According to Richard, who monitors my blog stats via Google Analytics, there was a huge spike in visits to my blog on election day, which leads me to believe that 40 of you (or ten of you who visited four times) were curious to know my thoughts on that momentous day. Here's the scoop -- I couldn't possibly blog that day because we were so busy electing Barack Obama! Lucy and I headed over to the Bellefonte Fire Station at 7 am, and waited in line for about 40 minutes to vote, which seemed like a good sign to me. After our annual trip to the cardiologist (Lucy is fine! Come back in a year! Yay!), we went to Obama HQ in Wilmington, and were sent to Chester for GOTV activities, from a church basement in a housing project. It was an incredible operation -- people in and out all day -- tons of them from Delaware. Lucy, Richard and I knocked on about 75 doors in an African-American working class neighborhood. Most of the people we talked to were lovely, and most had already voted (we were on the second pass of three through the neighborhood). We were amazed (and frankly, appalled) by the polling station there -- it was the dilapidated clubhouse for the abandoned neighborhood swimming pool. According to one of the residents, the polls had closed for about 30 minutes because part of the ceiling had collapsed on some voters....Nice.
After canvassing, we headed back to Wilmington HQ. I made some phone calls to Virginia voters, and Richard made calls on behalf of the Delaware Dems. Lucy made signs. We saw Andrew and his friend Mandy, who had also volunteered to GOTV in Chester, got yelled at by the Delaware Campaign Director for chatting, but had a good time nonetheless. The energy in the room was high -- people were really optimistic about how the race was going to go. While we were there, we got the info on the planned Victory Party, and the Campaign Director (who I know from my last job) invited us to come to the Obama Volunteers Party room, which Lucy thought was pretty special.
Headed home to let out the dogs, and stopped by to visit our next door neighbors, who had also been on a GOTV mission, and ended up hanging out with them and their extended family for dinner and to watch early returns. It was nerve-wracking. As McCain-heavy returns would come in, Richard would remind everyone that these were tiny fractions of the precincts that had reported, or that the returns were from states McCain was expected to win, and that they were not signs of an apocalypse. We finally got too antsy to stay, and since the returns had started to move in Obama's favor, we decided to head downtown for the Victory Party (we didn't want to go the a Victory Party if McCain won -- how depressing would that have been?).
The party was fun -- most of the Delaware democrats were there giving victory speeches (we were standing right behind John Carney while Jack Markell gave his speech -- it seemed so sad, and I kind of wanted to give John a hug -- but Richard assures me that he will be OK). There was a balloon drop, which is always fun, although it seemed kind of early in the night. We saw tons of people we knew, which was cool --as I have said before, I like to surround myself with people who agree with me politically. Poor Lucy was exhausted, and really wanted to go into the special Obama Volunteers room, which had been on lockdown for some reason. At around 9:30, we finally got to go into the room, which just had marginally better food than the main ballroom, but worse TV. By 10:30, Lucy was about to collapse, so we headed home, just in time to see the election called for Obama.
Incredible. For the first time in 8 years, I was crying with happiness and pride, instead of sobbing in despair and threatening to leave the country. A couple of people have sent me messages thanking Richard, Lucy and me for our hard work on the campaign -- and I appreciate that -- but honestly, it was one of the most gratifying experiences of my life. As cliched as it is to say, it was so cool to see a truly diverse group of people (young, old, black, white, men, women, dogs, etc.) coming together for a common purpose. And despite the terrible state of the economy, and the war, and the general shittiness of the world right now, I do have hope for the future, and a belief that Obama will help get us headed back in the right direction. And I am particularly glad that Lucy was able to be a part of all of this, too.
On Thursday, flickr created a group photo pool of messages for Obama. You should check it out -- the messages range from funny to inspiring (and a lot of people really want to make sure that the Obamas adopt a rescue dog). Here is mine (you may recognize a certain PostSecret-ness about it), which sums up my feelings about the election:
(To see the image larger, click here.) And thanks for visiting. Now that the election is over, I will have more time for blogging (if I can stop playing so much WordTwist on Facebook....).
