Electioneering

As promised, we did go canvassing for Obama in New Hampshire yesterday, and as promised, I’m here to tell you about it. First, the facts. We went to the local democratic party office about 9 a.m., got driving directions for where to go in NH, and then picked up a couple of people who needed rides. It turned out the directions were really crappy, but we did make it to the destination at about 11. From there we were handed packets that contained a short script with talking points (more on them later) and a list of names and addresses to go to in a neighboring town. More crappy directions later, we ended up finding the target neighborhood at maybe 11:30. We split up into two groups and started looking for addresses.

Let me add a little more about the name and address list. Each entry was for a particular person at a particular address, with information like age and party affiliation listed. Then, to the right of that info was a space to circle how your encounter went: not home or refused to talk; supports Obama or McCain or is undecided, etc. It turned out that a lot of the information was incorrect; I remember one particular time we knocked on a door expecting a 65-year-old woman to answer, but the person that answered to her name was more like 30! Either that or she was in fantastic shape. She should give McCain some tips.

The goal of the whole deal was not to actually persuade anyone of anything, but just to gather information about how people were leaning in the election. So if you met a McCain supporter, you just thanked him for his time and moved on—no arguing or any of that. On the other hand, if you met someone who was truly undecided, you were supposed to engage him on the talking points and kind of talk up how Obama would address whatever issue he was worried about. For people already in Obama’s camp, you tried to get email addresses or drum up interest in volunteering. In this fashion we tramped to about 50 addresses and talked to maybe ten actual people.

Now, I should hijack my own recollections and get to the real point of my post: Canvassing was incredibly nerve-wracking and pretty much left me feeling as though I’d been beaten for several hours. I have just about zero talent for chatting with total strangers and am not too great at thinking on my feet when it comes to talking about politics. Hell, I kind of dislike people in general and would be thoroughly annoyed if someone knocked on my door and tried to chat me up about Obama. In other words, I think I’m just about the worst possible person to go canvassing. I was petrified we would actually encounter someone who was undecided, because I felt like I had no ability to make a good impression. In the end, we ended up encountering only committed voters, so that didn’t come up, but it always took a giant dose of courage to push each doorbell.

We got through our list of addresses at around 2, and headed back to the NH office where we’d started. I have to let out a little whine here and mention that I had just about no food or water for the whole time, which probably added to the difficulty of the whole thing. The rational part of me recognizes that it makes a difference just to take the time to walk through someone’s neighborhood and to be a friendly face for the campaign, but the less adult part of me had a supremely miserable time and wonders if I could actually gather the strength to do it again. I mean, now that I have some experience it would probably be a less fearful exercise, but did I mention how miserable it was? Agggh.

Anyway, I am glad I did it. Although it truly was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. For the first time, I’ve been contributing to the effort to get my candidate elected, and that is important. On the other hand, have I mentioned how easy it is to go on the website and donate some money?

Back to the surface

As you can see by the date, it’s been a bad month for the blog, with a bunch of crap at work and other things getting in the way. But there is some good news to report, mostly on the sporting front. First, I’ve been taking my singles tennis league by storm. I started out 1-1 but have won my last five matches, and just qualified for the playoffs. All the matches have been a lot of fun and very competitive, which is a nice change from what I was experiencing in the doubles leagues the last two summers. Unfortunately, Swami has been suffering in his singles league, which is super frustrating. For the upcoming indoor season we’re signed up for a doubles clinic with the local pro, and I’m excited about that. I haven’t had formal tennis instruction since a class I took in college back in like 1988. The only difficulty I foresee is if my reflexive dislike of authority comes to the surface, heh.

In other news we did the Hub on Wheels charity ride again this year. This time we did the longest course of about 47 miles, which was only the fourth time I’ve ridden more than 40 miles. And I played tennis matches on the days before and after, which proves that I am now certifiably insane. But the ride was a blast, as usual! It’s getting to be very popular: last year I think there were about 3,000 cyclists, and this year it seemed even bigger. They’ve managed to move nearly the entire route to roads rather than bike paths, too, which is really awesome. My only disappointment is that we were supposed to hook up with some people from a Meetup, but got there too late to find anybody. We’ve been trying to get into the Meetup scene now that most of our friends have moved out of town, but it’s been a slow process. I have to say, Yankee standoffishness is kind of frustrating to me now that I’m short on local friends. Of course, it doesn’t help that I’m a standoffish Yankee myself, does it?

This coming weekend I think we’re going to go to New Hampshire to canvass for Obama/Biden. I’ll let you know how that goes; it’ll be the first time I’ve ever hit the pavement for a politician. Given my dislike of chatting up strangers, I’m not sure it will turn out well! But this election has me feeling like I’d better do something, rather than just sit around worrying.

Speechless

I don’t think I have it in me to get into a really detailed discussion of recent events about the election, but I do have a couple of things to get off my chest.

It all comes down to just one question: are these people kidding me? The Republican Party, the one that’s bursting full of people over the age of 50 who bemoan the crassness of today’s culture, has a VP candidate whose family life looks like the plot of a bad reality show. You’re telling me that the people who shrieked and freaked at the whole Monica Lewinsky debacle are totally cool with Palin’s teenage daughter getting knocked up and forced into marriage with a self-admitted douchebag? Cool with the idea that Palin, whose daughter is going through what is probably one of the more traumatic scenarios an adolescent can imagine, has seized upon it as the perfect opportunity to reaffirm her political stance on abortion? And her speech last night, what little of it I could watch—is she running for host of the Tonight Show or vice president? Cracking jokes and bashing a man who is worthy of respect whether you want him to be president or not? Give me a break. Her speech was all about the usual Republican haterade, delivered in the kind of vapid content-free style that you get out of the Cosmo you’re stuck reading while waiting for a haircut. “Ten Reasons We Think You Should Dump Obama!”

What a fucking joke. And “joke” is the operative word. Who’s responsible for turning discussion of political issues in this country from substantive debate to an idiotic junior-high-school popularity contest? Not the goddamn Democrats. Jesus. After the last eight years and this kind of nonsense, does anybody think the current crop of Republicans has any ability to govern?