Anderkoo

After a week data-stewing for Obama, I’m finally able to head out to the trenches. Rachel’s a canvassing captain in the Bluff precinct of Columbia, and I’ll be on her team filling in gaps as the day progresses. This happens to be one of the neighborhoods mentioned in this week’s Wall Street Journal article, so we know that we’re in for a tough battle tomorrow. We’re definitely appreciative of the dozens or more students who will be showing up, but as the article makes clear, local opinion often relies heavily on local opinion-makers. So we’ll be counting quite a bit on our local neighborhood teams and doing our best to back them up with whatever they’ll need to turn the vote out for Obama.

Whatever happens tomorrow, I’m already very inspired by our local volunteers. While we interlopers drive off into the sunset (or snowstorm) on Sunday, these folks live here with their neighbors, friends, family, and fellow church-goers for the other 364 days of the year. To go your own path when the authority figures around you urge you to stay in line is a courageous act, and many local politicians ready to shake up some change are relishing the prospect of a victory tomorrow as the dawn of a new era of South Carolina — perhaps even Southern — politics: one that relies on individual choice and getting personally involved rather than deferring to the judgment (good or bad) of community elders.

And whichever side wins tomorrow, I hope that the thousands of activists that all of the campaign have identified and cultivated will form the bedrock of a new political contract, one that offers democracy only when individual citizens reach out and seize for themselves the power to bring change.