Conversations with my Ohio neighbors

Yesterday, I spent a good part of the day placing get-out-the-vote calls to Ohio from the local Hillary Clinton campaign office here in L.A.’s San Fernando Valley. I’ve never been to Ohio, so all I know about the state and its people is what I’ve heard on the news, read in newspapers or magazines, or learned from the few Ohioans I’ve known through the years.

When I completed my final call for the day, I started to think about the conversations I’d had. Some were brief and perfunctory, and a few – thankfully, very few – were hostile or rude. But most, it struck me, had been just like the campaign conversations I engage in with friends and neighbors right here in sunny, freewheeling (and generally more liberal) Southern California.

Some of the Ohioans I spoke with clearly had more conservative views than I do, but they were usually willing to talk about the election and their choice for President. A few – reflecting what might be a preference for privacy in the more traditional Midwest – chose not to disclose their vote. But, unlike similarly reticent voters I’ve come across in California, who can be downright rude in their refusal, almost all of the Ohioans politely explained their desire to keep their choice to themselves, allowing us to part company on a friendly note.

But the conversations that stuck with me through the night and into the morning were those in which the person first said, yes, they’re voting for Hillary, and then hastened to share a personal observation that told me how important their vote was to them.

I remember a woman reporting that she’d already filled out her ballot but was waiting for her daughter to drive her down to the Board of Elections to turn it in. “I don’t want to worry about it getting lost in the mail. I want to know my vote for Hillary gets counted. She’ll be our first woman president and I want to vote for her!”

I remember an eighty-something wife saying that her 81-year-old husband couldn’t take my call because he’s now living in a nursing home, before adding, “But he’s been asking me every day if his ballot came in the mail because he wants me to bring it to him. It came today so I’m taking it to him tomorrow. He is determined to vote for Hillary – he is appalled at the idea of someone as nasty as Trump being president. We’re both voting for Hillary.”

I remember a 93-year-old man who, after I’d said I was a volunteer for Hillary calling to ask if we could count on his vote, pulled my leg by intoning sadly, “Oh, dear, you’re too late. I just sent it in today.” “So you didn’t vote for Hillary?” He replied, “Now, I didn’t say THAT, dear…” before starting to laugh and adding, “Of course I did! We need her to follow President Obama and not let the Republicans tear down everything he has accomplished.”

I remember the mom who told me her young adult daughter, whose name was on my calling list, wasn’t home, and said we shouldn’t try to call her back. “I’ve tried everything I can think of to convince her she’s making a huge mistake voting for Trump, but she’s just not listening. You’ve got my vote, but I don’t think we’ll get hers.”

And I remember the octogenarian woman who said that both she and her husband are supporting Hillary because “we’re just terrified of Trump. He’s hateful – the things he says remind us of Hitler. We can’t imagine America being led by someone like that.”

Most important, I remember hearing “thank you” or “bless you for volunteering” over and over and over again. I’ll never forget those words – because, in a campaign season that has been as hate-filled, fear-mongering, anxiety-inducing and disconcerting as this year’s, those thank-yous and “have a blessed day” farewells did more than lift my spirits and motivate me to place the next call.  They convinced me, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Trump’s core campaign message isn’t just foolishly negative – it’s flat-out wrong.

America does not need to become great again. As Hillary Clinton and all of her surrogates have said at campaign rallies across the land, “America already IS great, because America is good.”

As are the vast majority of the American people I’ve had the privilege of talking to in my efforts to help elect Hillary Clinton.