So Saturday I did my second bit of volunteering for Obama, the first being phone bank work during the primary.  Along with about 40 or so other Chicagoans, I drove out to Hamond, IN to knock on doors.  I’ve never really been that interested in the sort of face-to-face interactions with people, especially not talking about politics, but with Indiana lookin like a real possibility, I thought I should go do my thing.

Our goal for the day was mostly to talk to people who were either Obama supporters or on the fence, and to get them to vote early or persuade them to vote for Obama, respectively.  They gave us a list of names and addresses and we fanned out and went down the list.  Everyone I talked to was pretty cool about having someone bug them, and I’m sure folks in Indiana are pretty sick of getting bothered by people, so I appreciated it.  I don’t think I changed any minds, though I think I did help a few people by talking about early voting and making sure they knew where their polling places were.  I knocked on about 60 doors and talked to about 20 people.  So that was that.

It was a little strange, though.  I kinda felt like the cliche urban yuppie Democrat, knocking on doors and proselytizing.  At least  didn’t drive my Volvo there or have a latte with me.  I was really self-conscious of that at first, but I got over it soon enough.  I didn’t end up needing to do that much persuading, so it felt good to just be able to give people information they needed.  It felt mostly like civil service and not so terribly partisan.  It was funny too, becaus on teh way home I really felt like I had done something, even though I really hadn’t.  I think it’s relatively rare to do anythign beyond voting to help the process out.  Maybe I should be an election judge or something, try to do a little bit more.

The other cool thing was meeting all the Obama supporters.  They were all super nice, but pretty hardcore.  That’s awesome, of course, to really believe, but it was funny because I’m certainly not that intense.   I was certainly the only one there who’d given money to McCain as well.   I’m not sure whether I’ll go back next weekend, I think they’ll do fine without me.

(I read on other blogs that the campaign asked them not to blog about canvassing.  I hope it’s not true, but I wouldn’t be surprised, what with the Obama campaign’s total and complete on-messageness. )