DCDemocrat reminded me of what we were doing a year ago today. Then I saw Senator John Kerry at Rosa Parks funeral service looking more dignified and presidential than Dubya could on his best day.
This originally appeared on Dec. 17, 2004 on DailyKos.
I began writing this diary several times and stopped. It’s taken a while for the outcome of Nov. 2nd to fade away enough for me to post.
The day ended badly. But the movement that began with this election campaign doesn’t have to end there.
And I’m going to focus on the positive. If you want to go negative about Kerry or West Virginia, red states in general, Daily Kos, etc., this is not the diary for you.
Nov. 2nd began early for me, but it was earlier still for others. DCDemocrat, our friend Sean, and other volunteers were up about 2 a.m. planting our remaining K/E yard signs. A lot of our signs had been stolen by the Bush Cult. They were out planting more in the public spaces.
I slept in until 4:30 a.m. I woke immediately alert with a tense alertness, the kind of waking that would happen on the mornings of big game day during the high school football days or on wedding days or when the wife wakes you and says, “The contractions are two minutes apart.”
I made my coffee and took it with me in the travel mug. It was cold outside. When I started the car, I had forgotten to turn the radio off the night before and Trick Daddy’s “Let’s Go” blasted loud in the quiet fog of the pre-dawn darkness.
Lets Gooooo! (Lets Gooooo!)
If you want it you can get it let me know (let me know)
The song with its driving hiphop beat to Ozzy Osbourne’s “Crazy Train” fit my mood. A lot was at stake that day and we knew it and we’d worked hard for a victory. It had been a long time since I’d ridden in a car with people packing a lot of weapons to some place with a mingled sense of confidence, danger and trouble. But I had a similar feeling as I drove away that morning.
I know it sounds melodramatic, but this is how I felt. I love my country and it felt like I was going off to fight in the only way possible for it. I believed and still believe, that Bush represents a terrible threat — for so many reasons, from his ineptness in preventing the Sept. 11th attacks to his corruptness in handling the economy — to the land I love.
I arrived at the parking lot of the vacant supermarket that closed after WalMart moved in to town. I joined the other volunteers from Project Next already there. Shenna, the GOTV coordinator, and others gave us our instructions as we waited for the bus to arrive from DC.
Project Next volunteers on the bus during a trip in August — great, bright people.
The bus arrived and I paired up with a man on his first canvass to Martinsburg. He was part of Run Against Bush, had seen an email about the GOTV in West Virginia when he arrived home from work at 2 a.m., and decided to get on the bus and go. I had canvassed several times the neigbhorhood we were assigned and we headed off with our door knockers. We worked quickly, he on one side of the street and me on mine, hanging red hangers on the doors of our previously identified Kerry voters.
At some point the sun rose, but we didn’t have time to notice. We finished about an hour after day break. People were moving about on their way to work. Cars filled a parking lot of a precinct place. We returned to the parking lot.
Shenna and the other Next coordinators had maps stretched over the trunk of a car, marking the neighborhoods finished as people reported back. Other volunteers were sent out to check polling places of our predominantly African American neighborhoods to make sure there were no vote challengers to disrupt them. There were reports of two polling places being moved at the last minute. Volunteers were sent out to direct people to the new locations.
I was sent to Camp Kerry where a group of our sign wavers had reported voters had stopped their for directions to the polling place. I took supplies to make a directional sign and dropped it off. The young people were there with the veterans, waving to the passing cars.
I drove past another intersection. DCDemocrat, Sean and others waved their signs. I returned to the main location and returned with water for them and the other wavers.
At one of the intersections at the north end of Martinsburg, we had about 14 wavers to the Bush cult’s four. The day had grown warmer, but our people had so much energy and enthusiasm. A police officer pulled up and spoke to me, saying he had received a complaint from a passing motorist about our people in the road. He told me if he had to return he’d be writing tickets. I spoke to one of the Bush people, a decent guy who had given his water to two of our women before I had arrived. We agreed to pull everybody to the grass and off the shoulder.
I crossed the road and spoke to the people there. Our people were absolutely wonderful. I told them all of the information I had from our other locations, how we outnumbered the Bush wavers 45 to 10 at the different sites.
I went back to our main location. I had to leave for work. I hugged Shenna and a couple of the other volunteers I had spent so many days and nights working with for a Democratic victory. Here and my favorite here. We thought we were going to win and we worked hard for it. We didn’t.
Others more politically astute than me have written why so I won’t go into that. I just wanted to tell my side of the story as I witnessed it. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: every door knocked, every mile walked, every dime spent, every letter sent, I’d do it all over again for John Kerry.
Thanks for the diary and your efforts on behalf of Senator Kerry. He is an honorable man defeated by a dishonorable opposition.
Well said.
Thanks Carnacki for being strong enough to share this. I still have been unable to write about the 2000 election, the pain is still too raw… I vowed in 2004 I wouldn’t get that emotionally involved… but my heart overruled my head and it happened all over again.
bah. I can’t go there. I’m not ready yet.
Anyway, good to see you C, it’s been a while.
spiderleaf, I know what you mean. I’ve tried several times to reply to the comments throughout the day and not been able to.
We can’t know the big picture. Perhaps it’s for the best that Bush won so that the sorry mess he created falls squarely on his shoulders. Perhaps America needed to bottom out before rising up again. I don’t know.
I’ve thought of that many times these last few years. Maybe the Dems needed to lose control of all three branches in 2004 so the Republicans finally won’t have anyone left to blame their greed, destruction and incompetence on… to be optimistic, you can see it starting now… they can’t trot out “it’s all Clinton’s” fault” anymore and be believed…
Well, I just hope too much damage hasn’t already been done… and that sanity and balance can be fully restored in time.
It was so invigorating to feel like our democracy was coming alive again!
Perhaps it is not too late.
I was honored to be at the third debate in Tempe last year. Gathered with several thousand Democrats, Independents and probably even a few sane Republicans, we watched on big screens and heard on loudspeakers as Senator Kerry continued to trounce Shrubzilla. It was clear that he would sweep the debates. I felt so optimistic and hopeful for the future of our country. It’s a moment that I’ve had to return to continually when the days get dark (another moment would be Obama’s speech at the Convention). While we may have lost the election, we cannot give up against the Bush War Council. We have to continue to fight and I remain hopeful as long as the fighting spirit stays lit.
thanks for being here Carnacki. Your diaries and comments always seem to brighten my day. Paz
I remember the original at dKos. I’m so glad to see Carnacki again. just seeing his name makes me smile.
we’ve been though some interesting times, my brothers and sisters. I find comfort in the fact that we are still standing next to each other a long, long year later.
I remember it too! Didn’t we bump into each other on some John Edwards threads?
YES!! we did. great to see you again, furryjester. 🙂
Man Eegee and others,
You’re all so nice. I really appreciate it.
Seems like yesterday I was sitting on my son’s couch a year ago and the exit polls all had Kerry in the lead. Then the whole Ohio thing started. I felt so sick but we wouldn’t know for sure until the next day. When Edwards came out and said we won’t concede until every vote is counted I still had hope. Just writing about this now, I get all choked up and teary eyed. Oh what could have/should have been. All the more reason to fight and work like hell for the future…right?
I got up at packed my bag with two meals worth of food and all my MoveOn gear, grabbed breakfast and went down to vote. Then I settled in as a poll observer. I didn’t have enough people to spell me for more than an hour for lunch, so I sat just outside the polls for 14 hours. I had a wireless connection so I posted bits like this to Kos:
“College vote WI
Well here in Ward 5 of Menomonie WI, all day. 1,300 so far in a ward that normally sees 5-800 voters total. It’s been solid students for ten hours. Since about 2:00 the line has run from 1-2 hours and the students are just patiently waiting. The poll judges say they’ve never seen anything like it. It’s fantastic.”
My wireless connection gave me the chance to email the voters I’d doorknocked and identified as Kerry supporters to make sure they made it and checked in with me when they voted. It also made me the only link to the broader world for all of the other poll watchers and lawyers on both sides, so everyone kept checking in with me to see how things were going. It looked close but good all day long. You all know how that worked out.
But I was full of hope. When I finally left the polls, they’d packed the last batch of voters in and closed the doors. There were so many that the voting didn’t finish for at least another hour. It was an amazing display of determination on the part of a group of voters that were 90+ percent students, and probably half of whom had never voted before. I treasure that, and I’m sure I will for the rest of my life. But man, the third was a black black day.
A year ago today-we went to vote a 7 AM-then I went back home and turned on the TeeVee -and lo and behold, it looked like we won–until it looked like we didn’t.
It is very hard to describe the way I felt when the ax fell. But when hub came home that evil day- my face pretty much said it all.
Bewildered and betrayed.
What I remember most about November 2, 2004, is the way I felt at 7:01 pm. For the past hour and some, I’d been running through the highest Democratic performing precinct in my area, knocking on doors, breathlessly asking if the people who answered had voted yet, and then running, running, running, barging past a dog that bit me and I didn’t even feel it to knock on the next door. (The dog’s owner yelled at me.)
And then suddenly it was over. Everything I’d worked for so hard and long for the past six months was over. In a campaign there’s always something more you can do. If you can force yourself to stay awake for another hour, there’s always more work to be done, something more to be accomplished.
But then came 7:01 pm on November 2nd and there wasn’t anything more to be done. There wasn’t anything more that could be done. There wasn’t a single thing I could do, a single action I could take, that would affect the outcome. I walked back to the car feeling cold and numb like I’d just had a bucket of water dumped over me. Like I’d just slipped sideways into some alternate universe that was completely different from the universe I’d been living in for the past six months. No more frantic activity – no more staying up until 3 am and then getting up at 7 or 8 am for more – because not a thing more could be done.
I climbed in the car with the rest of them and we drove back and I went into the office and I sat down and I thought maybe I should feel something good, some euphoria, some sense of accomplishment, but I didn’t feel anything. I just sat there and tried to get used to the new reality, the reality of not being able to do anything about the election results of November 2nd, 2004.
After a while I went over to the “victory party.” And for us it was one: my candidate won. But our Senate candidate lost, and then of course the networks called Ohio red or was it green? What did that mean? It meant we lost, that everything I’d been working so hard for was for – not for nothing. Not quite. But…
I thought we were going to save the world. I thought, and said to myself over and over to keep myself going, that November 2nd, 2004 was “our last, best chance to save America.” That was what I said. As that hope slowly seeped away I had to find new hope somewhere. And I realized that I wasn’t done. That I couldn’t just go back to my normal life. No. Not yet.
Maybe it’s a good time for me to repeat to myself the words I said again and again, during those fast and furious months. The words I copied out across the top of my walk sheet. Whispered under my breath.
I feel better already. That was my choice then; that must be my choice now. People of strong will can make a difference. How lucky I was to have the chance to learn to be one of those people, last year.
You have no idea what your comment just did for my day. Thank you furryjester.
You’re welcome. Thank you. I think it did something for me too. It’s easier just to numb yourself – but that’s not what’s best.
Is there any way to give you an 8? Thank you for your story of inspiration jerry
I mean furryjester…silly me! Great comment!!
Yeah, what you said. I’m a full time writer. For the two months before the election I didn’t do any of the kind of work I get paid for, choosing instead to write letters to the editor and try and place them all over the battleground states, that and I volunteered for MoveOn. Even though we lost, I don’t regret a second of it. My county went for Gore by 5 votes. It went for Kerry by 1,200, 10 percent of his margin in Wisconsin. I did what I could, and I’ll keep right on doing it until I drop because I know it makes a difference even when we lose. Oh, being able to get up and look myself in the mirror every morning doesn’t hurt either.
I turned 28 on election day and thought the 28-year cycle would prevail- you know, the one where Carten wins in 76 (the day I was born), Truman wins in 48, Kerry wins in 04. Unfortunately the cycle has corrupt, dipshit Republicans bookending it- Harding and Bush.
Harding died in office, leaving a swath of sexual perversity and corrupt Ohioans behind him.
Hm…
It felt good to be doing something that was clearly important.
At the time I felt very good about the prospect of dumping Dubya, but frankly pretty darn ambivalent about the potential election of John Kerry. Smart and dignified, he may be. But he was also a proponent of this war, and would have kept it up as surely as Bush has done. We do not — and did not — need a more competent war in Iraq. We needed — and need — to end that war.
Kerry would not have solved the healthcare crisis in this nation. Nor would he have pursued reasonable trade policies. And it was utterly unclear to me that he had the rhetorical or political skills to take on a Congress still controlled by the far right. The promise of Kerry was the promise of the lesser evil. And both that adjective and that noun are significant. I am very sorry that George W. Bush is still president. I don’t honestly regret that John Kerry will never be president.
All that being said, I too was feeling pretty good (largely out of intense Schadenfreude) about those exit polls. And I was appalled, but not surprised, by Kerry’s decision to almost immediately concede defeat.
Ultimately, a very difficult political season for Greens ended with one of our party’s finest hours: the challenge to the Ohio results, led by Green presidential candidate David Cobb.
I remember that nite one year ago: chatting with liberals and Dems on irc and watching the various news channels as we waited with so much exhiliration and fatigue as the results came in. It was a real time rollercoaster and we were so, so hopeful.
It was a truly crushing blow and it rocked the liberal blogosphere for such a long time afterward. The reverberations are still being felt, of course, but we made it through the depression, sadness and anger and have all moved ahead together.
And look where we are now. Today. We have overcome and we will continue to do so. There is no doubt about that.
What I remember (was it just one year ago – seems like a lifetime!) were also the days leading up to that fateful day. I checked into web sites every day to see what the polls were on both the presidential election, but also the senate. Then just a few days before the election seeing the amazing video of “Mosh the Vote” by Eminem. Although I had been as vocal as anyone in my criticism of his lyrics, that was one of the most inspiring things I had seen in a long time. I was so hopeful. I went out and bought a black hoodie (pretty funny for a 50 something year old woman) and wore it on election day as I voted and did GOTV work.
As much as I was hopeful at the beginning of the day, the night was just as depressing. I had to stay home from work all day the next day – couldn’t even process or talk until I listened to Al Franken on Air American in the early afternoon on Wednesday.
And in the days following the election, I remember spending time on the internet – particularly visiting the “I’m Sorry” website and just crying my eyes out. My only consolation was in the millions of people that felt the same way.
I was 40 and bought a black hoodie too for the same reason.
I was depressed for about two months after. I truly believe that nothing was wasted though, all that was done then has placed a foundation out there for others to build on. So many things are being torn down right now too that I believe there is going to be a lot of building needing to be done for the health and welfare of our nation.
I was in Cleveland OH as part of Election Protection. Originally I was supposed to be one of the volunteers that was to monitor polling places for any activity that threatened to interfere with local citizens’ right to vote. However, they needed a lawyer volunteer to man the phones at their field office, so I was selected for that duty. I spent all day fielding calls from our volunteers about all the dirty tricks being pulled by Republicans in Cuyhoga County. These included the following:
I spent all day fielding calls from EP volunteers and advising them on how to counter these illegal tactics, doing legal research online, preparing affidavits for volunteers who had witnessed these occurrences, giving talks to volunteers before they went out to their assigned polling places regarding the applicability of the federal court’s restraining order and generally running myself ragged.
Because of my illness, I couldn’t eat anything all day. I subsisted on cokes and coffee. I was there from 7:00 am until about 8:00 pm. The last calls I took were from volunteers who noticed that some polling place officials had taken the ballot boxes into locked rooms and were refusing to allow any independent observers to witness the vote count.
When I left the early TV reports about the exit polls were predicting a Kerry victory. Most of the volunteers who were still there (including a number of students who had bussed up from Howard University for the day) were cheering and celebrating. Some people made plans to go out for drinks, but I was too exhausted, and just went back to my hotel for a light supper (some soup) and to watch the election returns on television.
As the night wore on I became steadily more depressed as the impossible seemed to be coming true again. Despite all we knew about Bush’s incompetence, venality and corruption, he was being announced as the likely winner.
My wife called me long distance about 11:00 pm because my 9 year old daughter was having uncontrollable crying fits and a panic attack. My daughter had gone with me earlier in October when I campaigned for Kerry as a volunteer in Cincinnati. She was adamantly anti-Bush and seeing him win was too much for her to bear. I spent the next hour on the phone with her trying to calm her down until she was finally so exhausted she fell asleep. I went to sleep about 1:00 am.
I spent the next day driving back to NY, listening to the news on NPR. It was a very sobering, despair filled ride home.
Thank you for your efforts and for your story.