When my 15 year old daughter and I set out for non-communist, real America, coastal Virginia last week to work for Barack Obama, we were wary of what we would find--but that's why we went. My 80 year old mother, a New York transplant and life-long democrat lives there, and though she was planning on voting for BHO, she was still stuck somewhat in Hillaryland, so we invited her to come along, too.
We live in Vermont, one of the most racially homogeneous states in the union. We had canvassed before in NH, which has a similar demographic. What we found in coastal Virginia, which does not, was an object lesson why Obama's message of hope and change are not rhetorical flourishes, and why, despite the mess we find ourselves in, including the widening gap between rich and poor, we've got a fighting chance not simply to solve our problems, but to, in fact, create a more perfect union.
Let me continue after the fold...
Our canvassing took us from predominantly white, solidly middle-class neighborhoods, to predominantly black, lower-middle-class enclaves, and at almost every turn, we were surprised and heartened. We knocked on the door of a 90 year old white woman who showed up on our list as an undecided who seemed hesitant to tell us who she was voting for. So we said, "You can tell us if you're voting for McCain, we just have to know so we won't disturb you again." It was then, when she looked at us with a quizzical smile, that we realized she hadn't heard our initial question. "I'm voting for Obama," she told us. We asked her if she'd like an absentee ballot so she didn't have to wait on line on November 4th and she scoffed. She wanted to wait on line, she said. She wouldn't miss it for the world.
We were walking back up a neighboring street when a man came running up to us waving the literature we had left at his door. "Did you leave this?" he asked. We braced ourselves for some kind of verbal attack--after all, the people next door and across the street had big McPalin signs in their yards so we imagined we were in a republican district. And he was Hispanic, and so, schooled by the press over the past few years about racial/ethnic/religious divisiveness in this country, we had reason to assume he was pissed. And then he said, "Can you get me an Obama yard sign. Please. And make sure you put down that there are three of us who will be voting democratic."
Back at the office, I did a quick survey of who was there. Lots of college-age kids from all over the country, and one from the UK, black and white, and a small army of older folks, also racially mixed, and a couple of middle-aged people who were juggling their Obama work with paying jobs. Everyone who walked through the door was given a job to do. Ego was not in play.
We made phone calls. A lot of phone calls. A couple stand out: the 83 year old African American man who had just registered to vote for the first time. The 73 year old Jewish woman (she told me this repeatedly) who said voting for Obama made her feel the same way that voting for JFK had. The right-to-lifer my daughter engaged for many minutes, explaining the difference between being pro-choice and pro-abortion.
Listening, I was proud of my daughter, and proud of my candidate, and proud of my country. Despite the best efforts of some, we have learned how to get along. These past 20 months have shown us this. We are a diverse nation, and instead of drawing energy by exploiting those differences, we are drawing it by sheer aggregation--by coming together. What feels different now, than in the past, is that the big-tentedness of the democratic party does not feel expedient, or pragmatic, or even political, it feels organic. Though it was Obama who first suggested that we could get here, he did not do this. We did.