For the past two weeks, ever since it became clear that John Edwards was no longer viable, I have been a precinct captain for Barack Obama in the city of Brea, my current home in north Orange County. I have two precincts, in fact; as the one next to mine was not spoken for, and I didn’t want to leave it uncovered. So for much of the past two weeks, I’ve been on the phone, calling voters. Two precincts is about as much as I could handle; in fact, I didn’t finish calling the last 50 voters in my second precinct. (I may try to catch some of them tomorrow.) Still, I called over 600 voters — some of which were wrong numbers, not home, etc. — and now it’s time to reap the benefits of having laid that groundwork.
I didn’t have time to canvass homes in person — I don’t think that my talking to people in my own precinct on their doorsteps would be more useful than leaving messages with a large group of other people in the neighboring one. But now that we’ve identified supporters and undecided voters, I did have time to do a lit drop this evening — about 70 houses. I made up my own flyer to include with the campaign literature; it explains what I’m thinking and why I think it’s important.
I don’t think that the issue differences between Obama and Clinton are that significant, frankly. Take health care, for example. Both of them are wrong: the way to cover everyone, as Atrios says, is to cover everyone: automatic enrollment, with premiums for the base level of coverage included in taxes. We don’t need mandates, etc.: we need to make that problem go away. But because whatever the President proposes is not going to be what Congress passes, and because I think either of them will sign a decent bill, their current difference on that issue doesn’t matter to me.
What matters to me is winning the White House. And so I wrote this letter, which was slipped into the screen doors of our supporters and to undecided voters. It represents my own views as a campaign volunteer, and was not paid for the campaign.