Wednesday, September 24, 2008

        The minions of Obama approached my home with promises of fundamental change.  They were young, probably early to mid-twenties, and the look of excitement which shone in their glossy eyes left little doubt of their pride in and commitment to their task.  Mine is a neighborhood of families where the majority of the residents are either Republican, conservative, or both, so I imagine that their typical reception, while cordial and respectful, was rather shorter and less fruitful than they might expect in many other communities in Northern Virginia; a traditionally red, currently purple region which threatens to continue a recent trend toward blue.

        Adorned in their snappy “O” regalia, clipboards in hand, they rang the doorbell with

a deep confidence in the righteousness of their mission that was redolent of the soldiers of the ill-fated Children’s Crusade.  I answered and was asked if my wife lived here, to which I responded in the affirmative but with the caveat that she was nursing and therefore unavailable.  This was followed by inquiries about whether she was registered to vote and about which direction she was currently leaning with her support.  I explained that she was registered but that her vote was a personal issue which I was not at liberty to discuss with complete strangers.

        I expected that this would incite these stalwart youngsters to ask about my registration status and partisan leaning, followed by an explanation about why their candidate deserved my vote, but they simply turned and left.  Perhaps they were only targeting the demographics they thought they had the best chance of influencing and my wife, an educated Hispanic female, came up on their radar, while I, an educated white male, was less likely to render sufficient return on investment.  It’s just as well, as while I actually am still undecided about who will receive my vote in November, I plan to make my decision based on the substance of the coming debates, not on the parroted talking points of door-to-door salesmen.

        Still, I couldn’t help but notice that of the five times I’ve been solicited since the two conventions by people attempting to either register me or sway my vote, proponents of the Obama/Biden ticket have, in every case, been the solicitors.  This, I suspect, is a product of either or both of

two phenomena.  The first is that Obama’s message and persona are much more attractive to younger voters, who themselves are, on average, more likely to have the time and motivation to engage in door-to-door operations than their older, more employed counterparts.  The second is that the McCain/Palin campaign probably realizes that they have far less to gain than their competition by an increase in the percentage of the populace that turns out on November 4th.  This is because the vast majority of their support base consists of the type of people who don’t need to be reminded to register whereas the rest of the eligible citizenry, which might otherwise not register or not vote, would likely vote overwhelmingly for Democrats.

        So, essentially, McCain/Palin stand to benefit from a lower voter turnout.  This, of course, would translate to election results which are less representative of the overall population; a detriment to the fundamentals of democracy no matter how you look at it.  Sadly, this “unrepresentativeness” has historically been the norm in this country but Obama appears to be targeting it as his first in a series of promised changes we can believe in.  If this intrepid pursuit of justice is characteristic of the change he promises to bring, I will be more likely to vote for him.  But in the meantime, I sure wish he’d call off his overzealous minions.