keystone kalls

If someone had told me a year ago that right now, I would be sitting in an apartment in Ithaca, halfway through my first semester of library school, no longer a journalist, I might not have believed it. But I definitely would not have believed that I'd be saying these words: "Hi, this is Gwen, and I'm a volunteer with the Barack Obama campaign."

I wouldn't have believed he'd win the nomination, and I wouldn't have believed that I'd ever do something like sign up to call voters in Pennsylvania on his behalf. It is... weird. Not me, not at all. But also oddly fun and extremely easy. I'm "phonebanking," as they say, from home -- you can sign up here -- and five seconds later you have a list of 25 people to call in the battleground state of your choice. You click one button and a suggested script pops up. Voila, you're a volunteer.

I've tried to call 75 people total, in two nights; I've spoken to about a third of them. Most of those people, most of you will be happy to note, are already Obama supporters. One of my lists was almost all elderly voters in Philadelphia, and talking to an 89-year-old woman who wants to discuss why Obama's right on Iraq is fairly awesome. Not one person on the Philly list said he or she was voting for McCain. In fact, I don't even think one of those people was undecided.

But then I got to the second list, which had mostly Harrisburg-area numbers on it. Several of these people said very clearly they were undecided, which sort of left me at this weird impasse and urgently calling Kelly for advice. The script has the question phrased as, "I'm calling to see if you have any questions about Barack Obama and if you've decided who you'll be supporting on Tuesday," or something similar. That seemed right to me, because it's awkward to launch right into TELL ME WHO YOU'RE VOTING FOR RIGHT NOW GODDAMNIT, which is really the point of the call, along with seeing whether anyone needs a ride to the polls. But the order of that two-part question gives people a chance to say no, they have not decided which candidate but also no, they do not have any questions. And then you're like, "uh. do you, uh, want to talk about it?" like you are some kind of absentee therapist, and they've already told you they don't have questions, so... yeah. Where do you go from there?

Some interesting case studies:

• Very unfriendly 63-year-old woman who basically hung up in my ear after she said, "Yes, I know who I'm voting for," and I asked if she'd tell me or if she'd prefer not to, and the click came before it was out of my mouth.



• Very friendly man I talked to for an HOUR last night. He is a member of a group I truly thought didn't exist and was a product of the media's collective imagination: a Hillary supporter who switched to McCain. He finds Obama "scary" and "untrustworthy" and was actually fascinating to talk to.



• Nice woman whose daughter's name was on my list and who assured me that "everyone in her family and also the entire city of Harrisburg" was voting for Obama. When I told her that unfortunately that was not the case based on the people I'd called that night, she tried to convince me to give her the names and numbers of the McCain supporters and undecideds so that she could give them a piece of her mind.



• Somewhat nice man who told me that he is undecided because he's retired, and the most important thing to him was each candidate's "retirement spending plan." I tried to ask him what he meant by that exactly (do any of you know?), if he was talking about Social Security or something else, and he would not specify. He just said that it was the most important thing to him and the Obama and McCain plans were similar and therefore he couldn't decide. I'll confess to being rendered speechless by that one. Really, you can't think of one other thing that's important to you? Not the economy, not the war, not health care, not Sarah Palin's $22,000 hair... nothing? I briefly considered reading this David Sedaris essay to him, but then I thought the Obama campaign might not be helped by some random volunteer using profanity on the phone, so I refrained.


Anyway. I am kind of loving this whole experience, and it's made even more interesting by the fact that I never thought I'd do anything like it. I'm still holding on to my disillusioned journalistic cynicism and I still think the Democrats have plenty of time to mess this up, as well as plenty of faith that many voters in this country can disappoint me in myriad ways, so I'm not counting any chickens or putting any eggs in baskets or generally participating in any poultry-related metaphors until after Thanksgiving.

Chicken says, Leave me outta this.