Just do it!
This Tuesday, I’m taking a break from my Teaser Tuesday feature to urge you first to GET OUT AND VOTE if you haven’t already! VAMOS A VOTAR, mi amigas y amigos.
OK then: now for my report from the ground in my no-longer-so-swingy swing state. I spent all day Sunday knocking on at least 80 doors in a few different neighborhoods in Greeley and Evans, Colorado. It took me pretty much all day, from about 9:45 in the morning to 4:30 in the afternoon. My pedometer estimated that I covered 9.3 miles. I observed a number of things that might be of interest to you, my dear readers.
As a representative of the Colorado Democratic Party and the Hillary Clinton campaign, we were knocking only on doors friendly to us or potentially friendly–so, only registered Dems and Dem-leaning unaffiliated voters. Both neighborhoods featured a number of voters with Latino and non-Latino last names. Here’s what I saw:
- Most people weren’t home, even on a Sunday, because Democratic voters are working too damn hard. Some were probably at church, but a surprising number of doors answered by teenaged kids were at work. One kid told me his mother had left at 4 a.m. to get to her job.
- Every single person who answered the door was friendly. It was clear who I was representing, as I had an “I’m with Her” sticker on my shirt.
- I met only one person who is a registered Dem, an older Latino who told me he’s voting for the Human Stain, and he was friendly too. Not a single woman I talked to said she would vote for Trump, so the gender divide was evident in my sample.
- A lot of the households of voters with Latino surnames had signs in their yard against the death with dignity/physician-assisted suicide ballot issue we’re voting on today, Proposition 106. I assume that might be linked to Catholicism, as the Church has come out swinging against 106, as you would expect. (I think it’s going to pass, given the wide Libertarian streak in this state, but we’ll see tonight or tomorrow morning!)
- Most of the people who answered the door had either voted already–and enthusiastically–for Clinton and the Dems, or they had a plan to get their ballots filled out and turned in that day. These were all women with one exception, as I recall. I talked to about 10 of these voters, who also said that Clinton is who their friends and family were voting for.
- I met only two people who were undecided and I talked to them about their choices. One woman, a registered Dem, was fairly easily talked into voting for Clinton. She told me she had an Egyptian husband, and Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric troubled her. The other person was a youngish Libertarian man who consumes a great deal of the right-wing conspiracy-mongering media. He said he thought Clinton was “dangerous,” but he indicated zero enthusiasm for the Republican nominee. I told him I hoped he voted anyway, because that’s how I roll.
Finally, in what I hope is a good omen for the Clinton campaign, I SAW A TACO TRUCK in one of the neighborhoods! I don’t have a photo of it but here’s an approximation. Greeley is full of them, so it’s not like a unicorn sighting, but still–
Happy election day, friends! I’m excited. I may go back out and knock on more doors this afternoon, too. I hope my optimism is warranted. Vamos a votar!
Historiann 
Was there an anti-Trump or pro-HRC sticker/sign on the Taco truck? – TL
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Couldn’t see one either way.
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Fingers crossed here. My home state is light red but I voted absentee in hopes of making people remember that the colour is only homogeneous on the map and not on the ground.
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Good for you for keeping your registration in the U.S.! We need you, Janice.
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Mid-day voting was heavy, with lines cycling through in ~15 minutes, in my largely Republican ward here in Northeast PA. I voted Libertarian where I could, and Republican in the small remainder, with the exception of the congressional race where I profanely spoiled my ballot given that Lou Barletta was on it. The only Republicans out plugging their candidate were supporters of a local state legislator – no great shock since the wards in this part of the world that have been traditional Republican ground are not the ones where Trump is getting his support.
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Thanks for your report, but I have to ask you: What *IS* Aleppo?
(I kid, I kid.)
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I don’t know. My Capo dictates that the tempo of my day is that I am off to a Harpo Zeppo IPO expo about hippos taking EPO in Limpoppo depot, where I plan to eat a scampo, it is apropos and that is not a typo.
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Luzerne County 2012: Obama 64,397 Romney 58,325
Luzerne County 2016: Clinton 49,103 Trump 74,689
Thats the election right there, more or less. We have reached the fourth stage of Fascism.
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I got ballot number 47 in my ward at about 7:30 this morning. I moved slowly down the column, fearful of not bubbling in the ovals right, but otherwise savoring the experience. This will be a (largely) Democratic town in a Republican county sandwiched into a Democratic corner of a blue state in a red region. The only poll watcher there was a Democrat. The waiting is getting somewhat stressful.
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My US History to 1877 students received my annual “We’re up to approximately 1840 and who was eligible to vote in 1840? Why, yes, that’s right, you can only vote if you are white and male. Who can vote today? Good. Go do it.” speech yesterday. Most of them said they were registered and planned to do so.
I’m waiting for my husband to get home and then we’ll walk two doors down to the high school to vote ourselves.
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A plea from out here in the Antipodes: vote wisely! We voted absentee electronically. I felt great relief when the report came back that my ballot had been accepted. Apparently if you get your act together in time you can send your ballot via diplomatic pouch. Maybe next time.
It will be really excellent when I no longer hear anything about Drumph in our morning news. We did have days of chuckles about “no, you’re the puppet,” but ugh, just ugh. Today we had reports of east coast voters saying “I chose the lesser of two evils,” which my children know from experience is the fastest way to get me to shout at the radio.
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This “lesser of two evils” bit is really wearing me down. I believe it’s mostly an artifact of our two-party system. (Recall the 2000 election, in which we were told that because Al Gore was boring and didn’t give good speeches, he was just as bad as the callow & ill-prepared George W. Bush.) But it’s really picking my a$$ because of the way this false equivalency is dragging down excitement over another historic first for the modern Democratic party: electing a woman president.
I don’t care. I’m excited! I’m going to be sobbing and jumping up and down and hugging people tonight. They can’t take that away from me, so don’t let the false equivalencies we’re awash in take it away from you, either.
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I have to post this when it looks like everything that makes this country what it wanted to be, looks like it has lost.
H’ann, you’re one of the very few females that could had *passed*, i.e. claimed couverture by virtue of your male belongings’ jobs, but still posted under your own point of view.
Thank you for your blog, in this twilight for the rights of those raised side-by-side with males, but still considered less human than they.
The women that let this happen have yet to realize the damage those nearest to them, but not dearest, will do.
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Thanks, PDXPat.
I’m very sad and very ashamed right now. White women voted for Trump! College educated whites voted for Trump!
White people! Seriously!
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Have to add, that of all the libru;l male outrage over “passing”, the one most in plain sight of them was right there and they never said a thing, that I heard. “Mrs. Edgar Tolmey”, “Mrs. John Jackson”: “Mrs. A. J. Jefferson”.
Would those excitable males have risen to this? Not a chance.
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