NJ Canvassing For Obama or: How I Came To Learn About The Culture Of Death From A Barefoot Woman

On Saturday, my fiance and I spent the greater portion of the day volunteering for the Obama campaign in our local county here in New Jersey. It turns out that a friend of mine from high school is a leading organizer of the volunteer effort in our county, so he ended up seeing that my fiance and I were supporters of Obama on Facebook, decided to contact us, and boom, just like that we're out on our feet in the brisk winter air talking politics with the local folk. And, of course, there was one special lady we came across during our day...more on that later.

In terms of the turnout at the canvassing event, I was really pleasantly surprised. There were around a few dozen people that showed up, most of whom said something to the effect of "yeah, I just saw the event posting on the Obama website and decided to come"; apparently, this kind of turnout on Saturday's "day of action" was replicated across NJ, so that's a good sign for the Obama campaign organization here in NJ. Anyway, after the distribution of some nice Obama campaign items (extra stuff courtesy of the connection with my friend), the districts were divided up and my fiance and I were off to knock on some doors.

Our route involved about 40 homes with a history of voting for the Democratic Party, all of which we managed to visit, less than half off which involved actually speaking with the residents (although, for those that were either too afraid to open the door to what they perceived to be a young woman and her pointy haired little brother, or for those simply out enjoying their Saturday off, they received a nice Obama campaign pamphlet wedged in the handle of their front door). For those houses that we were indeed greeted by people, one of them involved a door slamming in our faces and another involved an extremely old gentlemen that had a very difficult time hearing 95% of the words coming from my mouth.

However, everyone else we talked to resulted in really great conversation and led to some pretty interesting political observations. First observation: for every person that was an Obama supporter, their support was strong and they were very enthusiastic about his candidacy; they'd go on about how they've already donated, how inspired they were, and how they'll be gathering up their friends and family to vote for Obama in the February 5th primary. Second observation: for the rest of the people we spoke to, they were largely undecided, i.e. we never came across a strong Clinton supporter (of course, this is a VERY small sample of NJ voters we're talking about here, so it's really just wishful thinking on my part that the state is broken down into ardent Obama supporters and undecided voters...then again, this is probably more scientific than those New Hampshire exit polls, ba-dum-chh!); most of the time they were between Obama and Clinton and hadn't made up their minds yet, and some times they would discuss how they liked Edwards but were thinking of voting for the other candidates (we can thank the media's decision this past week to unofficially declare the Edwards campaign dead for this). And the third observation: for all the undecided voters we talked to, they overwhelmingly kept referring to the discussion of the history and experience of Clinton vs. the freshness and likability of Obama, so it looks like this political narrative is truly resonating with the voters.

Now, on to the woman referenced in the title of this post...or should I say the barefoot woman. So, my fiance and I come to this one house (with a really ugly porch made out of tile, by the way) and a woman promptly answers the door. She was a woman of large stature, one might say, and she wasn't wearing any shoes nor any socks (later, I'd come to find out from my fiance's observation that she apparently had bloody scabs on her feet, the possible explanation for her lack of foot attire, but I digress). It is important to recognize that the woman was extremely pleasant throughout the entire conversation, smiling her rose colored cheeks at the two eager volunteers standing before her door. And so, our conversation went a little something like this...

----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- -----

Me: Hi [Barefoot Woman's Name], my name is Chris and this is Andrea, and we're volunteers with the Obama campaign, and we've been walking around the neighborhood talking with people about the upcoming Democratic primary here in NJ. First, are their any issues that you'd consider to be personally important to you during this election season?

Barefoot Woman: Well, I'm very much pro-life and so I could never vote for a candidate that wasn't pro-life, as well.

Me (after a slight pause) : Oh ok, well I believe all of the Democratic candidates are pro-choice, so has there really been any one of them that you've been interested in or following closely during this election season?

Barefoot Woman (wildly grinning): Well, no, because I can't support a candidate as long as they support a culture of death.

Me (stunned): Well then...I guess that's pretty clear...(uncomfortable laughter)...Thank you and have a nice day.

Barefoot Woman (foot scabs bleeding): Bye bye now!

----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- -----

So there you have it. Now, one might ask exactly why a woman that is so strongly pro-life would be on a list of voters with a history of voting for Democratic candidates...and that is a good question, one that I would love an answer to at some point. Regardless, I wish I hadn't been so blown away by the sheer enthusiasm with which this jolly woman pronounced the phrase "culture of death". If not, I might have mentioned that, assuming she'll be voting for one of the pro-life Republican candidates, she may want to take a look at a tiny little issue called the Iraq War, enthusiastically supported by the Republican candidates, responsible for hundreds of thousands of human deaths both American and foreign...but hey, who am I to say that this woman is a total hypocrite? Oh, right, I'm a person with common sense reasoning.

And, therefore, I hope that this woman and all residents like her will go out and perform their civic duty by voting in the upcoming New Jersey presidential primary which, as I told the woman, is being held...on February 6th.

Joking, of course.