Geeky Mom

I’m headed out in about an hour to canvass our town on behalf of Obama. I don’t know all the talking points, but what I do know is that our country can’t take any more of an administration that puts its rich friends ahead of the average citizen, that thinks nothing of sending our young people to a war we never should have fought, that only values the power of women when it comes in the right package, that won’t support our children’s education or health. I feel we’re coming close to a death spiral if we don’t change something. Obama by himself may not be able to fix everything, but he can start us on a road to fixing ourselves.

So I jumped in and volunteered to make phone calls for the Obama Campaign. For three hours last night, I called people in order to get volunteers. I didn’t do too badly. I put my former telemarketing skills to work and signed up 8 volunteers. Considering I only actually talked to 22 people, that’s not too bad. I’m also doing some voter registration drives this weekend and at a big town event in a few weeks. I’ll probably make more phone calls next week.

What’s funny is that the key to doing this kind of stuff is to not take it too personally. I had a couple of people hang up on me and quite a few more pretend to be someone else and tell me they weren’t home. To those who are mean to volunteers when they call, they don’t care. You’re only making your own blood pressure rise. Even when my income depended on connecting with people and making the sale (I did business to business sales), I didn’t really care too much if someone gave me an earful and hung up. It just meant I could move on to the next possibility that much faster.

I’ve done some canvassing for our local Congressman when he was running in 2006, but this is my first real involvement in a political campaign. The other volunteers have been with Obama since the beginning. I’m a latecomer, having supported Edwards and then Clinton. But since last night’s calls were to Obama supporters, I easily got more fired up. I had a hilarious conversation with one woman about how awful Sarah Palin is. And she wanted me to make sure Obama put Hilary on the cabinet, preferably as Secretary of State. She said she could never volunteer making phone calls because she’d just get mad at McCain supporters and take em down a notch. I may be at that point when we start calling the undecideds. I did get one of those last night and she was actually quite nice about it, asked for more information, and said she really wanted to take the time to look over everything and think about it. I believed her.

I’m glad I didn’t talk myself out of doing this and yes, it’s exhausting and yes, it takes time out of an already busy life, but I think it really does take more people getting involved to make change happen. I just couldn’t stand on the sidelines doing commentary anymore.

I decided I could not miss a historic moment like watching the first African-American presidential nominee give an acceptance speech. He said everything I’ve wanted Democrats to say for years. He hit some key issues head on that previous candidates have pussyfooted around–oil, abortion, gay marriage. He pointed out that Republicans have basically been trying versions of the same policies over and over again and they’re not working. I thought his line about “policies of past vs. policies of the future” was really more “okay, old white dudes, you’ve had your turn; now get out of the way.” I think I’m ready to put my bumper sticker on the car and start handing out some literature. If we don’t win this thing, I’m moving to France.