Of canvassing and kings

With voters at the doors, we may talk of many things.

“Have you ever heard of Cyrus the Great?” I asked Liz, my canvassing partner.

“Sure,” she replied. “The Persian king, right?” “Well,” I said, “I just had a voter who schooled me in twenty-five hundred years of Persian history. He’s a strong supporter of Democrats, and apparently it all goes back to Cyrus.” Born around 600 BC, Cyrus united the two original Persian tribes to found the First Persian Empire. He was known as a benevolent conqueror who respected the religions, traditions, and human rights of those who came under his rule. In my Iranian-born voter’s mind, there was a through-line between Cyrus and today’s Democrats in terms of their respect for diversity. But he expressed some frustration. “Democrats need to be strong!”

I couldn’t agree more, though I’d prefer not to extend that principle to conquering other nations. But my chat with the voter was an example of how new Americans often view US politics partly though the lens of their home country’s history and culture. It’s one of the reasons why talking with voters is always fascinating.

Northern Virginia, where Liz and I canvassed last week, is one of the most ethnically diverse areas of the country, and the Loudoun County suburb where we found ourselves was no exception. Townhouses lined cul-de-sacs with names chosen to project uniformity: Rock Falls Terrace, Hollow Falls Terrace, Darkhollow Falls Terrace, and so on. But behind the facade of sameness lived a mini–United Nations of Virginians with roots in dozens of countries. When I opened the canvassing app to see our list of target voters, up popped names like Ahmed, Khafaji, Tehrani, Kumar, Adebayo, Fuentes, Kim. My Iranian-born voter gestured approvingly at his neighbors’ houses, saying, “Many cultures together. It’s what makes this country great.”

Culture wars

I wish everybody agreed. In multicultural Loudoun, culture wars are raging. School board meetings have degenerated into vicious fights over critical race theory and transgender students in bathrooms. The Virginia GOP, led by Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin, has pushed the threat narrative hard, and voters of all backgrounds are susceptible. On a previous canvass, a Latino voter told me he’d always voted Democratic but was no longer sure. “I’m worried about woke,” he said. “As a father of three children, it bothers me when the Democrats tell children they can be one hundred genders.”

Knocking doors for a state Senate candidate in Loudoun County, Virginia.

I didn’t hear such views while canvassing last week for candidate Russet Perry. Her race, against the son of a billionaire donor to Youngkin, is one of a handful that will determine control of the Virginia Senate on November 7. A slim Democratic majority in the state Senate has been the firewall against right-wing legislation, including a 15-week abortion ban, pushed by Youngkin and the GOP-controlled House of Delegates. Virginia Republicans want to flip the Senate and gain total control over state government. If they do, a parade of hard-right bills will be marched into law. Virginia’s results in November will also shape the climate for national elections next year.

Why we canvass

Liz and I were lucky. Morning rain and chill gave way to a sunny afternoon. Our “turf” was ideal, a compact neighborhood of shared-wall townhouses that required minimal walking. It isn’t always so easy. My least favorite type of turf is a rural area where you have to drive between far-flung addresses rather than walk.

Our turf map from the MiniVAN app shows doors conveniently close together.

Whatever the turf, you may ring ten doorbells before one person opens the door. But that one person could be a deciding vote. State legislative elections, though highly consequential, typically draw low turnout and can be won by 100 votes or less. (In 2017, a Virginia legislative race was won by one vote.) With less than a month to go until Election Day, we’re mainly contacting voters thought to lean Democratic, to nudge them to turn out and vote. I had a conversation in Loudoun with a woman who was disgusted with Republican chaos in the US House. She wanted to vote early before traveling abroad, but she wasn’t sure where and how to do it. I gave her information on how to request a ballot and vote by mail, and she was grateful.

After the 2016 election, many of us felt helpless and depressed. Eventually we found that taking action made us feel better. You feel more optimistic and energized when you do something to change the situation. Ringing strangers’ doorbells sounds stressful. It doesn’t seem like something that would relieve stress. And yet it does. Why?

One reason is simply that it’s demanding. You have to think on your feet, because you never know who will answer the door or what they’ll say. In between doors, you’re walking (sometimes a long way) and entering data into an app. All your physical and mental energy is consumed, with no mental space left over to obsess about Trump.

Liz leaves candidate flyers at a voter’s door.

Canvassing offers me a window on lives very different from my own. I’ve canvassed in conservative suburban and rural places that are entirely unlike my deep-blue urban neighborhood. I’ve talked to people above and below me on the socioeconomic ladder, and people from countries and cultures I know nothing about. But you can sometimes find a point of commonality amid the differences.

Canvassing in Virginia before the 2018 midterms, I came to a house with a big garden in front, with beautiful plants and sculptures. After I rang the bell I turned so that I was gazing at the garden when the person opened the door. She said, “Oh, you’re looking at my garden?” “Yes,” I replied. “I’ve been knocking on doors for days and I’ve seen all kinds of gardens but this is the most amazing one.” She was delighted: “Tell me what you like about it!” And we talked for 15 minutes. She was a Democrat, and by the end of the conversation she assured me that her entire household would go vote the next day because she would personally take them to the polls in her van.

It’s funny that we tend to speak of “knocking doors” when we’re more often ringing video doorbells. The term “knocking doors” harkens back to a time when most of our interactions with other people were face-to-face, rather than via computer. And I think many of us crave that at some level.

If you’re canvassing with a partner, you encourage and support each other. I’ve made good friends that way. You can also make connections, brief ones, with voters. Talking with friendly Dems is fun, but sometimes the most important conversations are with undecided voters. Occasionally someone will be unpleasant, but most people are at least polite if you’re standing on their doorstep, smiling. They somehow recognize that you’ve made yourself vulnerable, and you’re out there because you believe in democracy. And they respect that.

Our canvassing team last week included members of my volunteer group, NOPE, as well as students from Catholic University College Democrats.

Defending – and reforming – our democracy

With one of the two major parties veering toward authoritarianism (see Ruth Ben-Ghiat’s blog Lucid), we can’t take our democracy for granted anymore. Around the world, most of the autocratic figures who’ve come to power in the past century didn’t seize power through coups. They were elected, and then proceeded to dismantle the opposition and democratic institutions so they couldn’t be removed. So it’s critical to keep anti-democratic, illiberal politicians from getting into office in the first place. I don’t support everything that national Democrats do. (A case in point, among many: Biden’s border wall.) But there are some good, progressive candidates running on Democratic tickets at the state and local levels – and what happens in state legislatures matters a lot.

It's easy to assume that we had a perfect democracy before Trump and the Republicans broke it. But recent articles by Jamelle Bouie and Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt explore the ways in which our democratic institutions – unlike those of most Western democracies – allow and indeed encourage minority rule. These institutions include the Electoral College, which has awarded the presidency to five men who lost the popular vote, including two of the past three presidents. The US Senate, with its small-state bias and filibuster rule, is also counter-majoritarian, and a Supreme Court with lifetime tenure for justices gives nine unelected individuals almost unlimited power over our lives. If we can keep Trump out of the White House next year, Bouie writes, “it will be worth it for Americans to start to think — out loud, in a collective and deliberate manner — about the kinds of structural reforms we might pursue to make our democracy more resilient or even to realize it more fully in the first place.”

That’ll be a long process. For now, I can get out of my blue bubble, talk with people, and encourage them to vote. Sure, at most houses no one answers the door. And every so often someone – a voter or perhaps their dog – growls at you. But a surprising number of people seem to recognize that having civil conversations about politics is good for the country – that we can talk, listen, and maybe disagree, but remain polite. And that’s a start.