put your shoe-leather where your keyboard is

[chhotii]

Today I signed up on elizabethwarren.com to go canvassing in (of all places) the town I live in, and I was out there pounding the pavement from, like, 3pm to almost 6pm. Can you possibly imagine a more emotionally exhausting thing: a painfully shy person, walking up to people's houses, in my notoriously Republican, nit-witted, and aloof town, to talk about politics. (Not that we'd get into any deep discussion about such. The little speech I came up with was: "I could enthuse about why I'm excited about Elizabeth Warren. Or I could just give you a pamphlet if you prefer." Smile, hold up pamphlet. Everyone I got that far with took the pamphlet. The point of these things is more for a) visibility and b) for the campaign to send out feelers, get a sense of things at street-level. Not for any forlorn hope that a volunteer is going to say the winning thing that convinces anyone.)

Yo, someone buy me a beer, yo! I was out there doing it, yo!

Comments

[lyonesse.livejournal.com]

*lifts a stein to you*

i like your little speech.

[ceo]

That rates a beer and a lot more. I did some GOTV in NH on election day in'08, and my conclusion was, if I was given a choice between that and stabbing myself repeatedly in the eyes with a rusty fork, I'd say "How rusty?".

[chhotii.livejournal.com]

Sadly, political scientists have not shown any election-day benefit to having your campaign staff or volunteers stab themselves anywhere with any rusty utensil. Sadly. I look forward to them proving such a connection... would be so refreshing to have a new option in the mix for how to help out, other than the tired old give money/canvass/phonebank...

[anotherjen.livejournal.com]

Woo! Go you.

[hammercock.livejournal.com]

NIce job! I am impressed!