Oops I Did It Again

I didn't whimp out. More importantly to me, I got Puck to go along. It wasn't easy. There were shouted, angry phrases I had to take, but it was worth it. We ended up doing the neighborhood on the opposite side of the major street that runs outside our gate. Puck held stuff for us and said goodbye to people as we left. I introduced her a bunch of times. She would have left if I'd tried to get her to engage anyone. I kinda know the limits of how far to push.

Anyways back to the canvassing task. It was about the same number of residences as last weekend. The people were a bit more peeved about a knock on their door than last week. Not sure if it was because it was a different neighborhood, the fact that yesterday was the first day or early voting, one weekend closer to the big day of Nov. fourth, or a combination of all of the above. A lot of people were canvasser weary. A couple specifically complained of me being the 7'th or 8'th person to knock on their door for a campaign in the last week. I can definitely see that for undecideds because both sides or going to try to focus on them. I partly fault the campaigns for that. The campaigners that handed us our route told us that there should only be 1's or 2's (campaign speech for strongly and semi strongly committed Obama voters). Their reasoning, which I agree with, is that knocking on doors of undecided voters this late in the game to persuade them is less likely to help them, but more likely to alienate them from voting for Obama. You aren't going to change minds this late in the game. It's far better use of your volunteers to visit the homes of the 1's and 2's actually go out and vote. When I looked at my list though, there were 20 or so registered democrats, republicans, non-partisans, or independents that were either undecided or were leaning towards or decidedly pro-McCain. Having 1/3 of my list having "persuade" on it kind of bummed me, but I figure most wouldn't answer their door. I was mostly right. Still I don't understand why the philosophy of the campaign didn't match the data lists.

Anyways, most people were civil except for about 5 of the houses. One guy closed his door behind him and raised his voice with a...fork raised menacingly at me (yes, I'm typing that with a smile). Puck said he scared her. He annoyed me a bit because in my opinion he was using our knock on his door to work out his frustration with the voter roll having his name down incorrectly (asked for the female on the roll, he asked me to name the other person listed as registered to the address, which I figured was incorrect because it had the same last name as the house two doors down). I can understand a bit of his frustration, but to take a minute or so to yell at me about a bunch of stuff was a bit much, especially when we offered to correct everything he complained about but he didn't want us to do anything to help.

He complained about the voter roll name being incorrect. Offered to get it fixed. He said no. He complained about seven or eight people showing up within a few days. Said I could stop canvassers coming to his address. He responded that he wanted canvassers, just not so many and that us knocking on the door has gotten him from wanting to vote Obama to wanting to vote for McCain. Then I guess he was done, because he shut mouth with the bright yellow (just the tips) teeth still glowing in our brains. Puck and I still can't come up with why he would have his teeth stained just in that way. Any ideas for yellow tipped teeth across the entire upper row and they aren't gold?

One house where two older guys were in their garage working on restoring an antique chevy (weren't on the list) but I waved and commented, "nice truck" to the guys. One responded and sounded like you would if you were trying to talk while spitting at the same time, "I know". So I kept on walking with no response but to kind of tell Puck what a prick that guy was. So we do the rest of the houses on that street and as we're walking to the next street on the other side of the street the guy yells out, "Have any McCain Palin signs?" followed by the type of chuckling laughter you'd hear from Boss Hog. I should have not replied, but I politely said no, of course to more laughter from them. All my mean comebacks were right at the tip of my tongue, worst of which was that he probably spends so much time working on old cars because because the even older model inside refuses to be worked on because he doesn't have the tool to fix her.

For all the bitching in the last two paragraphs, walking around wasn't thankless. There were at least two homes where the person specifically thanked Puck and I for walking around for a campaign. One of the two I remember specifically because he had a yankees sticker on the back window of his car and I thought to myself, 'oh boy, a smug guy awaits'. A big, burly Puerto Rican guy answered the door and was as nice as can be. You could tell he was a former new yorker as soon as he opened the door.

Anyways when we were done and walking back to the car I asked Puck if her feet hurt and she said hers did, which made me feel better because last week the guy I was with said his didn't hurt at all and I should probably go see a podiatrist. When we turned our stuff in the volunteers asked us how things went and when I mentioned the canvasser weariness of one of the two neighborhoods we visited and they kind of nodded like I wasn't the first person to say that. I stupidly signed up for next weekend against my better judgment. I think the annoyance will be worse next weekend because a lot of people are just going to be annoyed at being canvassed multiple times when they've already voted. We were canvassed by two young ladies around 11 A.M. Oh yeah, we voted yesterday after we canvassed. We voted at a little office on the side of our neighborhood Albertson's supermarket.

Oh yeah, that reminds me. There were two or three older (55+) voters who would only say they voted and although were registered democrats, refused to state who they voted for. Scary little subgroup of voters there because these people were labeled as in the pocket of Obama either by phone polling or how they represented themselves to previous canvassers. Something to think about when the news people are trying to bury the Bradley effect.