ELECTIONS!!!
haha, that's my new slogan
I went to New Hampshire today for more canvassing for Barack Obama, which is where you go door to door talking to people. We were also marking levels of support for Barack and what issues people said were important to them. It was a lot of fun, and I met a lot of interesting people. It has definitely restored some faith in democracy because of its participatory nature. We had a lot of good conversations with people. At the same time, it's not like this is happening on a national level. Iowa and New Hampshire get a special focus because of their early primaries.
Anyway, here's a little bit about what happened and the people that I met.
New Hampshire is a dog state, seriously, and so basically every house had at least one dog. I canvassed with a woman named Kathleen who was very very good at emoting with people and getting them to spill their beans, so to speak. She said she used to be a journalist and even worked for washingtonpost.com and now she teaches ESL students at Harvard. We were canvassing in a poor neighborhood where many of the houses looked like trailers. The people were pretty friendly and receptive.
One woman said that she and her husband used to be Republicans but they have since changed their party affiliation to Independent. They are still deciding which primary to vote in, but if they vote in the democratic primaries, they are pretty sure would they vote for Barack.
A few people were completely undecided but seemed open to Barack.
There was this farmer guy we chatted up, too, who was like, I think I like the lady. Haha. He said he watched the debate and Barack did too much mud-slinging. But he also said all the information he gets is just from the TV. *sigh* Actually a lot of people don't have computers there.
We talked to one grandma who had to use an oxygen tank and she said things were going bad. She was undecided but she seemed to appreciate our empathy and was interested in looking into Barack.
We had maybe one say that they already decided.
We had one supporter.
Finally, we talked to this woman who had so many animals. She said she supports Hillary, but a big part of the reason is that she was such a big fan of JFK and MLK that it was really traumatizing when they got shot, and she thinks Barack will just get shot.
People really responded to how Barack is not taking PAC and lobbyist money for the election and so he would actually be able to do what's best for people. Or at least he won't have to appease them as much as Hillary does. Even with all the best of her intentions, it's not like she can bite the hand that feeds her.
People also really like how he does not demonize Republicans and blame everything on Republicans. This is very important to New Hampshire people because there are so many Republicans there and Independent voters who share some of the same views as Republicans. They are not likely to agree with Barack on every issue, so it's important to them that he is going to listen to everybody and not just stick it to Republicans. In fact, part of the reason that he got elected to be editor of the Harvard Law Review is that eventually the conservative faction threw in their lot with him because even though they didn't agree on things, they felt that at least they would not get alienated and their concerns would still be taken seriously.
So yeah, some semblance of participatory democracy! Yay!
I think we're going to throw some elections events through LSC or something, too. WHOO
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