Just went canvassing over the weekend for a state Senate candidate and was partnered with a woman who’d never even imagined she’d be involved in any kind of political activism.

At least, until 2016.

And by Jove, last Saturday, there she was, schlepping through neighborhoods, knocking on doors, talking to people, talking up our candidate - and doing so as a well-informed promoter of that candidate. She was terrific! And she’d never done anything of the kind before, until trump. I had the flyers and the basic spiel, she had the clipboard with our assigned route and the addresses of each house we were supposed to approach, and she made the notes after each encounter, as she threw in the parting words - the invitation to join us volunteers for this particular campaign.

What a great afternoon that was! Only one door slam. And another dude who, when I started in with our candidate’s proposals FOR access to affordable health care for all, started in with that selfish short-sighted crap about us taxpayers paying so other people can get it for free... he soon got to different mumbling about “babykillers...” and we just agreed to disagree and took our leave. But everybody else who was home to answer the doorbell was receptive, undecided because they hadn’t heard about the candidate (WE took care of that!) or were enthusiastic and already kinda knew about him. There was also one additional guy who questioned us... which party were we? Whereupon we said “Democrats” and he eagerly took our flyer and said “good! That’s all I need to know!” We encountered a few who’d already resolved to vote for Democrats up and down the ballot, which was most encouraging!

We didn’t have to do much hard selling. We’d describe what our man’s positions were on the issues and we got a lot of validation that those positions were theirs as well.

I’ve done a number of canvassing things since the Hillary campaign. Always a challenge to kick yourself in the backside to get started, but once you do, it gets easier and easier, house by house. And it REALLY helps to have a good partner. Makes all the difference in the world.

We had a STELLAR absolutey kick-ass partner during the canvass for Hillary. We worked a little beach-ish community with a lot of apartments and small houses. There were three of us - a young woman who was a bit introverted so we had her handle the clipboard and the note-taking. The other woman was a local activist who proudly opened every discussion by introducing herself as the person who had pushed the neighborhood council to get a messed up street repaved. That street just happened to be part of our route. That tactic worked like magic! Everybody instantly became favorably predisposed toward whatever any of us had to say!

That’s a handy-dandy little strategy for your back pocket, with things like canvassing, btw. If you’ve ever done something beneficial for the neighborhood, that automatically makes you one of the good guys, and people will be far more receptive to whatever you’re working on now.