Confessions of an Obama Volunteer

I went to Ohio and found hope, change, and a lot of unpersuadable voters.

“Do not depart from the script. Do not canvas alone. Only in pairs. And do not under any circumstances enter the house. It’s like one of those old horror movies: Do not go into the house. It’s quick and dirty. Make your pitch and get out.”

So says Tara Martin, one of the field organizers for the Obama campaign. She’s a short but energetic African-American woman whose bubbly good humor cannot quite hide her mission’s similarity to that of the Louis Gossett Jr. character in An Officer and a Gentleman: to whip the 200 or so lily-livered, latte-drinking New York liberals she sees in front of her into a crack squad of electoral marines, ready to parachute into a battleground state and go toe-to-toe with the Republican party faithful.

“I want you to look around you,” Martin says. “The people next to you: This is family. You’re not going to be talking to family. It’s been two years and these people are still undecided, you hearin’ me? Anywhere you want to go on vacation because you’ve heard it’s real nice? Those are not the places we are going be going. We’re not going to Santa Fe. We’re not going to be going to Aspen. These are not the spots we are heading.”

One man sat on his porch and intimated darkly that I “didn’t want to know” his reasons for not voting for Obama.

There are 200 or of us gathered together in an auditorium in the Teamsters Building on West 14th Street: old, young, black, white,  gay, straight—like an Obama speech come to life. The first thing they have us do, in fact, is watch the speech Obama gave at the 2004 convention on a giant video screen, looking out for certain themes—adversity overcome, challenges met—so we can fashion our own stories along similar lines. “It’s the Oprah effect,” says one of the campaign’s media advisors. “You know where she gets the person on the couch and they’re crying and she’s crying and then you go off and get your book deal? In Obamaland, that’s what we call that the story of self.”

This will be our first pitch to voters: a way of establishing some sliver of human contact. Then comes the script, a multiple-choice maze of conversational options designed to push through every available crack in every door. If voting for Obama, will they vote early? If not voting early, can they volunteer? If they can volunteer, when… We pair off into teams of two to for a little phone-banking role play—first just the two of us, then in front of the class. I get a Jewish retiree with purple spectacles called Ruth, whose easy smile manner does nothing to betray the mischief she is about to spring.

“Ring-ring, ring-ring,” I go.

Ruth looks at me, as if to say: I’m not picking up yet.

“Ring ring, ring-ring,” I say, a bit more insistently.

“Hello?”

“Hi, my name is Tom and I’m calling from the Obama campaign, how are you toda—”

“What is the matter with you people,” she yells. “I already told you I’m voting for him!”

“Oh… Well… Ah… That’s great. Well, in that case I just wanted to check that you know where your polling station and…..”

“Of course I know were it is. But how am I going to get to it? I’m in a wheelchair.”

I stare at her. There are some titters at the back of the room.

“Well…in that case we can get someone to pick you up and drive you there if you like... Hang on a minute, a wheelchair, did you say?”

“Yes. I’m paralyzed.”

“Well… In that case maybe you’d like to do some phone-banking for us? You’re just making calls just like this one. You won’t have to go anywhere, you just...”
 
The hall erupts in laughter.

Tara calls the role play to a halt. “Never, ever say that,” she says. “I’ve gotta say it but right now you people are whack. I think by tomorrow we can get you from whack to okay. And then maybe I can get you from okay to arright. And from arright maybe, just maybe we can get you to dope. But right now you guys are whack.”

We take our seats, a little shell-shocked by the responsibilities the campaign is entrusting us with: not just phone banking and door-to-door canvassing, but recruiting and organizing the next lot of volunteers that come in through the door—teaching on Tuesday what we learned on Monday. No other political campaign has entrusted its volunteers to quite this degree. “The old way of recruiting volunteers is done. Gone,” Tara says. “We have to get viral about it. I want you recruiting volunteers when you’re on a date. Hey, you rich? That’s nice. You like Barack Obama? No? Too bad. Peace.”