This is about my experience working on Edwards campaign, but it says nothing bad about any Democratic candidate.
Primary season in New Hampshire is odd. I’m sure, to many of the locals, it’s like a plague of locusts has descended upon the region, having taking an odd migratory stopover on their way from Iowa to South Carolina, Nevada, or some other region.
For three of the last four days, I was one of those locust. I already wrote about seeing Edwards in Keene on Sunday (the one day out of the last four we didn’t canvas) and canvassing and then later seeing Edwards on Saturday.
Today I’m just writing about the experiencing of canvassing, which I’ve done before in previous elections (for Paul Hodes in 2006, for Howard Dean in 2004), and what it means to walk a neighborhood in support of a candidate.
There’s always a problem with me for knocking on peoples’ doors. I hate it when people knock on my door unsolicited. So when out with campaign literature, we try to be very respectful of people’s boundaries. Any house that has any sign outside that indicates “do not disturb,” “no soliciting,” etc… we’d turn around and leave them and mark it on our list. If they had signs inside their windows indicating specific support for any candidate, we just marked that and moved on.
The list we went from was specific; we didn’t just knock on anyone’s door. We visited people who were known Democrats or independents who didn’t indicate a final decision on their candidate. Most of the people we encountered were polite. We did encounter one Romney supporter, which was a bit of a surprise, and we skipped the house with the giant McCain sign on their lawn, because, really, why approach a house with a sign that’s designed as though it’s meant to be a threat?
I don’t know where this is going. I don’t know what’s happening tonight. I don’t know what’s happening in the next primaries. Three weeks ago, no one was predicting Edwards defeating Clinton in Iowa, just as no one (that includes me) is predicting Edwards defeating Obama in South Carolina. Obama’s got tons of momentum and I’m learning to make peace with the idea of his candidacy. If that’s how it’s going, I hope he turns out to be a lot more left-wing than his campaigning suggests, but we’ll see.
In the meantime, campaigning was fun. Even people who voted for other candidates were friendly for the most part. A pair of Clinton supporters invited us into their house to warm up this morning. We ran into an Obama canvasser at one point and traded helpful tips (“the guy at #4 has already voted for Obama” — “The house at #5 both just told us they voted for Clinton” — “the house at #3 is up for sale and the owners have moved out,” etc.) I’ve read other posts about dirty tricks from the Obama and Clinton campaigns. I don’t discount the possibility of stupid juvenile tricks coming from any political campaign, but we had an Obama supporter covering some of the same houses we covered (some before, some after) and there was no indication that he stole or threw out any of the literature we left. We covered houses in a neighborhood with Clinton supporters who had left door knockers on houses which already had Edwards and Obama knockers and no campaign had tried to remove or hide the other campaign’s literature, at least as far as we could tell.
I know everything is a bit tense right now, but really, we do have people disagreeing not out of hostility but out of valid differences as to what’s best for the country. One of my neighbors is a Clinton supporter and I respect why she’s made that choice. There’s no hostility over our differences.
A lot of people we talked to Monday said they were still undecided but they didn’t want to hear another word from anyone from any campaign. I can’t blame them. I made sure I put them on the “don’t ever bother again” list.
A couple fun notes about the day:
- when I walked into the Edwards office to do phone work on Saturday, after we had spent the morning canvassing, one of the other phone bankers was Granny D. That was awesome. I got to introduce myself to her and tell her how much I admired her. She offered me an egg;
- this is anecdote, third-hand, so take it with a grain of salt, but apparently a few Rudy supporters decided to canvas for their candidate by wearing Yankees gear.
In New Hampshire;
Talk about not knowing your target audience!
- When doing phone calling, I got a big-time Kucinich supporter who wasn’t hearing any of my Edwards spiel, but instead decided he wanted to try to talk me onto his side. It was entertaining, but mutually futile in the end
- we have pranksters in NH, that I’m sure are not at all connected to the campaigns. This is not surprising. Apparently, overnight, someone stole a few signs from a Romney house’s lawn, and replaced them with 50+ Edwards signs, arranged in geometric patterns. Everything about this makes me think “college prank.” I don’t see why anyone involved in any campaign would do this, but even I can see the humor in it.
You kids! Get off that lawn!.
So, now… I’m basically exhausted. I’ve spent the better part of four days working for a candidate whom I know will not come in first. I got to shake his hand and thank him on Sunday, which was really a treat. I walked over five miles today, and almost that much yesterday. Twenty years ago, walking five miles for a candidate wouldn’t have meant that much to me, but today it seems as though there’s a certain labor of love involved in this.
The most common theme I got from people was that it’s really nice to have good choices of good candidates. I’ve posted before about why I would rather have Edwards as the nominee than any other choice, but I’m not going to talk about that any further here. He’s my guy, but I totally get why he’s not everyone’s guy, and I totally get why many people are making the choices they’re making.
So here’s my final comment: whomever you’re supporting in this race, if you’ve volunteered for any Democratic candidate, thank you. You’re doing something important, even if I disagree with your choice. It’s a lot of work to take time out from your schedule to campaign for a candidate. It’s draining, exhausting, both physically and emotionally. Win or lose, your effort is of value.
(crossposted to Daily Kos)