It's the Ground Game, Baby! (Going to a Swing State to Campaign and Partying with the Dems)

Click here for An Open Letter to President Obama.

Yay! The election’s over and Four More Years! Four More Years! Which of course inspired me to write an Inaugural Poem for Obama #44 (try to guess where I sneak in the #44 in my poem! The answer is (will be in the Crib Notes explaining the poem!) Check out Other Inaugural Poems from great poets like Robert Frost for J.F.K. and Maya Angelou for  B.O., yeah! (And remember to Friend me on Facebook to get the poem out!)


For almost half in this country, it’s nothing to celebrate. My sister even felt labor pangs when Obama won again (yay!) but they subsided and my godson was born a week later. The labor pangs were from stress, not a good kind when she wanted Romney to win. Luckily, there was no talk of politics when I visited my sis for the baptism. It helps when you stay in a hotel and rent your own car. (Hotel my idea, car rental my mom’s.)

The week before the election, I wanted to head over to Nevada to do some campaigning, but had to finish some work before I could. Had to make sure that I had enough to cover my bills while taking some time off. For weeks, Obama For America had urged me to make a donation, even as little as five dollars, they said, but I hadn’t even that amount to give since everything was going to bills. Finally, a few days before the campaign, I had mustered enough to cover my bills while away in Nevada, with a few bucks, i.e., five dollars, left over to either donate to Obama For America or buy a fruit smoothie from Burger King (my serving of fruits and vegetables for the day). Burger King had a buy-one-get-one-free coupon I wanted to take advantage of but if I did, I wouldn’t have anything to contribute to Obama For America. So, I did the conscionable thing and donated five dollars. The very next minute, I got an email from Prez Obama asking: Ssal, thank you for your generous donation of Five Dollars, but we still need your help! Can you help with the campaign by making some phone calls? Why, yes, Mr. President, I can!

So, I hopped into my car with some buddies and headed over to Sin City in the great Swing State of Nevada. Some of them were already there, dutifully making phone calls and urging people to vote! Regrettably, I did not have much time to help with the campaign, but it was great fun! So many people hung up on me, yelled at me for bothering them with phone calls night and day for months (sorry, this is my first time calling, Mr. Hinks), and a few thanked me for my service (makes it all worthwhile!).

The Democratic headquarters in Las Vegas was smaller than I had imagined but evidently much bigger than the Republican base. According to my friend, the Democratic office was organized to my tastes, cluttery and haphazard. However, if you read the news, the Democratic Party was super-organized compared to the Repubs. So, I flicked away a used piece of Kleenex tissue (ew) crumpled on the desk at which I was assigned, grabbed a soda, and went to work.

The list I was given were the dregs of the potential Dem voters. That is, the high probability voters had already been contacted (half a dozen times) and we were scraping the barrel bottom for every last vote! Some of them must have recognized my vote because as soon as they picked up the phone and before I could greet them with “Hello, my name is Ssal with the…” click. Somebody made some monster noises on the other line, so I called back just to be sure (of what, I don’t know), and sure enough, he made the same monster noises and quickly hung up on me.

But it was for the cause, and I called through almost a dozen sheets of names and numbers, marking each one per the party’s directions, indicating if I made a real human “contact” or not. If I spoke to someone who was a relative and assured me that the person I was trying to reach had already voted, that still did NOT count. Can’t trust ‘em. Gotta’ talk to the man himself. The only way to have an accurate vote count. (That’s why Romney or many in Romney’s party thought he was going to win on election day. Go figure.)

After taking a pizza break, I started dialing again. Yikes, I got a rush job that I didn’t really want because these few days were supposed to be devoted to campaigning. Unfortunately, it was a big job and I couldn’t turn down the paycheck, so I finished up with some more campaigning until close to 9 p.m. (can’t call people past their bedtime anyway) and headed off to Starbucks to download some info to start my ill-timed project and worked until the wee hours of the morning.

Election day! We headed back to the office to make more phone calls; by the afternoon, it was more crucial to give rides to the polls. I was assigned a phone in an administrator’s office (that sounds grander than it is), so in between making phone calls, I kept getting phone calls. I was directed not to answer them, so avoided them, but once when I picked up the receiver to make a phone call, after dialing, I hear not ringing tone but instead get: Hello, I need a ride to vote. Bingo! I always wanted to get voters to the polls and help the disenfranchised! Actually, these people were not disenfranchised, only did not have a car and they were too old and sick to walk or ride the bus to their polling place.

The first person we picked up was a Vet. Bum knee still in a cast. Thanks for your service, dude. It’s sad that these people don’t have anyone nearby to help them to the polls, (other than the Democratic Party, of course of course!). Disabled people often get isolated, so we cheerily drove him to the elementary school that was his voting location and walked him in to vote! My first ride getting people to the polls! So exciting! If you want to do something really worthwhile in life, say, in contrast to going shopping on Black Friday, this is the thing to do! I almost cried walking Dave the Vet back to the car and helping him out of the car when we reached his home. He had a cat that missed him and that was all. Waiting for him to enter his house safely, we headed back to the office to pick up another voter who wanted to practice his right to vote!

The next person was in tears. She had been waiting for hours because no one wanted to pick her up. The address information this lady gave was not showing up precisely on Google Maps. Sometimes people don’t give us the correct info or something is lost in translation when speaking over the phone. Either way, all our drivers were busy ferrying other folks to the polls, so I volunteered to find this lady. I didn’t know that her residence was not in the best part of town, the part that people avoid after dark.

Undaunted, a friend and I went out in search of her place, like the knight in Edgar Allen Poe’s “El Dorado” (that’s why I write poems like Poe--see other pages and posts--, love his work). By the time we finally found her apartment, she had just been picked up by some other volunteers, good for them! Except I wish things had been a bit more coordinated because we spent almost an hour looking for her while a few other people were waiting.

Finally, we picked up a voter who ten minutes before the polls closed. He had MS and could not drive to his polling place. Agh! Fate was not kind for he typed in the incorrect address into his phone and we ended up circling the area before we finally found his polling place. They were packing up! Poor fella’ he had never missed a voting day in his life. What would his mother say, he asked? At least he tried, we consoled him. Because every vote does count. . .

By the time we dropped him off, everyone was heading to the Mandalay Bay. The Republicans were gathering at the Venetian, owned by Billionaire Akin who pledged up to 200 million to making Obama a one-term president (aren’t there better reasons to campaign? Like campaigning FOR someone because you believe in their principles instead of AGAINST someone because you don’t like them? I can imagine if the person was very hateful, like Hitler, but really, guys). I didn’t even think of bringing a nice outfit, so made do with a lavender skirt and lavender sweater (really, I was a bit too purple-pink that night) and a pair of boots. Was going to wear my coat because I get cold easily when one of my friends reminded me that it was almost 70 degrees outside.

Walking from the parking garage of the Mandalay Bay to the North Convention Hall ballroom, you could feel the excitement. People were laughing and wearing Obama signs. I had checked my phone on the way to the Mandalay and the reports showed Obama breaking away in Ohio. By the time we got a blue wristband to enter the ballroom, the jumbo screens showed CNN, ABC, and CBS calling Ohio for Obama with 280 electoral votes, the crowd broke into deafening cheers, all over the country, I suspect. (Fox was a little behind the curve with this one, as you might have seen, tee hee. Carl Rove was stuttering his protest about how Ohio could still be won, tee hee.)

We waited for the speeches but unfortunately, Romney’s concession speech was interrupted by a local who had just won and was giving his acceptance speech in the ballroom, which was being broadcast live. At least we saw Obama’s speech, which was thrilling for the crowd. Someone raised their iPad to record the jumbo screen. That was one of the nights when you really felt that “God’s in his heaven, All’s right with the world.”

Talk about a high that you didn’t want to end.

You mean no more polls? Where do I get my morning fix of election polls and stories? I bookmarked the 538 Blog, CNN’s polling center, Real Clear Politics all on my Bookmarks tab. They replaced all my other important tabs, such as you know, Macy’s and wow, I can’t even remember what I used to have bookmarked. For me for months, there was nothing BUT the election. What do I do now?

We were smiling through and through for days, beaming our smiles right from our hearts.

If you read all the post-election analysis, the consensus of why Obama won is pretty simple: It’s the ground game baby. But this runs a bit deeper. When the Supreme Court decided the election ion 2000, I and so many others were indignant, downright fuming! I had followed the Gore-Bush election avidly as well, but for some reason, knowing that it was close, didn’t prompt me to help with the campaign. Maybe it was Gore, good but not inspiring.

With Obama, you just feel the love. So when pundits say that Obama won because of  super-sophisticated ground-game of unprecedented numbers, they’re right. People like me traveled from all over the country, “flew in for 10 days” one man we met in the elevator of the Mandalay Bay because “he would die” if Obama lost. That’s the kind of people Obama inspired. The just left their jobs, took vacation days, traveled to Swing states, and made phone calls, registered voters, anything for The Cause. No one but Obamaman could inspire such love.

Too bad that higher-than-a-kit feeling had to end. But the steady serenity we feel now is a pretty good substitute.

Four more years! Yay! 

Which of course inspired me to write an Inaugural Poem for Obama #44 (try to guess where I sneak in the #44 in my poem! The answer is (will be in the Crib Notes explaining the poem!) Check out Other Inaugural Poems from great poets like Robert Frost for J.F.K. and Maya Angelou for  B.O., yeah!

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MY OTHER WRITINGS

What I Said When I saw Salvador Dali's Metamorphosis of Narcissus at the Tate Modern 

Princess Boo Wakes Up on theWrong Side of the Bed