I've been canvassing quite a bit the last few weeks.
The weather has been glorious every Saturday, and it has been wonderful to get out and talk to real people rather than just banter and rave with disembodied intellects online.
I've been working on my legislative district, LD 7, the old-ethnic, blue collar, ever-more Hispanic neighborhood of Omaha. I was born and grew up here, then moved away for 25 years and just returned last year.
Omaha is the only city in the nation with our own separate electoral vote
(NE CD2 - NE and ME are the only 2 not-winner-take-all states)
There have been many interesting moments as I have learned how to share with people, but yesterday one conversation really stood out.
Added bonus: our brand-new new Bob Kerry Pedestrian Bridge across the Missouri:
The only pedestrian bridge linking two states. 26M$. Praise be to earmarks!
There are many undecided voters in NE LD7. A few weeks ago I went down one street, and 10 of 12 voters were undecided. These are classic Reagan Democrats who are at the end of their rope with the Republican Party. Conscious or not, race is elephant in the room.
I'm a very imperfect canvasser. First I was too reluctant to engage undecideds, now sometimes I talk too much about my thoughts rather than really learning how to get undecided voters to open up so that I can address their real concerns.
Yesterday I had my most interesting encounter by far.
I went to the door, and found that the person on my list had moved. As usually, I tried to engage the person-not-on-my-list to ask for her support and communicate our interest in her vote.
What followed was not the usual. It turns out she was a Republican, a mother in her 30's with a family. She started exploring questions with me. Some of this may be difficult to read and a bit tedious, but I trust if you stick it out, further down you'll see the meaning.
It became clear there was a great struggle going on within her. She couldn't dismiss Obama: her heart and her mind wouldn't let her. Yet neither her heart nor her mind would let her abandon her conservative convictions.
She was not a "yahoo yelling crazy insults," but a thoughtful, concerned person.
Concerned about national defense, and, yes, concerned about unborn life.
This is where we had a long discussion. I won't go into all the details (I don't even remember them), but a few key things stand out.
She asked (honestly, earnestly) how pro-choice people can make a decision about what life must be protected.
I shared that when I see a late term abortion, which is indeed gruesome, I feel that something in me emotionally says this is wrong. In Roe v. Wade (which I have not studied), the Supreme Court gave legal backing to protecting late-term fetuses. However, when I look at an embryo I do not have the same instinctive emotional reaction. The decision to view such a being as human is more an intellectual one, not a matter of direct perception. Early term pregnancies are a matter of conviction, not feeling. This is something upon which people of good will can disagree.
I may not have said all that, but this was the general tone. We went on about ensoulment, the ambiguous time period of conception, and etc. The details were important, but the respectful, calm tenor of both parties was even more important.
In any case I steered the conversation from the theoretical to the practical one: reducing unwanted pregnancies and abortions. I told her about international comparisions - that some countries with the most liberal abortion laws (like the Netherlands) have the lowest abortion rates, while some states with draconian abortion laws, like the Philippines, have horrible abortion rates.
She asked me if I had ever been a Catholic (oh, yes I did certainly used to be!). She asked me (again, very earnestly, searchingly) how could it be that a Catholic could ever vote Democrat. It made no sense to her.
After a short story about "cafeteria Catholicism" and Jesuit training in a critical approach towards faith and Church leadership, I got to the heart of her concerns. I replied that under Clinton abortions decreased, while under Bush they increased, and that if one is truly concerned about unborn life one needs to look at the whole picture of social policies, not just a legalistic approach.
Then we veered off this central (for her) issue. The conversation seemed to ramble.
To be frank, I began to wonder if this wasn't one of those voters who is wasting the time of canvassers (I must say I've read of Kossacks doing such to McCain canvassers).
Then she started to talk about how difficult it was with her husband's family. She was from rural Nebraska, but he was from Chicago, and they were all died-in-the-wool Democrats. They could never talk politics seriously because she always felt that an explosion with emotional consequences would follow if she brought up Bush, or her convictions.
Then I noticed there were tears in her eyes. Now I knew I wasn't dealing with a time-waster.
She thanked me and said that it was different with me. She didn't have anything invested in me, and she could talk to a Democrat without all the emotional stress involved with near and dear Democrats, including co-workers.
I thanked her for being so thoughtful. (I had already had one guy earlier tell me that he was for McCain - "To be President you have to be US citizen!"
The conversation moved on to national defense and other topics. She said 'I've heard he is the most liberal and you want me to move from 20-30% right to 95% left'. I told here that Sen. Obama was rated most liberal only by one group, and that the American Conservative Union had given him a 70% rating.
She said she appreciated how Obama had talked about abortion during last the debate. She said she never thought she would hear a Democrat talk about abortion that way, and what we really need is someone who can bring us all together.
I explain Sen. Obama's "partial birth" and "present" votes to her.
Then the topic moved to Palin's visit to Omaha. I shared my views on Palin's problems with integrity, then I started to feel I must move along my list (we'd been talking for 30-45 minutes), and more important, I didn't know where the conversation was going. It didn't feel right to "close the deal," I felt like I needed to give this woman her space to sort things out.
I wished her all the best, forgot to tell her how much we'd hope for her support, and went on.
This says to me that canvassing is not just a mechanical action (although the mechanical actions are important), but it can be a very important part of taking back America. It can be the beginning a real person-to-person dialogue beyond the spirits in our heads. It is in such dialogue that a real, renewed American community can be built.
Just down the street from this lady I talked to another man in his thirties, who was an angry small businessman. No "Obama is not a US citizen" yahoo, but a man who has grown up in the anti-community, anti-government delusions of the Reagan era, who supports Ron Paul and who earnestly fears his children will never know true opportunity.
I wish I could have known where to start a dialogue with him, but I am not yet such a canvasser.
I wished him the chance to enjoy the glorious autumn late afternoon and moved on, mechanically finding several Obama supporters on the block, thanking them for their support and turning them into early voters.
Best of all was my last visit, a 73 year Italian nonna who could barely speak English. She a strong Obama supporter who spoke proudly of her children and grandchildren who would all be voting for Obama!