obamamania

So this past weekend I was up in New Hampshire volunteering for the Obama campaign before the Dem. primary on January 8, in which he ultimately ended up finishing in a close second. Jer and I went up because our friends Noland and Will were working for OFA in Manchester and Derry, respectively. Having never really done anything political, I didn't really know what to expect going in. It was a great experience, I got to see first hand how a campaign's 'ground team' works, dispatching volunteers door-to-door to canvas for Obama, putting up tons of signs along streets to increase visibility and calling every household in the greater area trying to raise support.

Anyways, after knocking on approximately 300 doors over the course of three days to see if people were interested in having a little Barack in their lives, I started thinking of the practice of going door-to-door. Specifically, I've been wondering how the Jehovah's Witnesses do it. Do they actually convince people to join them by doing this? How could they possibly be persuasive enough to get people to think "yeah...this all makes sense! I want to make this my life and start knocking on every door I see."

My limited experience in the door-to-door business didn't really inspire confidence in this method of spreading the word, whatever that word may be. One reason why it might work is because having someone willing to take their time to walk through the elements to your door to deliver some message is a fairly powerful indicator that this person believes strongly in what they are representing. Phone calls are a dime a dozen, emails are a nickel a dozen, but having another person who is willing to traverse entire neighborhoods signals that he/she really care about what they are trying to accomplish.

However, a big problem is that very few people want strangers approaching their doorstep and telling them how to think or behave. Of all the doors I knocked, about 50% were not home, 40% did not want to hear what I had to say, and the final 10% were actually willing to hold the door open and listen to my pitch for Obama and discuss the upcoming primary with me. New Hampshirites are bombarded with 'political stimulus' and have heard it all before. As you can imagine, having people knocking on your door, calling your house and filling your mailbox for weeks and months prior to an election/primary can get tired real fast. ( I also feel there it is a somewhat insulting notion that people need to be prodded in this way in order for them to vote. There is the assumption that individual citizens won't educate themselves about the candidates and the issues and won't necessarily go out to vote unless constantly reminded to.)

Overall, I felt like it was a worthwhile experience if just for that 10% of people I spoke with about the candidates, issues, and our underachieving government. It is obvious that people are tired of many aspects of our current system and want to see changes. The biggest part of any campaign is getting as many people out to the polls as possible, and it still seems the best way to do that is by meeting people face to face and impress upon them how important it is that they go out and vote.