Standing at a rally of student Obama supporters in Lynchburg, Virginia on Friday night, I heard something that made me realize that this race and this campaign are historic in ways we won't fully realize for many, many years.
In front of a hundred or so Randolph College students stood Ertharin Cousin, a senior advisor to the Obama Campaign. She's been traveling the battleground states for the last couple of months, rallying the troops.
A student raised her hand and asked her what kind of Presidency the Obama Presidency was going to be.
"What keeps Barack up at night isn't winning this election," Cousin answered, "It's what happens after he wins this election." She then went on to talk about the effect of the web on this election, how it's energized millions of people who have answered the call, donated their time and money, and then are connected on an almost daily basis to people like David Plouffe and Barack.
"And on November 5," she smiled, "The email you get is going to be from President-Elect Barack Obama... and they're not going to stop then."
This campaign has awakened not only a generation, but also an entire populace who have become connected online, who suddenly hold the levers of democracy in their hands, courtesy a keyboard and a mouse.
I'm living proof of that. I'm a New Yorker who sat and watched Sarah Palin's acceptance speech and just said, "I have to do everything I can." For every weekend since then, I've been on the road in battleground states, knocking on doors for Barack. I've been to Michigan, New Hampshire, Virginia, and Ohio.
This campaign made it incredibly easy to get involved. I just went to barackobama.com; searched for events in a state I was interested in going to, and started sending emails and making calls. I talked to dozens of field organizers -- the best of the best, great people who have given up months of their lives for their country (yes, I think working for a political campaign is service, but then again I think community organizing is service, too...). I spoke with them, found somewhere I could be of help, and hopped on a plane or got in my car.
It's that easy. And thousands of people are doing just like I am, every day of this campaign.
"Back in the day," it would take me hours, if not days, to find a way to help out of state. You pretty much did your work for the campaign locally. There was no way to get a phone list for out of state voters, and it was hard to find a place where you could walk door to door. But the Obama campaign has changed participatory democracy forever. Log on, sign in, and hop aboard.
Thank Howard Dean for discovering this, and for fostering this kind of net development during the "down years" between the campaigns. It's made a huge difference.
I walked through Lynchburg this weekend with Sarah Parker, an organizer who was active there during the Kerry campaign. We talked about the huge difference between these races. The Kerry Campaign, in October of 2004, was wearing out, getting beaten down, feeling the burden of the swift boat attacks and its own candidate's unwillingness to fight back.
They ran out of energy at the end, because the "old way" of running campaigns had no way for the new energy to find its way in. You don't see that now. In 2008, you walk into any field office and you find people who have signed up, who get lists of doors to knock on, who have lists of phone numbers they can call RIGHT NOW.
I met people in Gallipolis, Ohio, senior citizens with John Deere hats on (the Obama button fit right over the Deere logo!), who sat down and started calling their neighbors and friends... and then started calling across the state lines.
I met progressives who have been seeking refuge up in New Hampshire, who are walking their rural roads and knocking on the doors of their gun-owning neighbors for the first time, talking about the election and what's important to them. This didn't happen before. This campaign is breaking down walls.
And the important thing about all of this is -- it WON'T go back to the old way of running a campaign, ever again. For the Democratic Party, and eventually for the entire country, this kind of bottom-up, participatory democracy is here to stay. I see it in the students who have given up this semester to work for Barack, in the lawyer in Virginia who quit his job to work the field office -- they're not in it to get a politicial job at the end of this campaign (the usual goal for campaign workers every four years). They're in this to change the country.
Barack Obama's campaign has millions of email addresses now. But those people have Barack's address, too... they're not going to go away, win or (god forbid) lose. They'll be there hectoring their congressmen and senators, they're be there organizing their school districts, they'll be there running for office themselves with the tools they've picked up in this campaign.
The effect of this election and this campaign is going to extend in ways we can't possibly imagine.
Joe and Laurel from Plymouth, NH, standing proudly before their new yard sign.