presidential candidates actually stand for, I highly recommend OnTheIssues.org. It lists quotes and voting records on a variety of issues for each candidate, all laid out in a clear format so you can easily compare positions.

This page lists all declared presidential candidates and links to their positions. Only Democrats and Republicans so far, but in 2004 they also included third-party candidates. I assume they'll do the same next year when we get closer to the election.

In Maryland I was told that absentee ballots are not counted, unless a race is so close that the absentee ballots might change the outcome.

Is this true in North Carolina? If so, is it also true of early voting, aka "One Stop Absentee Ballots"?

If it's true of early voting, then I'm very unhappy, because that's what I've done for the past 2 elections. Even if it's only true of mail-in absentee ballots, that deeply undercuts the argument that we should all vote absentee to create a paper record of our vote. Because in effect, instead of risking that our votes might not be counted, we would be ensuring that they will not be counted. I think this would be especially problematic if you were voting for a third party candidate which needed a certain percent of the vote for ballot access next time around.

The drive back to NC was not too bad. The rain slowed me down but there was hardly any traffic. I stopped at Ikea for a few things. They are the best deal going on crazy cool fabric. Also got a new bed for Jane, which she refuses to lie on. I guess she misses her flattened down dirty old bed.

In future political volunteering I'd like to do a few things differently. For one thing, this is the second election day I've spent knocking on doors, and have accomplished absolutely zero. Everyone says they've already voted and it ends up feeling like a waste of time. In my limited experience, knocking on doors before election day seems more effective. Although the people at the party office seemed really worked up about it. I may try to read up on how much it really helps, and maybe look into other options for election day activities.

Also I'm not sure about the phone bank. People seemed so angry about the flood of calls.
It seems like it would be better to start earlier and try to establish a connection with people, rather than hammering them with a dozen phone calls in the days before the election. But again, the people in charge were convinced it was the best approach. And Cardin won, so who am I to argue?

Back home it's a bad day to be extremely conservative, extremely nuts, or both.

All the candidates I liked won, and all the candidates I loathed lost. What is this strange emotion I'm experiencing? Could it be .. optimism? Like any good high, it won't last long, but damn it feels good right now.

This morning I was obsessing over the last minute polls, the alarming stories of "tightening" in many races, most especially the Cardin-Steele race, and wondering if disrupting my life for a week was even accomplishing anything. Yes, as it turns out, it was worth it.

I think I made the right call to work for the Cardin campaign rather than the Casey campaign. Casey clobbered Santorum, he clearly didn't need help. But the margin for Cardin was close enough that I can feel like I made a difference. In reality, I probably didn't. How much difference can any one person make, especially someone at the lowest level of volunteering? But still, I feel better about working for a close campaign than an overwhelming victory.

Today was much better than yesterday. Mainly because they sent me out partnered with other people. So even though I spent all day canvassing, everything went fast and I didn't get nearly as tired. It's harder to be by yourself: I would park the car at one end of the neighborhood and then walk the whole route. But with someone else, you can start at one end of the street, have them drive to the other end, and meet in the middle.

I spent the afternoon in Havre de Grace -- beautiful little historic town -- with Tom,* an interesting guy who works at the Aberdeen Proving Ground. It was good to hear the perspective of a career military man on the war. (In short, he thinks it's been criminally mismanaged.) At one point we were walking around and heard a loud booming sound. I looked up, thinking "oh no, a thunderstorm is rolling in!" He chuckled and told me it was a gun from over at Aberdeen. He even knew what it was by the sound; I think he said a "155" but don't quote me on that.

*not his real name, as he said they never discuss politics at work so I don't want to post statements about his political opinions on the internets.

After Havre de Grace I took a quick break for lunch and then they sent me out with a woman named Peg, to a neighborhood in Bel Air. We got about halfway through the neighborhood when we ran into another team doing the exact same packet! It was kind of embarrassing; we walked up to the same house at the same time as they did. I think they were supposed to do them earlier in the day, leaving hang-tags on doors, and then we were supposed to come back through and make sure people had voted. But they were several hours behind. I don't know if they were just slow, or if the coordinators had overloaded them. Based on my experience, probably the latter.

The other team told us that they had just finished the neighborhood, and we decided it would be pointless to knock on the same doors 10 minutes after them, so we went back to the party office. Peg called it a night, saying she didn't want to drive in the rain, but it was only 5:30 so I stayed to do more. Sam, one of the volunteer coordinators, tried to get me to go with him to Edgewood, which I had heard of as a bad neighborhood, and I didn't like that idea at all. Luckily Marc, the other volunteer coordinator, ran in just then and told me he had a woman who needed a partner. Her name was Joan and she was a hoot. She was a teacher and we were in a neighborhood where her students lived, so she knew everyone. We'd get to a street and she'd run down the list crossing people off: "he moved, she's not home tonight, he's out volunteering, she definitely already voted..." It made things go a lot faster.

We had only been out for about a half hour when Marc called and asked us to come back, so we could go to another district that was showing low turnout. I thought he said Baltimore City, at which Joan was irate, because that would be a 45 minute drive away from us. She called her daughter who was working at the Cardin campaign, and reassured us that "they pay canvassers to go where they might get killed" and no one was going to send volunteers like us to Baltimore City. Turns out Marc actually said Baltimore County, much closer to Bel Air. Except that when we got back to the party office, Marc announced that they would be sending us, along with 3 other people, to Towson. Which is apparently also 45 minutes away.

Seeing as it was already 6:30 by that point, no one had much enthusiasm. In fatc I'd describe the reaction as "trying to calm Marc down long enough to explain why we aren't going." I simply said no, I lived a hour north of there and no way was I going to go another 45 minutes south. The others convinced Marc that we didn't lack dedication, but by the time we got there it would be too late to accomplish anything. So he called the Cardin people back and told them that we would be sent to a low turnout district in Harford County instead.

By some cool coincidence, he sent us to the exact same neighborhood in Aberdeen where I had been on Sunday afternoon. I had kind of mixed feelings about that actually. On the one hand, I knew where we were going and I remembered people as being really nice. On the other, I was disappointed that turnout had been low there. Had I done a bad job of canvassing on Sunday? I left there thinking that everyone was really enthusiastic about voting. Then again, each district comprises several neighborhoods so maybe the folks I talked to did vote like they said they were going to.

I was walking with a really nice fellow named Pat. He had a somewhat different style of approaching people than I did. My style was "short and sweet" -- keep it fast so as to impose on people as little as possible. By Tuesday afternoon it was just "Hi, have you voted yet today? Great, have a good day!" Pat liked to establish a connection by addressing the person by name, introducing himself and me, and talking at more length. I think his approach was maybe less efficient when we're down to the wire, but probably more effective earlier in the GOTV campaign. Next time I do this, I'll try to adopt more of his way of connecting with people.

Unfortunately, all the back-and-forth wrangling about where we were going to go had taken so much time, that we didn't get there until almost 7:30. Which was too late to visit even half the packet. We walked a few blocks, talked to a few people, and then realized that even if we found someone who admitted to not having voted yet, we might not being able to get them to the polls in time. So we bailed.

On the way home I treated myself to dinner at the Charcoal Pit. Dang that is a good burger. According to the menu they grind their own beef. I probably should have skipped dessert, but who can resist the hot fudge ice cream cake?

It's weird to think that it's all over. No more driving up route 155 on my way to Bel Air. No more "Hi, my name is Sarah and I'm a volunteer with the Maryland Democratic Party." No more of that stupid $5 toll bridge. Tomorrow I drive back to Durham, and then back to work on Thursday.

So, 2008, the campaign of whoever is running against Dole. Who's with me?

One funny thing that I forgot to mention. This afternoon while I was on phone bank duty, two teenage girls came in to help. The older sister was pretty good at it, picked up pretty quickly on how to sound natural and engage the person on the line. But the younger sister ... well her heart was in the right place. She would plunge into the script in a breathless monotone with absolutely no pauses or changes in intonation. It was like she was giving a speech while running through a graveyard and holding her breath.

"hello - my - name - is - alison* - and - i - am - a - volunteer - with - the - maryland - democractic - party - i - am - calling - to - make - sure - you - get - out - and - vote - this - tuesday - november - 7th - this - election - is - extremely - close - and - your - vote - is - crucial - can - we - count - on - you - to - vote - for - democrats - ben - cardin - and - martin - o'malley"

It's hard to express tone in writing, but imagine the above spoken very fast by a 12 year old girl robot. I thought it was adorable but I can see how it would be weird to actually get a call like that. Keep in mind that by now, the rest of us had talked to so many irate voters that we'd shortened our scripts to about half that length. That poor girl read the whole thing, word for word. She even read out the "this Tuesday, November 7th," even though that's tomorrow.

Unfortunately she didn't last long. I'm not surprised really. A girl her age probably has way too thin a skin to deal with cold calling. I hope they found something more fun for her to do.

*not her real name.

Today was a craptacular day, which turned out to be worth it in the end.

The main thing I learned today is that Monday morning is a much worse time for canvassing than Sunday afternoon. No one is home, and the few people who are home are in no mood to come to the door.

One woman stands out in particular: she got to the door after I had given up, stuck a flyer in the door and walked away, back to the sidewalk. I was already in front of the next house when the door opened. She stood in the open door and waited for me to walk back up to her door, then thrust the flyer at me, snapped "I don't vote!" and slammed the door on my apology. Think about that. She stood in the open door and waited for me to walk all the way back so she could slam the door in my face. You know, I realize that I'm intruding in people's lives and I try not to resent the ones who are rude to me. But I have to say, what a miserable bitch. She couldn't just throw the flyer away and get on with her life? I hope that someday, if she ever has to do something that she really doesn't enjoy, but she's doing it anyway because she believes in it, that no one treats her the way she treated me.

That was the worst rude person I encountered but not the only one. Also, they gave me way too much canvassing for one person -- almost 150 addresses that I was supposed to get through by myself in just a couple of hours. And one of the packets was for a sketchy neighborhood, where I was really uncomfortable being alone. It's funny because when I got there and got out of my car, I heard two young women talking about me, but not in a nice way like the two girls yesterday. They said "she's in the wrong place, she'll be sorry if she goes up there!" I wondered what was their problem, and I actually doubled back to make sure they left my car alone. Which they did. Then when I got a couple of blocks away, I realized that she was right. I was sorry to be up there by myself. I wish I could say her warning was kindly meant, but I don't think it was. It had a kind of smirky schadenfreude sound to it.

Anyway, just when I was feeling tired and sorry for myself and wondering what I was doing out there, the phone bank volunteer coordinator called to ask why I hadn't shown up for my shift. I confess, I kind of snapped at her. I apologized when I got back to the party office, and she was really nice about it. She seems much more understanding than the other guy, at least about putting limits on what you ask of a volunteer. The other guy seems to feel like whatever you can strong-arm someone into accepting, that must be a reasonable amount of work for them to do.

So then in the afternoon I did phone bank. The people on the receiving end of our calls seemed so annoyed that I spent much of the time wondering if we were doing more harm than good. One of the other volunteers actually got up and left in the middle of the shift for exactly that reason. She said she couldn't do it anymore because she didn't think it was accomplishing anything positive.

I asked the people in charge about this, and one guy told me the craziest thing: He said it's a deliberate strategy to overwhelm people with calls. Because it means they're getting the message. Sure, if the message is "we're annoying and we don't respect your time." He said that it would be bad if the call volume and frustration level had peaked on Thursday, but to have it peaking today was exactly what we want.

I must say, I do not agree with this logic at all. But then again, I'm not the expert. I guess we'll know tomorrow whether it worked.

Here's the funniest part: That volunteer coordinator who told me about this policy, walked through the phone bank while several of us were having the same conversation. It went like this: "Hi, I'm a volunteer with the Maryland Democratic Party.... Oh, I'm so sorry. I'll tell the system to take your phone number off the list. Sorry to take up your time." (Over half the calls I took went like that, if I even got that far before they hung up on me.) His response was to chide us that it was okay to promise to take people off the call list, but that we should still finish the call by reminding them to vote Democrat! Sheesh! He happened to be standing right next to me, and I told him that if I had a person say "For god's sake, I keep telling you that I'm voting for the Democrats, please stop calling me," I was not going to close the call with "Don't forget to vote Democrat!" It reminded me of the mayor on The Simpsons blurting out "Vote Quimby!" at every opportunity, no matter how inopportune. (Then again Quimby does get re-elected every time.)

I kept track of the numbers during the afternoon, to pass the time. Note: these number don't add up because some people were in more than 1 column. Also, I didn't count calls where I had nothing but dead air or an answering machine. If I could hear the "click" of someone hanging up on me, I counted that call.

105 calls (for 3 hours, this was a pretty low call volume. I spent many idle minutes waiting for the phone to give me a call)
46 "yes I will vote Democrat" (some of these sounded like they were just saying anything to get me off the phone)
59 people I punched in "rude" to get them off the phone list
9 actively rude people (not including people who simply hung up on me; these were the people who took the extra effort to say something rude)
2 "I'm voting Republican"
2 "undecided"
3 "not voting"
7 "already voted"
10 non-English speakers
1 fax line
1 "needs ride to poll"
4 nice people

There were also a few calls that didn't fit into any categories, like the poor woman who told me she couldn't vote because she had fallen down. I asked her if she meant right now, and she said yes, she had just fallen down. I kept asking her if she needed me to call an ambulance and she was a little incoherent, but eventually she got across that her nephew was with her and she didn't need a doctor, but she wasn't going to be leaving the house tomorrow. I hope she's okay.

I found that 1 nice person got me through 10 rude people or hang-ups. Which meant that there were almost enough nice people to make the afternoon go okay. The nice people were really, really nice though. One of them told me that she knew how hard cold calling was and thanked me for doing it. I swear, after the day I'd had, I almost cried when she said that.

The best call was the woman who needed a ride to the poll. It was a sad story: she told me her husband had died in May, and that he had done all the driving, and the two of them had voted together every year. She seemd really happy and grateful that I had called. I told her that I was going to punch in a code and then someone would call her back to arrange her ride, but since I didn't know when that would happen, she insisted on giving me her name and phone number. I gave it to the nice volunteer coordinator who promised to call party headquarters in the woman's area (Baltimore City) and arrange her ride. Now I know that one person is going to vote because of me, who wouldn't have otherwise. That makes the whole miserable day worthwhile.

Tomorrow they did have me scheduled for 12 hours of canvassing, but I told the nice coordinator that wasn't going to work, and she cut it down to 8 hours. So I don't have to be there until noon. I also told her that if they sent me to another bad neighborhood, especially after dark, I was going to leave. She promised me that she would be on top of that tomorrow. She didn't say it explicitly but I think she meant that the two guys hadn't been thinking about canvasser safety, but that she was & wouldn't let it happen again.