What have I been up to, since I obviously haven’t been blogging? Currently I’ve managed to ensnare myself into a design course that I am less than thrilled about. I’m also sort of in a band that never ever plays (I don’t play the bass!). As per seadragon’s challenge, I’ve been running more or less regularly in the mornings.
What else have I been doing? Taking democracy into my own hands by phonebanking for the local Democratic Party office. Figure I can’t afford to sit out on campaigning like I did in 2004, when we ran the most milquetoast politician possible on a “not Bush” platform (I actually like Kerry a whole lot better as an Obama surrogate than campaigning for himself!). Phonebanking isn’t my ideal way to volunteer, really. I hate dealing with the phone, and also nobody likes getting unsolicited phone calls - particularly about something as touchy as politics. In my experience, people are a lot less inclined to be mean to your face when canvassing, than they are to yell at an anonymous, faceless voice over the phone. I’ve even hung up on a phonebanker before when he refused to let me off! (Note to the National Democratic Party phonebankers - when someone tells you they don’t donate over the phone under any circumstances, it’s probably best not to argue, and steer them towards the web or mail-in donation instead).
After doing it for awhile, however, it’s really not that rough. When you volunteer to phonebank for a campaign, your job isn’t really to engage the person in discussion or debate. All you do is ask the person questions such as “what’s the most important issue to you?”, and “do you have any strong opinions about such and such candidate?” The goal of phonebanking is to try and identify voters who are on the fence, or need more information. Those voters are then targeted for further outreach, flyers, etc. At first I was pretty nervous doing it, but now it’s become kind of boring asking the same questions over and over again. Being a political junkie, I almost wish someone would ask me questions about where the candidates (particularly Obama) stand on the issues. This almost never happens.
I like it when people respond to the question about the “single issue” with consternation - “but there’s more than one issue that’s really important!” Even though it makes it harder to identify their preferences in the system, it’s quite heartening to hear that people are actively thinking about the issues. Again, this is also pretty rare. Most people have a signature issue, whether it be abortion or education, and we try to follow up with these voters regarding our candidates’ stances on that particular issue.
Today, one such voter managed to temporarily dampen my renewed enthusiasm in the electoral process. Now keep in mind that I phrased the issue question like this: “In your opinion, what is THE single most important issue affecting both the state of Kansas and the nation?” Most answers to that question involved, say, the economy or jobs or terrorism (ranging across the aisle from Democrats to Independents and Republicans). Most answers I could understand, even if I didn’t necessarily agree. What was this woman’s answer?
“English as the official language of the United States.”
“Really? That’s your final answer?” I wanted to ask her, the way Regis Philbin does during the beginning rounds of ‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire’ when he’s hinting to you that you might want to choose a different answer! Instead I just asked her to repeat herself, and she did.
Out of all the economic turmoil, the fact that the country is embroiled in two difficult wars, oil prices are skyrocketing, wages outpaced by inflation - this was the most important thing she could think of? Really? There is a dim hope that maybe she was just being facetious and throwing out any old answer just to get me off the phone, but she was very patient with answering my other questions about the congressional and state races.
I guess whether or not tax forms are available in Spanish is way more of a big deal than one’s own ability to pay those taxes. I love democracy, but sometimes it makes me cringe.