Since I’ve been here, I’ve seen the following websites emerge as must-reads:
538.com - A site run by a statistician who did a lot of work for Baseball Prospectus (not just a statistician, but a sabermetrician!) who turned his eye to political polls and implemented a method of weighing them based on their accuracy in the past.
I was up, washed, and packed up at 7 am, walking through the drizzle to reach my train to Union Station. I united with Rachael, another Baltimorean volunteering to trek south to work for Obama in Virginia. We arrived in the District around 8:40, and took the Red Line Metro to meet Sharon at the Cleveland Park station.
Sharon was to be doing the driving, and we packed our luggage into her Honda CRV to make the trip down. We had a 1pm appointment for a training session at the Plumbers and Steamfitters Local 540 in Newport News. We got on the road from Cleveland Park and started out down I-95. We stopped at McDonald’s for breakfast and I got a delicious Egg McMuffin meal along with the new Southern Chicken Breakfast Biscuit sandwich. Nothing says life on the highway like being uncomfortably full after eating fast food on the roadside.
It was a beautiful drive down. The fall colors were on display, and our particular stretches of highway, 95 to Richmond and then I-64 from Richmond to Southeastern Virginia, were awash in autumn leaves.
Obama’s Virginia strategy, the DNC’s Susan Mariner told our group of 20 in the large union hall, essentially boils down to this: There are high numbers of Democratic voters in Northern Virginia and high number of Republican voters in Western Virginia who (depending of course on the specifics of turnout), will ostensibly cancel each other out. This leaves my diverse corner of Southeastern Virginia as the area that will swing the election. There are a number of various military bases here, and many families around here are comprised of veterans or currently-serving military personnel. Also there are large numbers of minorities (mostly black), many of whom are registered for the first time.
We adjourned and drove into Hampton. Before going to the local campaign HQ, we went to drop of our things at our resort for the week, the home of Hampton Mayor Molly Ward. We met our host who is essentially running a boarding house for volunteers all week, with the expectation that 7-10 people could be staying here. I staked my claim on a bed, thanked the mayor/maitre d’hotel and got on the road to the office.
We got the office and got the quick and dirty on canvassing. I paired up with another carpetbagger, Adam from Washington, and we set out to knock on doors. I knocked on 30 doors, and about half of the folks were home. Mostly undecideds, so I tried to take their temperatures and speak to the issues that they thought were most important. For many it was the economy and job creation and Medicare, so I tried to speak as best I could on the subjects, mixing in a bit of my own reasons for why I was there. Everyone was very friendly and reasonable, even if they may not have agreed. We packed up shop a bit after dusk.
I was excited to finish because Senator Obama was to be in nearby Norfolk, speaking at the home stadium of Baltimore Orioles minor league affiliate Norfolk Tides. The Tides’ stadium was packed in the chilly night, and I could see pretty clearly, though a bit far away. The crowd greeted Senator Obama with a frenzied roar, but even then it seemed like his energy exceeded that of crowd, which especially amazed me given the length and intensity of this campaign. He touched on so many issues (transportation infrastructure, technology investments, and veterans’ benefits) and it really got me excited for this next week of work.
More canvassing on Wednesday.