🦋 Enthusiasm and diffidence
I worked at a BlueWave NJPAC phonebank event this evening, calling voters about the election. I have a hard time doing stuff like this -- I find it pretty easy to put on a happy, friendly voice and chat to the person I'm calling as long as I don't have to make any actual argument, but I can't see what good that does. (The whole event was dedicated to calling registered Democrats in Montclair, which it's hard for me to see what the point of doing that is. So I didn't have to make much of an argument, but it was hard to see myself as doing something useful to the campaign.) Most of the people I talked to (I probably made about 100 calls or a bit more, and spoke to about 25 people?) were enthusiastically supporting Obama and the Democratic ticket -- one guy was not so enthusiastic about Lautenberg but planned to vote for him because there is no alternative; a few people said they were voting a straight Democratic ticket but didn't know or care much about the people on it below the presidential candidate. Several people did not want to talk. One woman said she was concerned about voting for Obama because of his plans to redistribute the nation's wealth -- I engaged this for a while (not particularly well I think -- see above about making arguments -- but earnestly) until she brought up Jeremiah Wright, at which point I hung up on her. Not sure what her game was but it was not honest inquiry. They are having the same event tomorrow but I think I will skip that -- I see on Thursday there's a phonebank event in West Orange to call swing voters. Maybe I will go there. But I'm not sure, based on doubting whether I can do a good job at it.
posted evening of Tuesday, October 28th, 2008
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