Notes from New Hampshire
Damien O'Brien
Issue date: 11/11/08 Section: News
Canadians from across the country travelled to various cities within the United States to help get Sen. Barack Obama elected President of the United States of America.
While this statement summarizes what happened, it does not nearly do justice to the experience of being part, even a small one, of one of the most transformative elections of our time.
For two weekends, I travelled to New Hampshire, to work with friends from Canada and local Democrats. These were not the politicos one imagines working in post-modern offices, but passionate and committed individual citizens fighting for what they believed in; fighting to get their country back.
I had a remote sense of guilt. There were general comments saying our politics is more important, although having worked myself into a pile of dust along with thousands of Canadians of all political stripes in past elections, it remained a remote sense of guilt.
Barack Obama represents for so many people not a "cult of personality" or a celebrity politician, but was the embodiment of the power of self-determination and represented the notion that collective action in good faith applied to the issues of a nation can make a difference.
From canvassing door to door, to phone calling and putting up signs, this was the most basic work that wins elections and has been done for so long. But this time it felt different.
For me, the first time I walked on someone's porch and said I was there on behalf of the Obama campaign, I could feel the weight of history and the powerful significance what was being done not by me, but by an entire nation with the world watching.
That sense of significance, of what was going on around us was magnified by the sense of isolation from the national campaign and the near breakneck state of the national media's coverage. The sense of purpose and sense of direction of what we were campaigning for was crystallized, rather than diminished by the simplicity of the message of hope and change, "yes we can" and the person who put them forward.
There was notably little animosity towards us as Obama supporters on the porches and doorways of New Hampshire, unless we were cheering on street corners doing "visibility". Beyond that though, I encountered the legendary independence of those from New Hampshire made them unlikely to reveal their choice of candidate to canvassers, but they were polite and cordial by and large.
As individual results came in, we cheered for our state when its results came in, and cheered louder when we learned that the county we had worked doggedly for went Democratic.
As we learned of House races, Senate races and electoral votes, I slowly became dumfounded. We had heard the polling numbers before we came, Obama had a lead.
Still I couldn't believe that someone running on a message hope and change to a frightened and jaded electorate could possibly earn their votes. But on Nov. 4 at 11 p.m. EST, Senator Obama became President Obama and "Yes We Can" became "Yes We Did".
While this statement summarizes what happened, it does not nearly do justice to the experience of being part, even a small one, of one of the most transformative elections of our time.
For two weekends, I travelled to New Hampshire, to work with friends from Canada and local Democrats. These were not the politicos one imagines working in post-modern offices, but passionate and committed individual citizens fighting for what they believed in; fighting to get their country back.
I had a remote sense of guilt. There were general comments saying our politics is more important, although having worked myself into a pile of dust along with thousands of Canadians of all political stripes in past elections, it remained a remote sense of guilt.
Barack Obama represents for so many people not a "cult of personality" or a celebrity politician, but was the embodiment of the power of self-determination and represented the notion that collective action in good faith applied to the issues of a nation can make a difference.
From canvassing door to door, to phone calling and putting up signs, this was the most basic work that wins elections and has been done for so long. But this time it felt different.
For me, the first time I walked on someone's porch and said I was there on behalf of the Obama campaign, I could feel the weight of history and the powerful significance what was being done not by me, but by an entire nation with the world watching.
That sense of significance, of what was going on around us was magnified by the sense of isolation from the national campaign and the near breakneck state of the national media's coverage. The sense of purpose and sense of direction of what we were campaigning for was crystallized, rather than diminished by the simplicity of the message of hope and change, "yes we can" and the person who put them forward.
There was notably little animosity towards us as Obama supporters on the porches and doorways of New Hampshire, unless we were cheering on street corners doing "visibility". Beyond that though, I encountered the legendary independence of those from New Hampshire made them unlikely to reveal their choice of candidate to canvassers, but they were polite and cordial by and large.
As individual results came in, we cheered for our state when its results came in, and cheered louder when we learned that the county we had worked doggedly for went Democratic.
As we learned of House races, Senate races and electoral votes, I slowly became dumfounded. We had heard the polling numbers before we came, Obama had a lead.
Still I couldn't believe that someone running on a message hope and change to a frightened and jaded electorate could possibly earn their votes. But on Nov. 4 at 11 p.m. EST, Senator Obama became President Obama and "Yes We Can" became "Yes We Did".
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