that should be the real standard by which voters make their choice.  unfortunately, it's probably the last thing most voters will consider.

one thing that our chappaqua visitors did for this office was give us pretty much a dry run at election day.  having hundreds of people going through the office on saturday will be nothing compared to 9 days from now.  but we proved that we could handle it, and that gives the volunteers confidence that every thing will go smoothly.

listening to the stories of the people coming back yesterday was interesting.  we have narrowed our walk universe considerably over the last three weeks.  we've identified a ton of barack supporters, who get taken off our walk lists, and quite a few hillary supporters (whose leaners we leave on -- you know, they are thinking about it, which means we have a chance).  most of the doors we are knocking on at this stage are either unidentified or undecideds in previous canvassing or phone contact.  what we find at the door, though, is that people are willing to engage.  and that engagement produces results.  one walk team went out yesterday and produced 19 new barack id'ed supporters (1s, signed supporters, and 2s, strong supporters).  it was a real feat.  and that's on our second or third round of canvassing in that particular area.

in talking to one of the organizers of the trip, i was told that the chappaqua activists were trying to pressure hillary to drop out of the presidential primary so that democrats would have a better chance of winning the general election.  they are really focused on affecting hillary's connections to the money in their area, and leveraging them to pressure hillary.  it's an interesting approach and, from the conversations i had, it seems like it is a well-considered strategy.  

i got to talk to a couple of very interesting voters sunday.  one woman i talked to had been gone for a week or so on business.  she's supporting barack because she thinks he's the democrat who's capable of defeating mccain in the general.  electability is her issue, and she expressed her disgust over bush's leadership for the last seven years.  "we have to end this," she said.  more interesting, though, was her observations about the republicans she knows in the business world who express fear of barack's strengths running against mccain.  that seemed to be the biggest reason she was supporting barack, was because the republicans she knew would rather face hillary than barack in the fall.

she -- and many others, including one woman who said that she was a strong hillary supporter -- asked me how it looks.  in the last few days, this seems to be the most common question.  interestingly, not a single voter talked to me about barack's "bitter" comment, although several canvassers said that they got comments about it.  but some of those comments were about how the media was harping on it, that it wasn't that big a deal to them.

while i don't know if this voter was referring to this specific thing or not, i did talk to a woman who said she had been supporting hillary but now was supporting barack.  this is not uncommon in montgomery county.  but the reason she gave was because hillary was too negative, and barack "didn't do that kind of thing."  damned if you do, damned if you don't.  i was fairly surprised at her comment, because she definitely fit hillary's demographic (women in their late 50s and up).  

yet she is not alone.  i talked to another woman, a former elected official, who claimed to be undecided, but "i am a lady."  she liked hillary, but seemed to be afraid of what hillary will do with bill.  "i like bill clinton, but...," she said.  he keeps putting his foot in doggie doo, or something to that effect.  "i think he means well," i replied.  bill just can't help himself, i suppose.

don't get me wrong.  we've identified a ton of obama supporters in upper and lower merion, and so the list i was canvassing sunday was thus heavily culled.  i talked to a number of people who support hillary, and i was actually shocked that my results had me finding more barack supporters than hillary supporters (even if you include the one refusal i found).  but just barely.

more surprising was the fact that i found so few undecideds in the last couple of days.  people are making up their minds in pennsylvania.  one of our canvassers, a woman who says she's gone to other states, expressed her deep concern that we didn't have yard signs to distribute.  she wanted to take a handful of yard signs with her to canvass.  she seemed to think that a yard sign could seal the deal.  her concerns were kind of ironic, given the fact that another supporter related this story:

a hillary supporter in elkins park, pa noticed that there were so many more obama signs than hillary signs, so she asked her cousin -- an obama supporter -- if it was true that people had to give a donation for their obama signs.  it is, he told her.  people either got them online or made a donation at their local obama headquarters.  hillary's signs are free (if you remember what i related in the call from the montgomery county democratic headquarters, that they couldn't even give hillary's signs away).  while we are finding more hillary signs in people's yards -- there is one basically across the street from where i am staying -- most of her signs i see are in the public way.  i'm always amazed when i find an obama sign in the public way, just because i know that some barack supporter cared enough to make a donation and then put it there.

hillary has people here supporting her.  they did a lit drop in areas i've canvassed, but i've been told numerous times now that hillary doesn't have people canvassing in this critical area of montgomery county.  i did actually canvass one of hillary's "volunteer team leaders" and she seemed almost resentful that i was out knocking on doors in her neighborhood.  she called barack an "empty suit," which seems ironic in light of hillary's claims to have been "under fire" in bosnia (can you imagine the swift boat opportunities that brings up for republicans?  but we already knew they were chomping at the bit to face hillary).  i smiled, as i always do, knowing that she really needed to express her frustration -- not at me, per se, but at the incredibly shitty campaign hillary has run.  hillary's failure as a leader, as evidenced by both her campaign and her leadership of president clinton's health care initiative, has become a subtle theme in this area.  many voters here mention hillary's "record" of leadership and how the campaign she had run completely undermines her message of experience and leadership.  barack's message of judgment has been an effective counter, especially in light of hillary's failed leadership in this campaign.

this was really a tough weekend, and it only gets harder as we head towards election day.  michelle obama is coming to our area on tuesday, and our office is the ticket distribution point for her visit.  all the staff has been involved in making this visit happen, and our regional field director has basically moved into our office to oversee the event.  

but this also means that our voter id program takes a back seat, and then after the visit, we start in on out gotv efforts.  the obama campaign has made great strides towards getting serious about get out the vote.  it has opened, i think, 30 offices around philly and i think quite a few around alleghany.  but this is also what we live for.  election day is d-day for campaigns and this week is the final count down.  everything that we have been doing comes down to the next week.  that is both exciting and scary.

there is, of course, another word for it.  hope...