canvassing for Obama

[anadamous]

I went canvassing in Philly on Saturday. I was surprised at how good I was at it, and how fun it was, especially after Julia's horror stories. My partner and I knocked on over 100 doors, talked to over 50 people, and had long conversations with maybe like 20 of them. Of those 20, 8 were very racist and 3 were sexist, answering that age-old question

Comments

[goldmineguttd]

oh man, kudos. I did my little bit of canvassing during the primaries. If I had to confront people who were actually considering voting for McCain, my head would explode. If someone's that far gone you can't argue with them.

[once_a_banana]

Can't argue with them? I dunno, I think Nada's examples of how she responded in these situations are really awesome and instructive. Nobody likes being told "you're wrong!", of course and that never accomplishes anything -- rather, if one can at least approach it via other issues, like identifying a number of areas which the voter has opinions about, and then mentioning how their views jive with or don't jive with the views and plans of the candidates.... sometimes it actually results in a little spark of thinking on the part of the (normally apathetic and unthoughtful) person being canvassed. Even just helping someone admit to themselves that their current choice is a vote based on something different than what they thought it was seems like progress, to me. Especially when there are really ingrained biases based on race or what have you, just cracking the shell and opening someone's eyes a little bit to their own biases, and the results of having them, might do some good.

[goldmineguttd]

I would completely agree with you... until McCain put Palin on the ticket. If someone is still considering voting GOP, at this stage, I really do think they're past the point of rational discourse. Latent racism is just one of many possibilities.

[anadamous]

If someone is totally uninformed, though, Palin just seems like a down-to-earth sweetheart. People just like the woman, which is natural enough, especially if they don't know about things like, oh, the librarian she tried to have fired, the bridge-to-nowhere she endorsed for a while, then kept the money for after she stopped endorsing it, etc

[goldmineguttd]

I recently heard the term "low-information voter" for the first time. You're right, I think that's the demographic you can reach.