Thoughts after Canvassing

Today I went canvassing for Obama/Biden. Noah came with me for the first few houses, then got tired of it.


You'll note that my Obama tee hasn't arrived, so I made my own.

I knocked on 64 doors in my neighborhood. These were voters identified by the party as independents, unreliable voters, or new voters. Of those, 29 were strong Obama supporters who said they would be voting, and only 7 told me they were voting for McCain. That's heartening in itself, but I also found that here in the purple-ish, blue-ish state of Oregon, in a small town (would Palin still consider that "real America"?) the Obama supporters seemed a lot more fired up. Sure, I was wearing an Obama/Biden bumper sticker on my chest, but the difference still exceeded what you'd expect. I'm feeling hopeful.

Another observation: I talked with a union guy who was particularly excited. He made a point to show off the Obama/Biden poster he'd received from his electrical workers union. I'm always glad to meet another union member, but as a member of the teacher's union I couldn't help but think his union is better than mine. First of all, if he's representative of his fellow electrical workers (and he may be an outlier, like me) then they are more excited and supportive than we are. Teachers I know tend to be inexplicably split. Also, the house this electrical worker owns is a lot nicer than the house this teacher rents. Yep, his union is better.

Lastly, when I went back to the Independence office of the Polk County Democrats, a guy came in to share that he not only had his Obama sign stolen out of his yard, as did many other people in the community, but he got the punks' license plate number and the police caught the thieves. So, way to go Mr. Ledesma!

Tonight I'm off to a pumpkin carving party where the parents are evenly split, Democrats and Republicans. I made sure to pick up enough Obama stickers to put one on each of the kids.