Is a moral victory a real victory? Don't bother trying that one on my ardent Democrat friend Zelda, a woman of uncompromising standards. She'd say something to the effect of "it ain't no kind of victory, it a defeat." She acknowledges that the midterms could have been much worse, election deniers did lose in important battleground states. But she's still disappointed: the candidate she canvassed for in Merced lost to his Republican opponent by 563 votes; and big picture, the Dems lost the House.
Before the election she had red wave nightmares, visions of Republican landslides that would be all her fault for not doing enough when the chips were down. She'd lie guiltily, anxiously awake, and make plans to ramp up her electioneering.
She'd started up the ramp by volunteering with Vote Forward, which sends letters to first-time and infrequent voters, urging them on to the polls. Their ground rules allow espousing general principles, but not endorsing candidates. Zelda hand wrote 400 letters to voters in Arizona, saying what she she thought would be on the ballot: protecting our democracy; protecting our children from gun violence; protecting our planet. That must have taken her a work week; I learned from my part in the effort that it takes over 8 hours just to handwrite 400 addresses.
Then Zelda decided to go all in and canvass door-to-door, supposedly several times more persuasive than sending letters. She volunteered for Adam Gray in Merced, 130 miles from her home in the Bay Area, who was in a toss-up race for an open House seat. There was a battleground candidate closer to her, Josh Harder in Modesto, but he was slightly favored to win (and did).
She wanted to drag me along. She did. She started by asking what else I was doing for the election.
You couldn't exactly call me a firebrand. After addressing her envelopes, my low-key intentions were only to post interesting stories on Facebook, and to read "The Origins of Totalitarianism" by Hannah Arendt. Worse, my motivations for reading Arendt were largely personal. My old friend Frank had told me he had serious Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD). What to say, how to reach out? He'd always loved political theory, and reading a book together seemed like one way to solve the connection problem. And maybe Zelda would approve?? After all, we were both mixing politics with quests for personal redemption.
But she was furious. She's contemptuous of ivory tower types, despite being a Harvard grad herself. Instead of navel gazing, she thought Frank and I should be doing our bit to uproot neo-fascism from American soil. We negotiated. Forsaking Frank & Hannah was not an option, but canvassing together was, if she'd throw in stopping on the way back to see my son Sam in Modesto. Deal.
And so it was that we rose at dawn on five autumn Saturdays to rendezvous at BART, and carpool to Merced. To appreciate Zelda's dedication, you should know she reached Medicare age in February, just before she had open heart surgery for valve repair. Since then, a small stroke was a detour on her long and winding trek back towards her old self. One day canvassing means ringing ≈ 100 doorbells, and walking ≈ 5 miles. She would say she needed most of the next week to recover.
Our Merced routine started at 9 am when we straggled into a small meeting room in back of the one-story post office on 18th street. There was always plenty of free caffeine and junk food left for us, which was deeply appreciated given the uncivilized hour. The volunteer coordinators were two twentyish women from the North Valley Labor Federation (NVLF), dressed collegiate-style in jeans and sweatshirts. They'd use a phone app called PDI (Political Data Intelligence) to give us a 100 addresses to visit, give us flyers to distribute and a canvassing script to follow, and send us off into the field.
PDI shows the names, ages, and party affiliations of household members. We'd record the outcome of each doorbell rung by selecting items from a menu, most often "Not at Home" — we really should have started earlier. If someone did answer, the script called for starting by introducing ourselves as NVLF volunteers, and asking if they'd already voted. If not, we were supposed to ask if they intended to vote, and if so, would they consider Adam Gray, who had a good track record of issues important to the community. Like health and education. And then end by asking if they had any questions about the election.
Zelda followed the script carefully and had extended conversations with voters. One Saturday a 92-year-old African-American woman answered a doorbell she rang. When they were done talking politics they had a long chat about gardening, and the next Saturday, when we were done with our houses, we dropped off a bag of backyard persimmons.
I followed the script insofar as introducing myself as an NVLF volunteer, and saying Adam Gray was good for the community. But if someone hadn't voted yet, I liked to make eye contact and say "Please do your bit for democracy, it's especially important this year." Often the result was a smile of acknowledgment. Contrary to what the pundits were predicting, the good citizens of Merced seemed to think that this democracy thing was in jeopardy, and was something important to hold onto.
One thing that did not happen, once, ever, was anyone being nasty to me. Surprised me too. Committed non-voters gave me kind smiles, and one offered me a bottle of water and said not to work so hard. A MAGA guy, who worked for the National Park Service in Yosemite, said several times that he wished me well – before returned to explaining that God ordained that America run on diesel, NOT wind or solar. People must have a soft spot in their hearts for geezers dragging their aching bones around the neighborhood.
My aching old self returned the affection; it's easy to fall in love with Merced. Especially if you're from the Bay Area, that bustling, tolerant cosmopolis, where the rich and poor live in different worlds. The neighborhoods we walked had broad, quiet, tree-lined streets, like visions of small town America. Reminded me of my hometown of Alameda, about as close as the Bay Area comes to a place where you could imagine Tom Sawyer growing up. The demographics resemble Alameda's too, about half white, many Asians and Hispanics. And as we found out walking door-to-door, the diversity goes down to the neighborhood level.
Also, Merced's politics are closer to Alameda's than I would have imagined. Adam Gray was certainly no lefty, and one NVLF coordinator told us that some said they'd never vote for him because he'd opposed raising the minimum wage. Never asked, but the people we canvassed did seem like the types who would be in favor of boosting the working poor. If Gray was the sort of Democrat most likely to carry CD-13, it was because his politics appealed to the sliver of voters holding the balance between two much larger opposing camps. In Merced, like elsewhere in America, the center has thinned out, becoming more like an estimated average than like ideas people embrace.
And Merced does have its Bay Area amenities. We found a Thai restaurant that gave free ice tea refills, and once I got indigestion from drinking too many too fast; I lay for an hour in Zelda's car before getting back in the field. And once sleeplessness caught up with her and she needed a cat nap — you already know about the red wave nightmares, plus her IT job entails frantic after-hours requests beseeching for help in navigating scientific repositories. But those two incidents were the closest we came to mishaps. We be done by mid-afternoon, and then head off to Modesto to see Sam.
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My son lived in Modesto with his second wife Brittney, their infant daughter, her pre-teen son, her sister, and her parents. He worked at the Amazon fulfillment center in Tracy 6 am to 5 pm Wednesday through Saturday, plus overtime; visited his teenage son every other Monday in Richmond; and attended two AA meetings weekly. Thus we tried to keep our Saturday evening visits short. The only exception was when we met in Patterson to see Sam get his 7-year clean-and-sober pin.
Before the AA meeting we celebrated with Sam's household at a restaurant, and told Brittney's parents what we'd been up to that day in Merced. I braced myself for disapproval. Brittney is 3rd generation Central Valley, and her mom and dad seem practical types, likely to view Zelda and me as wasting precious weekend time tilting at windmills — c'mon, let someone else worry about the fate of democracy. We did not actually get into politics, but they did sympathize with the miles we'd walked, and ask for directions to the Thai restaurant.
The main speaker at the meeting told his addiction saga, which included a detour through relapse. Zelda was riveted. She's drawn to politics because she cares about the fate of ordinary people, like the speaker, with his life teetering between disaster and recovery. Sam walked to the podium to receive his pin holding his infant daughter. He said his plans were to take good care of his little girl, and of the new one coming in February. The assembled acclaimed his membership in the everyday heroes club.
Connection to the midterms? Yes, in a world seen through rose-colored glasses. As I dreamt it, participating in this celebration of real-life resilience implied a similar celebration come election day. Canvassing taught me that ordinary people cared about democracy, and were tolerant of idealists who cared about their caring; there are more ordinary people than any other type; thus the pundits would be wrong and the Dems would win.
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It was Zelda who first told me the election results. I teach a 3-hour STEM class Tuesday evenings, and never check the news until the last student leaves. It's a semi-retirement gig that after seven years still felt like a high wire act — the slightest distraction could cause a fall. When I could finally be alone with my phone, Zelda's happy text message appeared saying there was no red wave, Fetterman had bested Oz in Pennsylvania.
Her mood soured over the next weeks, as it became clear the Republicans would take the House, and we waited to find out who won in CD-13. First Duarte held a slight lead, and then Gray inched ahead as absentee ballots were tabulated. By Thanksgiving most of the uncounted votes were in Fresno, the red pole of CD-13 as Merced is the blue — up close Central Valley colors get complicated. When all the Fresno ballots were counted, Duarte was declared the victor, with 50.24% of the vote.
"Something's wrong, we won before," Zelda said, when she had to swallow the bitter pill. She'd worked too hard to believe that the problem was something she hadn't done. So maybe it was that Gray refused to call on Vote Forward to help with his district? Or that after all, Gray was not quite centrist enough for the convincible middle sliver? Questions she'd be debating at length with her fellow activists.
As for me, Zelda did appreciate my climbing down from the ivory tower to help out, and I almost stayed in her good graces through the holidays. But my attitude toward Biden's age infuriated her. To me 80 is significant, and though it might be good politics for a geezer to get sympathy by canvassing a neighborhood, letting a geezer run the show is another thing altogether. Her response was "DO YOU HAVE AN ALTERNATIVE? DO YOU?" Then she told me to be quiet, expressing that imperative in harsh terms.
That ended the discussion. She did have a point about no alternative. Winning is important, and one could argue that an old guy makes the best pablum for swing voters in swing states. But it's not just that Zelda is resigned to Biden, he's her preferred 2024 candidate. Behind the electoral math lurks something you might call centrist rage. Mostly aimed at Trump for upending the stately Bush/Clinton alternation in the White House. But some reserved for the Berniecrats, the other outliers who dare to contend for power instead of deferring to their betters. Biden's lack of compelling personal qualities emphasizes the transcendent importance of habit and tradition, and nips alternatives in the bud.
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"Probably wouldn't do it again," I said to Frank re the canvassing experience, when we met at an outdoor cafรฉ post-midterms to discuss democracy, Arendt, and the fascist temptation. It was one of those mild, cool Bay Area autumn days, crisp leaves on the sidewalks, crisp energy in the mild air.
My disengagement puzzled him. His COPD had been too progressed for him to accompany us to Merced, but he worked long, painful hours helping me address Zelda's Vote Forward letters. After the election, he said it was thanks to people like Zelda and me that the red wave turned into a ripple.
"Because senior," I told him, not wanting to turn down any appreciation. "Because addressing envelopes is easier, plus no commute." Could have added that doing Vote Forward letters allow lefties to engage in crucial battles without needing to feign enthusiasm for insipid candidates. But didn't, not wanting to hit a low note with a friend confronting life threatening illness.
We go back 50 years, to when we were both recent immigrants to Berkeley and met at a soup kitchen. Since then he became a high school math teacher, married, fathered a kid, divorced, and retired. Just a guy who did good things with his life after a rocky start. Like so many of us.
And like so many of us, he looks warily at Trump and his adherents and wonders how far they'll go. Pre-2016 there was an aphorism about online political debate: "the first person to use the word 'fascist' loses." Because vapid; because lazy; because just a curse word. Post-2016 there came a caveat: "unless the topic is Trump." Frank likes the fascist label for its descriptive power. The way Republicans believe Trump's lies about the stolen election is like how Hitler got the Germans to believe in Aryan supremacy. His favorite parts of "Origins of Totalitarianism" are when Arendt describes group think in a world of propaganda campaigns. And of course the fascist label has the obvious practical consequence. If the threat is fascism, then no candidate is too conservative as long as they're against Trump.
Personally, I doubt Arendt still has much to tell us. Consider that word, "totalitarianism" in her title. MAGA land ain't total nothin', it's a confederation of separate realities, online enclaves united by compatible news filters. "Fragmenttarianism"? Hmmm.
We debated Arendt's relevance over many a cappuccino before the midterms, reaching no conclusions. We didn't do much better after the election. But I was happy that my friend is still with us, happy fiery Zelda is ready to do battle again, and delighted with the perfect fall day. Hooray, climate change has not yet struck us full force! "There are intentions, and then what you'll really do," I tell Frank, returning to the canvassing question. "Do I want to get into the trenches again for the party of Biden? Not without an airsickness bag. But if it's October 2024, and the alternative is Trump, and …"
"You get to see your son," Frank said.
"And I get to see Sam, then …" I shrug and smile. "And Merced is great."
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