No one said campaign work was glorious; I spent the morning untangling wires (see left), vacuuming, and taking out the trash. Yes, that’s right: men’s work. As an organizer recently put it, one moment you could be talking high-level strategy, the next scrubbing the toilets. (The only difference for me is that I haven’t been talking strategy at any level).
Well, I guess I was also doing research, made a few calls, and cleaned some databases (as well as trashcans). Perhaps the most inspiring moment of the day happened while I was working next to an African-American woman, a schoolteacher, who came off the fence in the last week after hearing Obama speak. Her calls were passionate and personal: you could tell that, now that she’s made up her mind, this campaign is personal to her.
I suppose the news is going to relentlessly focus on the “momentum” that Hillary’s supposedly got now coming out of Nevada, but the truth is that each election is a new day. We saw that in Iowa, we saw it again (the other way) in New Hampshire, and we’ll see it again in a week. There’s a real, honest debate going on about what the future of America will look like going on in both parties, and it’s inspiring in the breadth of possibility. My wish is that our country will look at the choice through the lens of opportunity, not fear.
