Handbook to Field (3)

I just want to say to everyone who got out and jammed the streets yesterday: thank you for playing the game right.

This will be the last installment of this series. Next week: something new.

ELBOWS UP!

*

Small town Progressives and even moderate Democrats who’d been isolated since 9/11 emerged from their underground burrows and saw our office as a safe space where they could yell their reactions to the news and flail about. I did my best to get them out the door with walklists.

One kid who came in with his mom had a cultish devotion to our Obama cutout and would gesticulate before it and recite what sounded to me in my probable ignorance like a devotional chant: Obama Obama Obama HUP.

Supporters lined up for lawn signs like we were a fifteen dollar cupcake joint. Like we were giving away new Iphones. Collective obsession. This was also as far as many of them were willing to take their activism. It was a statement, one that took courage in a red county. Yard signs don't win elections, I'd say. Stay and make some phone calls, I'd say, and they’d laugh like I made a joke.

There was this retired railroad magnate who would get on me about how he knew who was sabotaging our side's signs around town, implying I should pay him for that information or otherwise reward his loyalty. Great, I told him, call the police then, sounds like property crime or vandalism. Here’s a phone list while you're at it.

His wife was running for the state house seat. This woman claimed to be the love child of Caroline Kennedy and a member of the British Royal Family. She was also running for office in Michigan even though she lived and worked as a high school Spanish teacher in Indiana. She was thoroughly cooked on pills and when she spoke I always expected her to pass out mid-sentence. She didn't win. I had no overwhelming feeling about that.

There were 'house parties', which were not the fun kind of parties. These were awkward gatherings where I was expected to anoint leaders and recruit volunteers to go out and knock doors and make phone calls. In one I was sandbagged into an argument about gun control with the hostess’ brother-in-law, who was a jerk but it was pretty clear pretty quick that we'd both been manipulated. I made an excuse and left them to their crudites and Bud Lite.

My territory had a sizeable Yemeni population, many of whom were registered to vote. The community inhabited a trailer park tucked between branches of the river and the locals mostly regarded them with suspicion. My attempts to reach them at their local mosque or through the trailer park’s management had yielded no results so I mentioned this to someone in Detroit and Rashida Tlaib, who was our Arab Outreach rep and running at the time for her first state house seat, took an afternoon to come all the way out to my office in the sticks. About a dozen of the Yemeni community heads showed up and I gave them the office for the afternoon. She spent a few hours with them, and when they emerged they each looked me in the eye and shook my hand, then went back and organized their people. It was one of the best things I saw on the campaign and if she asked me to come work for her now I'd seriously think about it.

Deputy Phil was a freshfaced kid bursting with an alarming amount of optimism. He was new to the campaign and in their cruelty they sent him straight to me. When we met I was like a shipwrecked sailor who'd gotten used to talking to himself for months and anyone who got near me just got hit with collateral damage. I soon saw his value and was able to leave him in charge so I could take over another half-county or so nearby.

Because we weren’t getting paid enough and I spent half my time on US-12 between Coldwater and Detroit my regional supervisor took pity on me and gave me a few hundred bucks’ worth of gas station gift cards. I ate a lot of hard boiled eggs, V8, jerky, and pickles in the car and to this day when I see a Shell sign it activates my hunger reflex.

McCain's campaign pulled out in early October but I still saw their one weird organizer in coffee shops sometimes, offering up Republican talking points to polite old women sitting in circles. He's probably in charge of the Air Force now.

In the last days I was just wandering out on bleak sparsely inhabited country roads and cul-de-sacs. I would leave my number on the office door in case anyone wanted to join me. No one joined me. I was mostly fine with that. I learned that while I was capable of intense engagement with others and really enjoyed interacting with people when we shared a common cause and had a plan, I was always counting the minutes until I would have some time to breathe, alone, again.

Anyway we won. Detroit was a lot of fun for a few days. Then I had to acknowledge the unfinished life I'd left back in Chicago.

I keep writing and deleting approaches to ending this. We should have done more, we can do more and we have to keep going, that kind of thing.

I think it's obvious to a lot of us what's going on now and why. I wish it didn't have to get this bad for that to be true but I'm done wishing for alternate histories.

Let's figure this out.