"AMMO" in large green letters was emblazoned on the license plate. Nothing else held my attention as I pulled into a driveway deep in the New Hampshire woods. "Live Free or Die," I thought. The front door opened. "Hi. I'm from the Obama campaign," I said.
A woman, squat and 60-ish, cut me off. "Not interested," she said, glaring at me and closing the door.
Walking back to my car, I looked at "Ammo" again. Maybe I had been lucky.
I was part of Barack Obama's ground game—a nationwide army of volunteers knocking on doors and canvassing voters all across America whose job it was to identify his supporters and get out the vote. My one goal was to get Obama elected. It was the only thing I thought and cared about; it was the big picture.
As November 4th drew near, hundreds of Obama volunteers from Western Massachusetts headed north to the battleground state of New Hampshire. In 2000 George Bush won the Granite State narrowly over Al Gore. John Kerry won the state in 2004 by less than a percent. John McCain is almost a native son in New Hampshire and an Obama victory here was in serious doubt. Our big push (GOTV: Get Out the Vote) would begin the Friday before Election Day and run right through the 4th in what was no less than a mass invasion attempting to keep a pivotal state blue.
I never knew what to expect in New Hampshire. Now finding the right house, I saw two yard signs side by side: McCain and Obama. A woman explained tearfully that her husband was a McCain supporter while she was for Obama and there was nothing she could do to change his mind. The woman's daughter came outside, holding her infant child. Another volunteer borrowed the family's camera and photographed the three of them together as the husband disappeared behind the house.
For me the campaign had started in the snow during the New Hampshire primary. The polls had Obama well ahead of Hillary, but after New Hampshire I didn't trust polls. Through the summer and now into autumn I kept returning to the highways and rocky dirt roads where the occasional "NObama" and destroyed Obama signs marked the landscape. As a good Democrat, I had learned how elections can turn out unexpectedly. The air was growing colder and the trees were going bare. All I could do was be in New Hampshire every one of these last five days.
A man came out of his garage wiping grease from his hands. Two old hot rods were inside and several more sat in the driveway. Several seconds passed. "No politician ever did anything for me," he muttered. "Afghanistan. Oughtta turn it into glass." He went on. "Maybe a depression is good. Just start all over again."
Behind a screen door there was an old woman sitting at the kitchen table. "C'mon in," she said. "Just about to have lunch." She was in the middle of a game of Scrabble, her meal encased in cellophane. She saw my Obama button. "I'm for him," she said finishing a word on the board. "Can't walk, but I'm voting."
"Need a ride?" I asked.
"My son will take me." She picked up another letter and carefully placed it between two others. She grinned. "We need change."
*
Voter registration lists were not foolproof; people had died or moved. And there were the silent homes with "For Sale" signs jabbed into front lawns or the abandoned house or the empty lot where an address number used to be. There were folks who probably lied and others who refused to say whom they were voting for because they had their reasons. By Election Day names had been analyzed, culled, scrubbed and finalized so that only likely Obama supporters made the final cut as targets for getting out the vote.
"In America," the man said, serving us pizza, "they say I'm Greek, and in Greece they call me American." He had black curly hair and was somewhere beyond middle age. He wiped his hands on his apron, raised a finger, and hurried away. "I vote for Obama," he announced. "I like his health plan."
Most of the carpoolers came as strangers to me. Gathering in two morning shifts in Northampton, they came in ones, twos, sometimes more, and sometimes as families. There was a woman on disability worried about wetlands, a reader of books on tape formerly for Kucinich, a lawyer, a doctor, a retired computer technician, a designer of jewelry, an 18-year-old boy working at a Cumberland Farms, and a woman who talked about the real reason World Trade Center Building 7 fell.
Hillsborough, New Hampshire is an old mill town. It was known to be Republican territory and driving time was more than three hours round trip. But Hillsborough desperately needed volunteers and about 40 of us said yes. These people whom I didn't know went because they were asked. On that day that was all I needed to know about them.
Assumptions came easy in New Hampshire. If an American flag was flying, they were Republicans. Democrats don't fly the flag. Two banners waved outside a modest ranch house: Old Glory and the POW/MIA flag. The man at the door wore a faded Patriots cap and was in his '60s, and when he stepped onto the porch he didn't say a word. We waited.
"Send Palin back to Alaska and McCain back to 'Nam," he barked. The town was taking the trees and woods that abutted his property. Condos were moving in. He had hired a lawyer but optimism didn't shine from his face.
Sometimes there was no need for a door to be shut in my face. "You're looking for my wife. She's not home." The 30-something man was leaning against a pickup. His two buddies, silent and staring, were drinking beers. The man folded his arms. "Going to get plenty of dead people voting for you. That's what Democrats always do."
I thought he was joking but he wasn't smiling. I wished him a good day. The Obama flyer still in my hand awaited the next name on my list.
In Winchester a woman with red eyes answered the door. She said she worked in health care and had supported Hillary. Obama was her only option, she told me. Her place was one half of a one-story wooden duplex. When the door closed it rattled and there was daylight between it and the floor. The New England winter would be here soon; her walls were thin and I hadn't asked about insulation.
Buzzwords and demographics flew: lipstick on a pig, elitist, William Ayers, Reverend Wright, spread the wealth, Palin, Joe the Plumber. Polls: Gallup, Quinnipiac, Rasmussen, Zogby, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Newsweek, Time, ABC, CBS, NBC. The Vote: white male, white female, black, Hispanic, Asian, over 65, youth, over $100,000, under $50,000, Evangelical, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish.
Fifty-two-year-old male. Unaffiliated voter. T-shirt, scraggly blondish hair, and friendly. "Who else is running?" he asked.
"McKinney, Barr and Nader."
"Fell off the wing of a B-52 back in the '70s," he said. "Messed me up real good. Been disabled ever since. Did Obama serve?"
I said no and talked about the new GI Bill of Rights. He knew nothing about it.
"You know about the Kennedys?" he said out of nowhere.
"I remember."
He smiled and took a flyer.
I couldn't tell if he was advocating assassination or just concerned about it. I had met a black woman who told me she wouldn't vote for Obama because "they'd kill him." It was out there and I pushed it further away.
*
It's Monday before Election Day and a young woman stands before us shivering. She is hoping we are buyers for her yard sale. We are on opposite sides of tables covered with items we have no interest in.
"I'm unregistered," she says. "I like Obama. If I were to vote… I'd vote for him."
We explain New Hampshire's same day voter registration, where her polling station is, that this is a crucial election, and her vote is very important.
I put down the alarm clock that I've been holding.
"I don't know," she said, watching my hand empty.
She walked slowly back into her house.
It is too late for persuasion.
Wall Street, Main Street, the Dow, mortgage crisis, credit, lending, layoffs, job loss, foreclosures, $700 billion, AIG, monthly sales figures, 401K, bailout.
Election Day: Northampton sends 100 volunteers over the border. We are "flushers" and have been tasked to flush out any and all Obama voters we can find. In the New Hampshire pre-dawn, remember-to-vote cards smiling their Obama smiles have been hung on doorknobs throughout the state. As part of the second wave, we return to many of these homes. "Don't forget the side door," I say, reminding my comrades of the New Hampshire tradition of not using the front door. There are few people home and the ones that are have voted or claim they will vote. Back at Walpole headquarters, they take our lists. We want to know about the people we were unable to contact.
"They will be called and called again until just before the polls close," we are told.
As I return to Massachusetts, NPR plays in the car. Something about long lines. I close my eyes and sleep.
At 9 p.m. I'm outside a tavern named Paradise. The inside crowd spills onto the sidewalk. I can't get in. Ohio is called for Obama. Cheers, embraces. I'm happy, not jubilant. I don't see anyone I recognize and go home.
Eleven p.m. A new president-elect. Grant Park. Thousands and thousands. Faces and faces. Oprah's tears. The new first family. Obama, soaring and serious. The big picture.
But I have been seeing smaller pictures: white shipmates who said that if blacks had their own ship they would be incapable of taking it to sea. A bent and white-haired Jackie Robinson walking past me on a Florida golf course.
I turn off the television and remember a tall man I met in New Hampshire. He was working a leaf blower, making his lawn all green again. His license plate said Veteran. Turning off the machine, he pointed to the Veterans for Obama button I wore on my jacket.
"I'm for McCain," he said. "It's my son you want. He already voted."
I asked him what branch he was in.
"The Navy," he says. He had been on a flagship more than 30 years ago
"Me too." For me it had been a slow wooden minesweeper called Vital.
"When this day is over, half the people are going to be very upset," he says.
"I just hope we all realize that we all have the same problems," I say.
He smiles. We shake hands. The leaves fly again. On the last day of the campaign, he was the last New Hampshire voter I spoke to.
New Hampshire went for Obama by 11 points. Points, numbers, margins.
Now I hear a woman's voice speaking to me from some town in New Hampshire whose name I had forgotten. She was making breakfast. "Obama," she said. "I want someone I can be proud of."
I switch off the light. I sit in the darkness. After a moment I find my way to bed.
