Nothing But Words

I canvassed for Kerry in Lansdowne this morning. It’s a mixed-race, working-class area. The volunteers were very pumped up, and there were a lot of them. I took this picture when I arrived at the meeting place, and there were about twice as many people there by the time we hit the streets.

I was paired with a woman from DC (probably about a third of the volunteers were from other parts of the country). We had a list of addresses to visit, which consisted of folks who were registered Democrats or had in some way identified themselves to the campaign as Kerry supporters. Lansdowne is considered a “base” Democratic town, and now I know why: our list consisted of about 80% of all the houses on the streets we worked. I didn’t expect that many people would be home, but there were more than I thought. In addition to the elderly folks and stay-at-home moms that I expected, we also encountered a number of contractors who were just leaving home. Our primary job was to just remind folks to vote, and to put them on a list for a ride to the polls if they needed one. There were also MoveOn.org folks working the streets, and the woman I was with asked why we weren’t coordinating efforts with them. I explained that would be illegal.

So now Kai is in bed and Maria and I are glued to the screens. She’s in the other room shouting tidbits of information to me that she’s seeing on TV, and I’m on the internet, shouting back other tidbits that I’m finding. It’ll be interesting to see what it’s like when the two mediums converge someday.

Anyway, the exit polls must be taken with a large grain of salt, but so far they look great for Kerry. And they line up fairly well with my predictions With any luck we’ll know before the morning who the next President is.