diary of a mad campaigner (part 6 in a series)

i am quickly learning that there is no sleep in campaigning, even for the lowliest of volunteers (like me). from the first break of dawn till the wee hours of the morning, there still isn’t enough time to get everything done. here in galveston, team obama is short-staffed, over-worked, and the amount of stuff we still need to do before tomorrow’s election is overwhelming.

yesterday was a new sort of adventure for me because i canvassed in a nearby town, made up of a whole lot of republicans and republican-leaning independents. it didn’t keep me from knocking on their doors and while most of them were incredibly nice, i ran into a racist who insisted obama was a muslim who was going to give free reign to all muslim americans to kill whoever and whenever they wanted. i also ran into a republican who thinks there is nothing wrong with our country, that the rest of the world is working alongside the u.s., happily pluggin’ along, fighting the good fight for democracy around the world. needless to say, i disagree.

yesterday was a tough day for me. i kept a smile on my face, even as i stood on his doorstep and listened to the racist go off on how obama is going to destroy our country. i said my piece, remained calm, debated as well as i could, and let him have his rant. the one thing that kept me going was the knowledge that i was able to sway a few undecided voters.

last night, after walking a bazillion miles of rough republican terrain yesterday, it was back to headquarters to tally the date for our internal polling numbers. we had a 1 am pow-wow to go over the internal polling numbers (team obama knocked on more than 3700 doors in galveston and the surrounding cities this past weekend) and what we could expect from the next two days. first and foremost, no sleep. after that, visibility, canvassing, coordinating our precinct teams, assigning election day tasks and training for tomorrow night’s caucus.

with less than 24 hours till polls open here in texas, the natives are restless, the volunteers from afar are even more restless, and we’re all scrambling to get the job done for obama and america.

this blog is cross posted at daily kos