Reflections on the Campaign...

So I took a post-Election Day skip on my class today – after going to bed at 3am, I needed to get caught up on sleep :) Now well-rested, I wanted to take some time to reflect on the campaign which has been such a huge part of my life for the past 2 months…

Yes, there was a lot of stress – from partisan dealing on campus, to administrative hoops to jump through, to endless e-mails for planning. There were definitely points where I wasn’t sure if I could keep doing everything – it seemed like too much. But quitting was never an option. This was too important.

So the month of September was consumed by voter registration – stationing ourselves outside Lottie and elsewhere, repeating the mantra “Hi, are you registered to vote in Pennsylvania?” until our voices were hoarse. Checking through the forms and trying to correct mistakes. Trying to make students care about voting in PA. It was tiring, and discouraging at times – but by the October 6th deadline we had registered 100-200 students! That was a small victory in itself :)

October 1 was The Debate – preceded by endless drama, but turning out really well. I immersed myself in Obama’s plans for America, finding more and more reasons to support him as I studied his policies. I still didn’t feel ready, though, when I walked into that room. But we prayed with our friends on the other side (them in their matching polka dots, and us in our matching gray & pink J). The room was packed, and once we started it was so much fun – articulating answers to the questions I had prepared for, and coming up with rebuttals to the opponents points. What an adrenaline rush! I loved it J After it was all over I was floating, buoyed by everyone saying how great we were. That was definitely a highlight of the campaign :)

October was voter education/persuasion, focused on planning as many events as possible to convince students to vote for Obama. This is when we had to deal with bureaucratic nightmares in planning our events…endless paperwork, approval processes, etc. But we made things happen despite all that! In 2 days we pulled things together for Shaun Casey, National Director of Evangelical Outreach for the Obama campaign, to come speak. That was phenomenal – we had to switch rooms because so many people came! He gave an outstanding talk about why he as an Evangelical supports Obama, and had excellent responses to all of the tough questions about abortion, etc. It was great!

And then there was Donald Miller – a no-go the first try, but a huge success the second time around. It was an amazing feeling to look out over the sea of people and introduce him.
Hundreds of students had flocked to hear him speak, and he was everything we had hoped for – a wildly popular young Christian author who spoke eloquently about his journey and his views and why he supports Obama. It was what people needed to hear, and who they needed to hear it from.

After that event, we were basically done with persuasion – it was time to Get Out The Vote! I sent lots of red “high-alert” e-mails to the MC Dems/Students for Barack Obama about helping with the campaign. We stuck stickers and stuffed walk packets on Friday, and Saturday and Sunday I sent out people to knock on doors. Monday I got into it myself, and knocked on doors for 6 hours! Most people I talked to were very enthusiastic about voting for Obama – one even told us not to waste our time, and to move on to the next house! Another told us to go tell his hard-core Republican neighbor that we were with the Obama campaign :)

My personal favorite – the crazy dog lady! It was dark, and we knocked on this door. An older lady came and was peering out at us, sizing us up for a good 15 seconds as we smiled awkwardly. Then she left, and as were about to hang a door-hanger and leave, a different lady comes and opens the door – with her HUGE scary dog, which lets out a giant bark! Taken aback, we stammer our line: “Hi, we’re with the Obama campaign – ” and she doesn’t let us finish, giving a frosty “I’m not interested” and shutting the door in our face! We laughed about it for some time… :)

Door-knocking in the dark was an interesting experience, as we learned – especially since after Daylight Savings Time it got dark at like 5:30pm! Monday night we were given mini-flashlights – which were fine for reading our paper, but not too helpful in finding house numbers! The numbering in this area didn’t really make sense to start with, so we wandered a lot – looking for hidden houses and roads. But it was fun, and for the cause! :)

It’s hard to believe that the campaign is over now – but I am very happy. I can become a student again, and devote more time to other things :) But I will never regret all of the time I put into this. We made a difference – here in Cumberland County, a Republican stronghold where Bush won by 28% in ’04, we narrowed the margin to 13%! And we had so many great campaign memories along the way… That’s why I’m writing this, so I don’t forget. I want to remember and retell the part I played in getting Barack Obama elected President for a long time…