What happens when you get the hang of deep canvassing?

This is Part 3 of what happens when we canvass with a friend.

We return to Rob Belushi and Patrick Quinlan to find out what happened to them as they became highly capable deep canvassers.

If you want to read the earlier parts of our discussion—how it felt for Rob to ask Patrick to canvass, how it felt to Patrick when Rob asked him—take a look at my last two posts, dated February 11 and 18.

As you get good at it, deep canvassing differs more and more from the typical campaign experience

Patrick:

The image of door-knocking and canvassing that most people have is totally separate from what we do. When I was in Philadelphia in 2020 and canvassing in an African-American neighborhood, I turned a corner and there were five hipsters from Brooklyn with the [blank] Party. They had all these campaign flyers for Joe Biden, and they were totally lost and confused, like they just landed on a new planet. I talked to them a little bit about what we were doing, but it was clear they were just in for one day, hanging campaign flyers on doorknobs. That’s pretty harmless. It's also not going to get you very far. Ultimately they didn't accomplish as much as they could even though they’d gone to the trouble of being there.

But I walk past the pile of flyers and I knock on the door; then I learn a little something about the person who lives there. It's a wild feeling. It's a wild feeling to get to know somebody that you never would've crossed paths with. Instead of driving by people all the time or being on our phones texting, how about having a nuanced conversation with someone you don't know? It is thrilling.

And you learn to stop making assumptions about people before you ever talk with them. I will never forget a conversation of mine that really drilled that point home.

A boy named Trump

Patrick:

I had been walking around a mobile home park for thirty minutes, having a difficult time finding the homes on my list. When I finally found Unit 14 (nowhere near 13 or 15), I could see a young man cleaning the porch. His dog started barking at us. Behind this sizable, white dog sat an older woman. She and the young man were chatting; I shouted hello to be heard over the dog. I was looking for Anna, an infrequent voter in her 60’s. The Latina in the chair had to be her.

"Yes, that's my mom," the young man said. "You can come up, don't worry about the dog." We ascended the stairs and now I was close enough to offer Anna a more cordial hello. I asked her, “If you had two minutes with President Trump, what would you want to tell him?” She smiled at me and said, “let me go ask my husband, my man.”

I laughed politely. She was charming, but I had a feeling in the pit of my stomach that any grown woman who needs to ask her husband about politics will probably support Trump.

As she slowly made her way inside the house, I was determined to make the best of this situation. Surely the young man might have different political opinions. So, while Anna went looking for her man, I asked about the dog. He introduced me to Bingo, who was very friendly now that I was on the porch.

I shook the young man’s hand and asked him his name. "Trump," he said. My eyes must have popped ever so slightly out of my head. Thinking I had misheard him, I believe I replied with one word: "Pardon?" "Trump," he repeated. "I was named after the hotel. It's not a great name these days," he half-chuckled with a shy smile.

I didn't know what to say. Somewhere in my brain, I was thinking his parents conceived young Trump on a visit to New York or New Jersey some twenty years ago. Like parents who give their kids names like Paris, Madison, or Mercedes.

Elsewhere in my brain, I realized that a husband and wife who named their son “Trump” probably were huge fans of his. Was I about to have a terrible conversation?

Before I could formulate a sentence, his father, Ramon, burst through the screen door. "He was named after Trump when Trump ran for president the first time in 1988, though he ended up not running." I had not fully realized that I would be meeting Anna’s husband; I had misread my walk list and didn't know Ramon’s political party or whether he was a super voter or a non-voter.

Part of my brain was desperate for some sort of information to help me formulate a plan. So I asked the father: “Are you interested in voting to put checks and balances on Trump—the President, not your son.” I figured a joke would be a great way to get the hell out of there on a high note if my suspicions were correct.

"Oh, yes. We always vote and we're voting against Trump's agenda."

I tried not to let my mouth hang open very long. Ramon had a Rachel-Maddow-level energy about his disappointment with Trump. He launched into a tirade about Trump and why Trump won: "He said all the right things, but then did all the wrong things. People wanted someone who wasn't worried about politics and was going to change things.”

When I tried to interject and join in, he quickly shut me down. It was a friendly exchange; he just wanted to get his thoughts out first. He returned to Trump-bashing and it became clear that this sweet, energetic voter was a Trump supporter in the past but now couldn’t tolerate what Trump was doing to the country.

Then he shared his personal story. He came to the United States forty years ago and became an American citizen. He wants to vote because he’s not happy about the way immigrants are treated and talked about these days. I agreed and said the best thing we can all do to bring about change is to vote. Turns out, all he needed to open up was someone to listen.

As we walked off the porch, we said our goodbyes to Ramon, Anna, Trump, and Bingo the guard dog. I was still a little stunned. I had assumed I was talking with the wrong people. But they were the right people—including the boy named Trump.

Rob:

I can’t match that story for sheer shock value, but I had conversations where voters really surprised me. Many were in apartment complexes with lower-income people, many of them Spanish speaking. I am not a fluent Spanish-speaker but I am almost conversational. Weak grammar, but I put in the effort. I always found my most emotionally successful moments in those areas.

Nephew

I remember one conversation with two older Latinas. At first, they didn't know what the hell I was talking about, but they said come into our house. They sat me down at their kitchen table and gave me snacks. We talked and talked and talked and they decided they wanted to register to vote. So I registered them and  got them both to promise to vote. All of this in my very imperfect Spanish.

By the end, they were calling me nephew. I was calling them auntie. We laughed. They gave me chips. They gave me water. I asked for a diet Coke. They used a Spanish term that's like babo, which might be the Spanish word for slug. They essentially called me an idiot for drinking diet Coke.

And it just showed me—this conversation was at the end of a long day—you never know when that door is going to open and change your whole day or week because what’s revealed is the inherent goodness of most people. I was once again surprised by the love hidden behind any door.

You just got to knock the doors.

Dave:

That’s a beautiful story, Rob.

Rob:

Let me tell you one more.

Vote another way

Rob:

This was one of my most difficult conversations, with a woman who told me for sure she would not vote because her vote doesn't matter. She talked about how corrupt politicians are, how it doesn't matter.

And then she told me she had five children living with her. She had lost a child to an overdose. She had her grandchildren there. She was Mexican, but very fluent English speaker, blown hair. She told me the gossip on every single one of her neighbors. She told me about the condos going in down the street. She was essentially talking about politics without talking about politics.

In the end, I said to her, don't tell me you don't care. Don't tell me it doesn't matter. You know everyone on the block, you care about your community. You care about your family. Don't tell me you don't care about what's happening in your community. You do. You know everything that's going on in your community.

Maybe you're talking about voting for president and how that won't affect you. But you don't like those condos down the street, vote another way. You want healthcare a different way? Vote another way. You want more rehabilitation clinics in your area? You want different treatment for drug abuse, drug offenses? You want hospitals to take more people in? Vote another way.

So she registered and she gave me water. She introduced me to her whole family. It was a stunning revelation to me that if you listen to people, they will give you their reasons, their obstacles to voting; and if you ask, and listen, they will give you a glimpse of what matters to them the most. If you understand that, you can clear the obstacles away.

By the way, this was ten minutes after I talked to a white woman in a different apartment, just down the street. She lived alone with her son; his father had just died of an overdose and always voted Republican. There we were, sharing her story and my story. She was crying in her door, telling me, thank you for listening to me. Thank you for giving a shit about me.

Dave:

Oh my God, Rob.

[Photo: Rob on the left, Patrick on the right]

Rob:

Let me tell you one more.

Why don’t you try?

Rob:

This is the one I take with me for the rest of my life.

I was volunteering in the office. Somehow you sons of B words got me to volunteer in an office one day. And Kathleen got a call from a woman who was trying to get help with her vote. She spoke Spanish. Kathleen asked me to call her back. I said, Kathleen, I don't speak Spanish well enough to be on the phone with somebody. And Kathleen just said, "Rob, why don't you try?"

So I called her back. We made a date for me to help her vote. I went to her on that day and sat with her and her husband—they spoke only Spanish—and her daughter who spoke English. They had their ballots and together we looked up every candidate even in judicial races. So they could decide and then mark their ballots. Every single measure on the ballot we looked up and they voted.

This was a woman who came to this country 20 years earlier and had finally become a citizen. This was her first vote ever. And I got to help her do that. She asked for help. She got help from us and those ballots went into the dropbox and they counted. One call to us for help led to three votes. And it was my honor and pleasure to help that woman vote for her first time after working in the U.S. for 20 years. I'll never forget it. And I'm so grateful I got to be of service to her.

*  *  *

So, readers, if you want to have conversations like these, take a tip from Rob and Patrick: ask a friend to do this kind of political work with you. Then you’ll have a buddy. You’ll ascend the learning curve together. You’ll help each other stick with it.

After a few tries, you’ll both start to connect with a wider variety of people. And you’ll both feel better as you see right in front of you that you are helping someone connect to voting. You are making a difference.

So pay your friends the ultimate compliment: ask if they’re feeling the same way you are about Trump. Ask them—no pressure—if they’d like to help.

Some of them are just waiting for you to invite them in.