There are four weekend days left before
the election that, to me at least, will decide whether we will
continue our slide into fascism or not. You should use at least one
of those days to canvas for a Democrat somewhere. It could be in a
swing district like ME-02, but it could also be for a sure thing,
(like Elizabeth Warren) or a long shot (like Jay Gonzales).
Door-to-door, person-to-person canvasing has been shown to be themost effective way to turn out votes for your candidate and if you
don't like what the Republicans have been doing with their power, the
best thing you can do is turnout votes for Democrats. But, canvassing
is one of those activities where you get out almost as much as you
put in, and whatever value you bring to the campaign, you get back in
other ways. So, here are some reasons why you should canvas—on top
of the whole defending the country against white nationalist
misogynist fascism thing of course—for yourself, followed by a few observations from my last turfs.
A Good Walk
I know this sounds like one of the
hokey things recruiters will tack on at the end of a pitch, but
seriously, canvassing is walking and you, you're not walking enough.
Walking is good for you. Being outside is good for you and you're not
outside enough either. Well, here you go: a good walk outside. For me anyway there are few activities as
fulfilling as walking through a new landscape and canvassing is
inherently that.
A Look Inside a Campaign
Politics is almost a parodoxical
combination of the simple and the complex. You vote and a candidate
wins. (Or you don't vote and a candidate wins without any input from you.) In nearly
every instance you will have a choice between a Republican and a
Democrat and in an even higher percentage of instances even when you
have other choices, you're only meaningful choice will be between a
Republican and a Democrat. (Except for you folks in Maine, who now
have ranked-choice voting!) And most of us already knew which one we
were going to choose, because we've been making the same choice for
years. Simple.
But getting more people to vote for
your candidate is a massively complex challenge that involves
volunteer management, workflow, data collection, data processing,
writing, editing, graphic design, coding, polling, fundraising,
financial management, and more with dozens, hundreds, or even
thousands of people. When you canvas, you get a peek at all of that.
You get to see what's on the walls of the offices, how many people
are working, and what kind of snacks they have. From whose doors you
knock on and where those doors are and the script and talking points you're given, you can get a sense of the
campaign's strategy, of how big their canvassing effort is, and of
who they think they can turn out on election day and how they think they can be turned out.
If you're at all interested in the
mechanics of elections and politics (and you really
should be) canvassing is a great way to get a glimpse of that
machinery.
Get Out of Your Bubble, But Not in the
Stupid Fucking Soft-Focus NYT Piece Set in a Hardscrabble Bar in
Northern Kentucky Bullshit Way (Not that I Have Anything Against Said Bar & Its Kindred Bars.)
By the last two weekends of the
election, you will most likely be knocking on Democratic doors (at
least suggested by the campaign's data), but that doesn't mean you'll
only be talking to like-minded people. In fact, there's a good chance
you'll end up talking to one of the (for me and probably for you)
strangest animals on the planet: the semi-aware American
sometimes-voter. Like, dude, this isn't Bill Clinton era political
triangulation, this is children in fucking cages, this is the most
corrupt administration we have ever seen, this is a President
obviously aligned or at the very least amenable to some of the most
repressive regimes in the world, including one was the villain in, like, half the action movies in the 80s. This is an obvious partisan hitman on the
Supreme Court. This is someone who at the very least had a drinking problem in his life that he refuses to confront but is probably also a serial sexual assaulter. This is lying from the Oval Office at an unprecedented
rate. This is a Republican party who's only policy commitment is
keeping itself in power by any means necessary. (And they give themselves bonus points when they get to hurt people they don't like along the way.) How the fuck are you
lukewarm about any of this? I can kind of understand devotees to the
cult of Fox News and though I don't understand why you would ever
feel this way, I at least understand why white supremacists are
supporting the Republican party. Same goes for all those fucking
asshole misogynist men who felt seen and spoken for by Grassley's,
Graham's, and Kavanaugh's temper tantrums. I don't understand what
the fuck is wrong with you, but I understand how being such a piece
of shit would lead you to certain actions. But to see all of that and
still think, “I just don't know?” Or, worse, to see all of that
and think, “Meh?”
What this tells me is that contemporary
mainstream political journalism has failed--at a level far worse than I imagined--in its primary goal of
informing citizens on the state of political power in our country. In
order to project some strange definition of “balance,” mainstream
media has downplayed the threat the contemporary Republican party
poses to America, while overemphasizing the flaws in the Democratic
party. I mean, the few times I was able to discuss specific issues
with people while canvassing they wanted to talk about health care,
so we did. OK. Fine. In Maine, I saw an a Bruce Poliquin ad arguing
that he was in favor of protecting patients with preexisting
conditions, despite voting to repeal the ACA with no replacement
legislation to protect the patients repealing the ACA would leave
vulnerable. And this isn't isolated. Somehow, Republicans around the
country are trying to run on fucking healthcare. They believe they
can get away with this because they know our political journalism
will not be able to respond.
A current in this failure is how “get
out of your bubble” was leveraged by the right to mean, “Let
another white guy from the Midwest talk at you.” Somehow, our media
has allowed the right to control the debate on connecting and
listening to other perspectives to somehow only mean that all
liberals have a responsibility to listen to a specific range of
conservatives. (And if we don't listen in the exact right way
and do exactly what they ask of us no matter how damaging it might be
to other populations it's our fault, not theirs if they help elect Trump and Trump-like Republicans.) Somehow, the
media has helped create another one-way street in which certain white
men get to talk at the rest of us as much of they want and
without any meaningful responsibility for their own actions. Which is
really tragic, because there are lots of different ways to get out of
your bubble. It doesn't just mean talking to your political opposite.
It doesn't just mean listening to someone who doesn't believe you are
fully human. It doesn't just mean another fluff piece on Rust Bowl
Trump voters. There are lots of different types of people you can
meet and perspectives you can interact with once you're there.
Political belief is a spectrum, in terms of policy and intensity and
it is always good to find ways to talk to people on different parts
of both spectra.
Canvassing might be the easiest way to do that.
They're All Crooks!
A corollary to the “Meh,” voter is
the “They're all crooks!” voter. It is undeniable that the
Democratic party has its flaws and that it is influenced by its
donors. It is also true, that there have been times in our recent
political memory (Bill Clinton's triangulation and Al Gore's
subsequent campaign) where there wasn't much to distinguish between
public statements and no small amount of enacted legislation. (Again,
Bill Clinton era crime bill & welfare reform and some
post 9/11 security state stuff. Oh yeah, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.) It is also true that there have been
corrupt Democrats and that there will certainly be corrupt Democrats
in the future, but there is nothing in modern memory anywhere close
to what Trump and the Republicans are doing. This, of course, goes
back to how “balanced” journalism works. There's a negative story
about a Republican being a fucking fascist, well, run a negative
story about a Democrat and present them as equal in scale even if
they are not even remotely of equal scale.
I should also note, that this is a
consequence of “horse race journalism” as much as it is of
“balanced” journalism. In terms of what a journalist does, it
shouldn't fucking matter whether Republicans claiming to protect
preexisting conditions is an effective election strategy because it's
a fucking lie. But, instead, the various policies and positions of
both parties are presented neutrally, as being equally valid
arguments conducted in equally valid ways and the only thing of
interest is which one ends up more popular. So voters, especially
voters who don't dive deeper than the headlines, come away with the
sense that the two parties are both equally bad and so why bother. In
fact, one person I talked to was visibly angry that both campaigns
were “bothering” him, so he was going to vote independent. Of
course, HIS name wasn't the name I had on my list, which brings me to
my next observation...
Special Report for the Department of
Shocking but Not Surprising
Holy shit there are still a lot of men
who will not hesitate to speak for their wives. The last house I
stopped at yesterday a man, roughly my age (38) saw my button and
said, “We're Republicans here,” which was especially interesting
because the woman's name I had on my list was, according the
state registration information, a registered Democrat. For all I
know, that person had honestly changed her mind at some point in her
life and just hadn't bothered to update her registration. That is, of
course, a “perfectly rational explanation.” But, much more
likely, this guy is a fucking Republican so his family is fucking
Republican and that's fucking it. There are a lot of forces, both
historic and contemporary that have created Trump's 38-42% approval
rating, but a big chunk of it has to be men who believe it is their
right to speak for their household and Donald Trump is overtly
protecting, shit, even celebrating, that power. (Should also note that
“shocked but not surprised” is perhaps my most common emotion in
2018.) (I should also note that if you're not planning on voting at the moment, maybe you could just to deal this asshole a loss. You know the smugness liberals are accused of having? This fucker oozed it, but with that extra dose of 'I can't be smug because I'm a Republican' smugness. Wouldn't you like to ruin his day?)
It's All Rigged
One of the more interesting responses
was someone who told me he never votes because it's all rigged.
Canvassing really isn't the time for a long conversation about
anything, so I wasn't able to drill down to what he actually meant,
as that could mean anything from a version of “They're all crooks,”
above to, “the Illuminati controls the world.” I bring him up
only because, later I realized I should have said to him, “I'm not
here to convince you, but, just ask yourself, who wins because you
don't vote?” Seems like a pretty good question for anyone thinking
of sitting this election out to answer for themselves.
Rays of Hope
My lists the past two Sundays were of
infrequent voters; people who had not voted in the last few elections
or in the last few midterm elections. This included Democrats,
Undeclared voters, Independents, and some Republicans. This means
that the campaign has the resources to go after unknowns, to expand
its potential base, and to reach votes the Democrats haven't reached
in the last couple of election cycles. And a good number of people I
actually talked to are voting Democrat! Like, a little over a third
of the people I actually talked to. Sure, that's maybe 10 people, but
if you all canvas on at least one of the remaining four weekend days,
that hundreds or even thousands of Democrat voters. I don't know if that's
enough, but it's either do something or don't.
Canvasing Links (Because you're definitely going to canvas now.)
Canvas for Democrat candidate for MAgovernor Jay Gonzalez (Because, last I checked, Charlie Baker was still fine being a member of a misogynist white nationalist fascist party.)
