We live in a moderately rural Oregon town of about 7,000 people. Roughly 15 minutes East of us is a city of 100,000 people. However if you head West up the mountain it's pretty much the boonies; farms, horse ranches and lots of single wides with trash on the lawn.
We drew a walking list a little West of town. Although there's lots of Obama support in that direction we did pass this sign that had been defaced on our way out.
I assume it was just kids but it's disconcerting just the same.
Canvassing works a little differently in Oregon because of vote by mail. What savvy campaigns try to do is identify their supporters and then make sure they get their ballots in. We can actually collect ballots while hitting these targeted voters. This is the biggest thing I don't like about vote by mail, btw.
It went pretty well overall. We had some healthy discussions with supporters of senator Clinton and senator Obama alike. The only bad exchange was with a guy that was pissed off we were bugging him about politics at all. Nobody forced you to register to vote and your certainly weren't forced to register as a Democrat, jerk.
I was so proud of my daughter. She had been up all night at an 8th grade graduation dance/ karaoke/ party thingy run by her school and I had offered to let her stay home and sleep but she really wanted to do this. She basically collapsed when we got home.
It also gave us a bunch of time to talk about the campaign and I did a lot of of listening. One of the things that impresses me about my daughter's view of politics is how mature it is. She realizes politicians aren't perfect. She brought up the fact that Obama himself mentions that fact repeatedly. She doesn't expect Obama is going to get elected and fix everything magically.
The other thing that repeatedly impresses me about her is that even though she's grown up in this rural town which is sorely lacking in diversity, she still has her head on right when it comes to this stuff. Most of her friends support McCain.
I'm so proud of her.
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