More Election Reflections

This campaign has been a major focus in my life since last spring when I signed on to go to Asheville, NC and work in the primary. I have knocked on doors, made phone calls, cheered and held signs at rallies, and spent countless hours keeping tabs on the campaign's progress as reported by the media. At times, it seemed that the election could not come soon enough. Now that it's over, it almost seems like a dream that Barack Obama will be our next President!


But it's finally sinking in - and now the real work begins. One of the things President-Elect Obama wants is for all of us to stay involved in our government, and as proof of this please check out the website Change.gov from the office of the President-Elect. As he says, "Today we begin in earnest the work of making sure that the world we leave our children is just a little bit better than the one we inhabit today." On this website you can find anything you want to know about transition plans, the inauguration, press releases, cabinet offices, biographical profiles, and you can even apply for a job in the new administration. But the most important feature of this website is that it asks us to share our vision for what our country can be. I recommend that you spend some time exploring this site, bookmark it, and go to it often during the next 4 years.


There are so many memories from this past 6 months, but some of the best are the people I have met and worked with along the way. Last week, I knocked on doors and made phone calls along side Daidee and Steve from Chattanooga. We rode to Charlotte together, shared a guest house together, and celebrated together at 11 pm on election night. Our hosts, June and Phil, also joined in the champagne toast. Their "labradoodle" Dawson was so excited he jumped up in June's lap.


Kevin, our intrepid field organizer, never let us forget that we were making a difference in NC, calling us in from a late lunch at 4pm on Tuesday afternoon to go back out and find voters who had not yet made it to the polls which closed at 7:30 pm. At 6:45 I knocked on a door and a young woman answered and started apologizing that she had just gotten home from work and hadn't voted. I simply said, "Get your shoes on and let's go!" We made it with 10 minutes to spare. Kevin was right - NC was so close that those last-minute voters gave Obama the extra edge needed to squeak out a victory in NC.



As I walked through the phone bank room, back at headquarters, at about 8 pm, I noticed that the basketball hoop used by Senator Obama was still on the wall. How can I ever forget being in that room with him and his tossing the ball up in the air and then into the hoop.



And the most exciting surprise - finding my picture on the front page of the New York Times on Nov 4!! That's definitely a first and perhaps the only time that will ever happen to me.


Another first for me was the paid TV ad. The local Grundy County TV station (GCTV) offers local community programming and our Cumberland Plateau for Obama group thought it would be a good idea to place some local spots for Obama on the air for the 5 days preceding the election. I was one of 4 people who did 1-minute spots - my topic was the economic crisis. Other topics included health care, education and religion (no, he's not a Muslim!)


I'm sure this afterglow will eventually mellow, but I hope that my renewed enthusiasm for participatory democracy will burn brightly for the rest of my life - "government of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish from this earth." Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address