This is part one of a two-part election diary kept by the newest member of our CommonSense2 team.

It is no secret that I have been volunteering for the Obama campaign. I’ve logged a lot of hours recently, and I’ve learned some interesting things about this campaign, and my neighbors. As I write this, though, my conscience gnaws at me. Any amount of time I invest in writing about the campaign takes me away from working on the campaign. So, while I feel it a duty to convey my impressions of operations on the ground, I also feel some pangs of guilt in devoting time to anything that doesn’t help the campaign prior to Election Day.

Hours and hours of painfully squishing the office’s tiny cell phone to my ear to listen intently to potential voters, with a finger in the other ear to drown out the office noise in the background, has taught me a lot about why voters are undecided. When I’m not making phone calls, there are hours spent on preparation for canvassing for the upcoming Get Out The Vote (GOTV) work in our area. If we have a voter’s phone number, we call them. If their phone is unlisted, they get a pretty door hanger that reminds them where to vote, that Election Day is on November 4th, and which provides a hotline phone number to call if there are problems. I have a lot of paper cuts on my fingers from collating maps and counting door hangers to include in the neighborhood packets, but it’s for a good cause, so I’m taking the paper cuts in stride.

The Obama campaign is very well organized. If they win, it will be partially because they know every last voting rule in every last precinct across this country. They know where their supporters live, and they have a plan to remind them to vote- not once, not twice, but three times. Only part-time voters will be contacted going forward. Those who are a lock to vote for Obama are left alone. Are voters getting tired of the phone calls? You bet. Most of the voters suffering through the most phone calls are registered Independents, so they are getting hit from both the Obama and McCain campaigns. That’ll teach them not to pick sides.

The Obama team managers at the state and county level have goals, and they enforce them constantly. They are perhaps driving some of their paid staffers a little crazy. Our young and dedicated paid staffer — who works seven days a week, all day and night — was chewed out earlier in the week for not having completed the printing of the canvass maps that were needed for the weekend prior to Election Day. It was a day when he had little help, when few volunteers came in to work, and there were dozens of packets which had to be assembled for canvassing. These had to be done well ahead of the day they were going to be used because the next day, more packets had to be compiled for canvassing on Nov. 2, 3, and 4. We all got the first batch of packets finished by 2 a.m., but this tells you how micro-managed this campaign is. It also tells you how dedicated the staffers and volunteers are at the grassroots level.

You may wonder if the Obama campaign is on top of what’s going on in every town in which they have an office. There should be no doubt in your mind. That said, they can only control so much, and certainly have no control over the messy voting machine problems. They don’t claim to worry about it, but there have been 350 lawyers on staff in Florida for months, and this scenario is replicated in every swing state and in every red state where Obama has a chance to win.

My own local Obama office is a tiny place next to a pizza joint in the center of my safe town of Collegeville, right across the street from Ursinus College. Have I yet mentioned that we have an evening security guard who stays with us from 6:00 p.m. until we leave at night? Why, you ask? Because our office was threatened by a member of the Ku Klux Klan. I believe it was a phone call. No one wants to take any chances.

I asked the guard, “Are you armed?” He said “No.” I then asked, “Are you a lethal weapon?” He said, “Yes.”

Obama contributions have not only gone to pay for ads, staffers, computers, paper clips, paper, cell phones, Obama’s own campaign costs and Secret Service, but also for a few security guards here and there to protect us volunteers from potential attacks from crazy KKK members.

It is a few days before the election. Many of my friends are anxious, have trepidation, and are often sleepless. We are the ones who knew that George W. Bush was going to prove to be even more of a disaster if he were re-elected than he had been in the first four years of his presidency. We were so depressed when John Kerry lost. The fact that Kerry probably won OH and NM, but lost over voter suppression in a one-point race — and therefore should have won the election — is cold comfort after proof, four long years later, that Bush was the disaster we feared he’d be. So, none of us want to get our hopes up too high, even though the polls look good. My husband and brother have contended for months, even before there was any polling evidence, that this election was going to be a landslide for Obama. And I, the cynic, said I’d believe it when I see it.

Something tells me that maybe this is too good to be true. Some of us are acutely aware that there are again voting machine problems. It’s one thing to get out the vote. GOTV doesn’t seem to be a problem. There is a lot of enthusiasm for this election, and early voting in states where it is allowed is higher than ever. It’s the legitimacy of the “V” that is problematic.

Even so, it is not difficult to notice that Obama may not only win this election, but win it by a lot. It is somewhat comforting to know that the collection of endorsements for Obama is enormous, and many of them have come from places we never could have expected a few months ago: Conservative Republicans, too many to list; hundreds of newspapers, even from conservative cities and towns; Israel, Jews, and Catholics; Colin Powell; all of our country’s allies around the world; even some of McCain’s own relatives. Even states that are traditionally Republican appear to be swinging for Obama. Voting-machine problems abound, as always, but hopefully the election won’t be close, no matter how it turns out. Can we bear to relive the voting problems of 2000 and 2004?

Lately, false materials about Obama are getting huge distribution here in this big battleground state of Pennsylvania. A lot of it is to dissuade Catholics and Jews from voting for Obama. I would have expected that I’d be getting a lot of literature to scare me about voting for McCain with remarks disparaging McCain’s character in the same tone that is employed by the Republicans to disparage Obama’s character and reputation. But no, I have not seen one piece of literature personally disparaging McCain or his years of service to this country. I have so far received two robocalls, but those were to remember to vote on November 4th. One was from Hillary Clinton, and the other was from Senator Bob Casey. Not one was to disparage a candidate.

And yet, if you have not been under a rock for the last few months, you have seen how Obama’s character is disparaged constantly via robocalls, literature, e-mails, websites, and YouTube videos. Lest anyone think I’m being one-sided, I have watched all of the TV ads from John McCain and Barack Obama, and all of the McCain ads mention Obama. At least half of the Obama ads make no mention of McCain, and only relay Obama’s plan for our country. Interestingly, this year, the disparaging character ads about Obama have turned off many of the Independents, who make up the majority of registered voters. They have told me they are sick of all of the ads and can’t wait for the election to be over. Negative advertising used to work great in swaying the vote. This year, it appears that common sense is prevailing. But we will not know until after the election whether these lies and smears have made a large impact or not. There is still a segment of our population that has continued to believe the myths and lies perpetrated by Republicans. Hopefully, these voters are in the minority. The hateful things that have recently come from their mouths are well-documented on videos taken outside McCain-Palin rallies in Pennsylvania and Ohio, and it’s scary to know that we are living near citizens who would like to bomb, shoot, and kill our candidate. Why do they want to kill him? Because they believe, among other things, that Obama is a “terrorist,” a “Muslim,” a “Communist,” a “baby-killer,” wants to take their hard-earned money away from them, wants to destroy Israel, and is not qualified to be president because he was born in Kenya. Have you ever heard anyone outside an Obama rally scream that McCain should be killed, bombed, or maimed? I haven’t.

There are ample videos taken by Mike Morrill of Keystone Progress that have documented the invective pouring forth from many McCain supporters outside of McCain rallies. To view them: http://keystoneprogress.blogspot.com/ We are not talking about mild suspicion of Obama, or a distrust of proposed policies. It is downright hatred.

These comments perhaps say more about these citizens than it does about McCain. After all, McCain is not responsible for those who support him. But McCain has done almost nothing to quell the fears that have fostered this hatred of Obama. In fact, he has done a lot to ignite these firestorms of malice via robocalls, negative ads, and his own comments in recent interviews on practically every news station. It is likely that McCain does not believe that Obama is a terrorist, or that he is a secret Muslim who would like to destroy our country. I can only guess that McCain fosters these fears because it is the only way he thinks he can win the election.

To be continued in January