The Canvass.

I guess I should write about how it went before I forget it all.

I got up at 5:30 so I could get my wife to drive me to D.C., where the buses waited, by 7. We had to take the kids, too, but for once, they were happy to be awake so early. (The kids, that is. I doubt my wife was, but bless her heart, she didn't show it.)

Crammed like sardines into a motor coach. The bus' radio was set to a local Christian music station. On a Democratic bus! Congnitive dissonance! Aren't we supposed to be the atheist communists? I read a little bit of Seymour Hersh's Chain of Command to remind me of one reason I was there, and then slept most of the way and woke up in... Harrisburg, Pennsylvania! Swing state country! (It was somewhat depressing, I admit, to look out the window the few times I was awake, because I invariably saw Bush/Cheney signs, but as we got closer, a few Kerry/Edwards signs began appearing as well.)

The state Democratic headquarters was heartwarming. Signs everywhere, for both national and local candidates. Plenty of doughnuts to go around. And I thought we were packed like sardines in the bus...

We got a nice lecture/pep talk about canvassing; they explained that they were moving from persuasion of undecideds to energizing the base and getting out the vote (GOTV), which worked for me; I'm not much of a persuader (or so I thought). Then we broke into groups of two and three and were assigned a block of Harrisburg and dropped off to work a list of registered Democrats.

I was with Rama, a biochemist from Laurel, and Karen, a woman who had last worked on a political campaign in Michigan for McGovern. (I explained that I hadn't been able to volunteer in '72 because I was too busy being born.) We walked down a street in a predominantly African-American neighborhood. They had been canvassed before, and not by the Republicans, based on the number of Kerry-Edwards signs we already saw. For the most part, those folks who were home were very polite, considering all the politcal crap they must have been hearing. But in one case, Rama and I (who were working the right side of the street while Karen took the left) actually met a bona fide undecided voter!

Her husband was a clear Kerry supporter (he asked us for three window signs, and stapled one to a two-by-four to improvise a lawn sign while we were there), but he had forgotten to register to vote, so our household vote came down to his wife. She didn't like Bush, but she wasn't sure about Kerry--seemed to have internalized the whole flip-flop meme. So Rama and I tried a little reasoning. What sealed the deal, though, was when she asked whether Teresa Heinz Kerry really gave money to extreme causes, as has been alleged in various chain e-mails. As it happened, I had just read about this, and was able to debunk it in some detail. That seemed to impress her. I think we may have given Kerry one more vote in Pennsylvania (worth about 300 votes in New Jersey).

At 3 PM, we elected to attend a rally with Elizabeth Edwards who was just wonderful, answering every question from the audience with aplomb. My favorite question came from someone who looked like a college student, and asked, "We have been bombarded with television advertising telling us that John Kerry is a 'liberal,' and that's it dangerous to have a 'liberal' in charge of America. Could you please explain to me: what is a 'liberal' and why is it bad to have one as President?" Mrs. Edwards made a pretty good case that George W. Bush is a liberal, actually.

After the rally, we headed to the bus (I took a wrong turn trying to get back, and was chewed out by a police officer, which saddened me) and back to D.C. I was home by eight-thirty. I wish I could do it again next weekend--but I am definitely doing it on Election Day.