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Tuesday evening canvassing turned out to be the night of the undecided voter. I ran into five households in a row where both husband and wife were undecided. I asked each of those people what they were waiting to hear, what issues mattered to them.
Nancy told me that the economy, of course, was her concern, and she went into some detail about how the current market is damaging her retirement account and how the housing market keeps her from selling the house she had been living in before she moved to our neighborhood. I think I’ll drop a copy of the script for an Obama ad into the mail for her:
In the past few weeks, Wall Street’s been rocked as banks closed and markets tumbled. But for many of you – the people I’ve met in town halls, backyards and diners across America – our troubled economy isn’t news. 600,000 Americans have lost their jobs since January. Paychecks are flat and home values are falling. It’s hard to pay for gas and groceries and if you put it on a credit card they’ve probably raised your rates. You’re paying more than ever for health insurance that covers less and less. This isn’t just a string of bad luck. The truth is that while you’ve been living up to your responsibilities Washington has not. That’s why we need change. Real change. This is no ordinary time and it shouldn’t be an ordinary election. But much of this campaign has been consumed by petty attacks and distractions that have nothing to do with you or how we get America back on track. Here’s what I believe we need to do. Reform our tax system to give a $1,000 tax break to the middle class instead of showering more on oil companies and corporations that outsource our jobs. End the “anything goes” culture on Wall Street with real regulation that protects your investments and pensions. Fast track a plan for energy ‘made-in-America’ that will free us from our dependence on mid-east oil in 10 years and put millions of Americans to work. Crack down on lobbyists – once and for all — so their back-room deal-making no longer drowns out the voices of the middle class and undermines our common interests as Americans. And yes, bring a responsible end to this war in Iraq so we stop spending billions each month rebuilding their country when we should be rebuilding ours. Doing these things won’t be easy. But we’re Americans. We’ve met tough challenges before. And we can again.
Maybe that message will resonate with Nancy, but I don’t know what I can do to persuade the other voters I talked to, because Nancy was the only one of the five who told me specificallly what she will be looking for. The other four either didn’t know or weren’t willing to open up. Two did offer that what they didn’t want to hear was “lipstick on a pig” diversions. What frustrated me was that they saw McCain and Obama as being equally culpable for that nonsense. Bob told me that if Obama would just ignore those attacks, they would die on their own.
I said that John Kerry had found that wasn’t true. He ignored the Swiftboat attacks in 2004, thinking surely no one would believe such nonsense about a decorated war hero, but the nonsense–unanswered–took hold. Some people believed it; others saw Kerry as too lily-livered to defend himself.
Bob’s body language told me that I had not scored any points with that answer, that he didn’t like being contradicted. Perhaps I needed to preface my response with something conciliatory like “You would think so, wouldn’t you?”
Of course, what I really wanted to say was: Did you ever notice that it’s usually the Republicans who start that nonsense, leveling half truths or outright lies at Democrats. The Dems are only guilty of defending themselves. But I suppose there’d be no quicker way to get myself written off as a whiner than to use that line.
Whether to respond and how, whether to just listen for the most part: who knows? Perhaps I’ll just follow the advice I got from a local Obama field organizer. He told me that one of the most effective tools of persuasion is to tell someone my personal story of why I’m out there canvassing. I believe him. I’m still working on what I want to say and how I’ll phrase it so it doesn’t sound like “Come to Jesus” proselytizing.
Are there any general guidelines or useful anecdotes those of you who’ve been canvassing would like to pass along?
with the undecideds I talked to. They specifically want Obama to give them a reason to vote for him – they don’t want to hear attack ads. They think both sides suck and they said they didn’t need to be told that by each side that the other side sucks. But they ALSO didn’t want me to tell them why to vote for Obama. They want to hear it from him. I hope they are happy with this new 2 minute ad on the economy (if it runs here).
I found I had better luck if I could shift the conversations to generalities rather than onto specifics of the Obama campaign. So for instance one guy said that he was frustrated by the last 8 years but he thought it didn’t matter which candidate was better because they both would have to deal with Congress and nothing would get done.
I commiserated with him about Congress for a while. And then, in a general way, I said that I always remind myself that the Executive Branch has a lot of power and can do things without going through Congress – through rule making at agencies. And I gave him some examples of things the Bush administration had done that I didn’t like that hadn’t needed any input from Congress. And we talked about that for a while. That made him think.
btw – when I find someone who is a strong Obama supporter I ask them to volunteer. Most of them say no. Then I smile and say that’s ok but I’m going to give them a little job anyway. They need to convince 2 other people who would otherwise not be going to the polls to show up and vote for Obama. Just 2 people. They always are cheerful about that and say that might just be possible.