For this night, and the next two, I'm sleeping in a hotel room in Fernley, Nevada, a good way from my rented one-bedroom apartment in Sacramento. I spent the day breaking in my new REI waterproof cross-trainers by trudging around a community 27 miles from Fernley, an assortment of adjacent homes that doesn't even have a collective name. I was engaged in GOTV canvassing for Obama, and I seriously hate it.
I'm the shy, reclusive type. I live alone. At 37, I have no family other than my parents. My friends are the coworkers who will sit at the same table in the break room as me. To a large degree, I prefer it that way. I'm a loner and I'm completely comfortable with my quiet, expectable and restrained life. So joining a campaign and knocking on doors in a foreign state should not be your first guess as to how I would choose to spend some vacation days.
Canvassing is hell. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. People normally quite friendly and neighborly turn into complete wankers the instant they see your badge. Even if your walk list takes you to a well-to-do part of town, you'll be called names you thought were legally restricted to Coen brother movies. The voter lists will always be erroneous, the maps unhelpful, and more than once a route, you'll find yourself backpedaling from someone who has told "you people" a "million times" they don't want to be bothered. You'll have to deal with dogs of all sizes and volume, perhaps even (as I did today) chasing one down after it took the opportunity for a sneaky escape. And if you do enough doors, it's a statistical guarantee you'll encounter the horrifying, "I'm sorry, she passed away." (And they always apologize for it, too, which just rends your heart further.)
Personally, I never want anyone I don't know knocking on my door. It isn't common, but when someone does knock on my apartment door, I always pretend I'm absent or deaf (or dead). Whatever they want, I just know I don't want to give it. So the easiest door knock is the one in which, one, they're already outside the house and therefore don't have to move a muscle to speak to you and, two, someone who has also canvassed for your cause and can completely empathize with you.
Since that's a very rare combination, every other door knock is a pain to some degree, for you, the resident, or both. When I pull up to a targeted house, I often have to sit for a few minutes just to work up the nerve... then the fear that suspicious residents might sic the cops on me gets me moving again. When I press that doorbell, I secretly hope they won't be home, that I can just leave some literature and skitter back to the relative safety of the sidewalk. While I suspect I'm one of the worst canvassers ever, I'm also certain that there are lots more like me.
And by that, I mean I just absolutely have to do this.
Why? I want to live a life worth living. My solitary life is no accident. I've spent the majority of the last eight years feeling sufficiently pessimistic to avoid social opportunities. After 2000, I was willing to accept that as a nation, we were willing to let the doom of global warming be the terrible inheritance we gave to the next (and last) generation. I had considered anyone spawning fresh humans into this overheating, overcrowded and underfed planet to be absurdly optimistic or completely ignorant to the fate these children will assuredly face. I had lost hope that our government would ever take global warming seriously, let alone start waving its arms up and down, shouting "Danger Will Robinson!"
It's totally cliched, totally cheesy, and it costs me something to write this, but... Obama gives me hope. He's on record saying that global warming is "one of the greatest moral challenges of our generation." That is more than enough for me to reconsider my position on the destiny of the human race. That statement has given me hope to reconsider my hermitical life and perhaps consider starting a family. (And if he could father Sasha at age 40, then I'm hopeful that I still have a few years left to try.)
This renewed sense of hope has done wonders already. I've started daydreaming again, about places I want to visit, careers I want to try, ways I might want to socialize again. Even though the economy is down, I've been fantasizing about going back to school, or finding work on the East Coast. I've even been moved to post a diary on dailykos, a site I've been lurking on since the heady days of Dean. So it's true, Obama has given me hope, and I don't want to see it dashed again.
So as much as I hate it, I have to volunteer, and I have to canvass. Direct voter contact is the certifiably best way to use volunteers. It's more persuasive than just waving signs or staffing booths at fairs. The numbers back it up, but keep in mind that we're talking about dismally low numbers. The total count of voters that will actually switch their vote based on your visit is better than those that are persuaded by a piece of glossy cardstock in their mailboxes, but that's not saying much. If you're a Hollywood celebrity, then you'll probably have a slightly better conversion rate, but at this point the electorate is mostly already decided, largely already voted, and completely already fed up with all this crap.
But only one vote can make or break an election. So I've set that as my goal: one. If I can help one voter get to the right polls at the right time on the right date with the intent to select the right candidate, I've succeeded. And today, around 1:30 p.m., one voter on Occidental Drive learned, from me, where his polling place was and how to get there.
So my trip here, my three days off of work, the mud all over my day-old shoes, the odd hotel smell, the insults I've endured, the frequent panic threatening to overpower my deodorant, the calculated risk I play with unseen but threatened dogs, the high-calorie dangers lurking in the campaign offices, the frequent phone calls my worried mother demands, the chewy granola bars and the bottled water, the endless driving, the suspicion, the rejection, the hostility, the hate... it will all have been worth it.
I hope.