As you might be able to tell from my username, I live in Brooklyn, New York. I was a wholehearted John Edwards supporter until I had to choose someone else four days before Super Tuesday. After four days of talking to people, researching and agonizing over my decision, I voted for my Senator, Hillary Clinton. Several weeks later, as her campaign began to implode, I found myself moving quickly to Barack Obama. It didn’t take long.
In 2004, I made 700 phone calls from my home to volunteers and voters so I could help John Kerry get elected. In 2006, I volunteered once a week at the Brooklyn MoveOn office recruiting and training more volunteers. I tested their new telephone tools, and held a very successful Election Day Call for Change party at my home where twelve of us made 1,000 calls to New Jersey to help Bob Menendez defeat Tom Kean, Jr.
So I was prepared for 2008. I’d done this before – I’d made calls from my home. I’d phonebanked. I’d trained people before, from the time I was in college, which was some time ago. But I was unprepared for what happened to me in the past six weeks.
It all started innocently enough when I went to Obama’s website. It was easy to get started calling, and I was able to call into a number of different battleground states to take the temperature of voters outside my pleasant New York City bubble. I thought I would have some interesting conversations with strangers, try to talk them into voting for Barack, and keep on moving.
I introduced myself as a volunteer, and often worked into the conversation that I was calling from my kitchen in Brooklyn, something everyone responded to. I called Ohio, where I spoke with a man who was voting early because he doesn’t know where he’s going to be from one day to the next. He’s a pipefitter who follows the work, or he doesn’t get paid. I called Indiana, where a woman with a Southern accent who has voted Democratic her whole life, told me she was voting for Barack (although she said "the Democrat" and not his name) but the KKK was quite active in the next county over. I stopped calling Indiana after that because, quite frankly, I don’t think I could have faced such overt racism.
Then I started calling women in Pennsylvania. I called area code 814, which includes Scranton and the towns around Titusville. It’s a traditionally conservative, mostly white, area, and many of its jobs depended on the Drake Well, an oil installation that was closed some time ago, resulting in the loss of many, many jobs. So here I am, calling these conservative women, wondering what we would talk about.
We talked about jobs lost. We talked about the economy. We talked about health care. We talked about years of misery caused by an uncaring, unfeeling administration. We talked about how they usually voted Republican, but not this time.
I particularly liked talking to the undecideds. Many of them said they’d voted for Hillary, and they were still unhappy. When I told them that she was my Senator, and that I’d voted for her too, they began to hear me. We spoke about how she wanted her supporters to vote for Barack, and how their positions are virtually identical on nearly every issue. We spoke about Sarah Palin, and how she and Hillary have only their anatomy in common. We spoke about the war in Iraq. By the time these conversations were over, almost all of them were "decideds" – they were voting for Barack.
When I told my husband and friends what was going on with these women, they didn’t believe me. It didn’t make sense. I figured that of all the women I called in rural, conservative, white Pennsylvania, in a swath of the part of the state that James Carville called the Alabama between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, about 80% of them were voting for Barack Obama.
That’s why I wasn’t surprised when we took Pennsylvania big last night, even after a week of the most vile and reprehensible campaigning by McCain supporters. It was Ohio, though, that really got me. When we were watching the returns and CNN called Ohio for Barack, I began to cry and hug my friend, neighbor and fellow volunteer and phone bank hoster – and finally said, "We’re going to win." Just once. Quietly. I was still afraid to jinx it.
After two hosted phone banks, two visited phone banks, a super phonebank at the Brooklyn Academy of Music yesterday that saw more than 300 volunteers, and after making 900 phone calls to strangers in Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Ohio, Nevada, Virginia and Pennsylvania, I was still afraid. So was my husband -- we could barely talk about the election for the last week of the campaign after what happened with the last two.
I’m not afraid anymore. I am elated. I am exhausted. I am hopeful.
This election really does give me hope. Hope that the American people may not get fooled again. Hope that our moral standing in the world will be restored. Hope that other nations will begin to trust us once more. Hope that we can repair the damage and build for the future. Hope that my children will grow to adulthood knowing that they are part of this historic time and not think twice about the potential of all people. Hope that all America's children will begin to understand that despite our differences, we are the same in the most basic and important ways.
It's a good day.