I was born in 1975, and I am older than half of the volunteers at the Obama headquarters. But I wasn’t the oldest person there by a long shot. The group was probably more African American than white, but it was close.
One volunteer was an older African-American electrician who had worked on the lights in the same ritzy restaurant where a young white woman was a waitress. They bonded.
Another overheard conversation snippet: “You’re a nanny? That’s great; I’m actually in the market. How much do you charge?”
The volunteers were sent out in small groups to go door-to-door in precincts that the campaign had targeted for their get out the vote operation. But people added their own ideas to the mix as well. One thirty-something Harvard law grad volunteered to canvass his 350-unit apartment complex: “It’s gated, so you can only get in with a resident. But it’s full of young professionals.” Turns out, he knocked on every door and the response was overwhelming. “Anytime you canvass for a Democrat in the South and the white guys are with you, you know things are good,” he told me.
Anne Cox Chambers, who is eighty-eight years old and one of the richest women in the world, walked through the doors at about 10:00 a.m. Google her. She was dressed impeccably, as were her two middle-aged colleagues. I assumed that they were “making an appearance.” But they asked for their precinct packet, and promptly went out to knock on doors. Her comment to me: “People say ‘Oh, it’s so good of you do this.’ But to me, this is fun! This is what politics is all about. I can’t wait to knock on some doors and say I’m for Obama.”
“Yeah,” the state director told me as she was leaving. “I gave her like thirty-five pages of names yesterday.”
After a few hours making phone calls as a volunteer, I went home and put my Obama sign in my yard. And, for a little while, let the campaign ease out of my system. The next day, we ordered a pizza for the Superbowl. The delivery guy from Savage Pizza stood on my porch with sleeve tattoos down both arms and a bull ring in his nose. “I like your Obama sign,” he said.
