Election Day In America: 2012

My daughter Michelle called me to say the campaign had called her. Since she had done a 24 hour day at work that week-end, she'd decided to take the day to answer the citizen call.
I was immensely proud. This was the last presidential campaign for President Obama. Why let time go by without becoming a part of it?
She got on a bus set aside for the volunteers. They lived in Illinois, but were needed in Wisconsin.
She called me back to say how luxurious the bus was. There were screens for people who wanted to
choose a movie.
When they got to Wisconsin, a campaign leader got aboard their bus to give them clipboards.
They were to go door-to-door two by two, checking voter logistics.
Each clipboard had a great many addresses, with detailed info on each.
Each address listed a certain number of persons as residents,  and told which residents were "friendly".
Volunteers were assigned to locate Obama voters, find out if they had gotten to the polls yet, then
let someone in the campaign know which citizens had not yet voted, and whether or not those
voters needed a ride.
In two hours, Michelle and her partner (a lady architect) got to 250 people before going back to
Illinois.
Back home, the last moment volunteers were shown to seats on the stage in the McCormick Center.
So our family place in a historic period in this country is sealed. Michelle sat in the first row behind
where POTUS came out to speak.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, one daughter dropped by one of the campaign sites in our state a couple of times. For myself, I was confident I'd done my part by making the 218 calls the campaign had given me to make during the summer.
However, at 6:20, I got a text from the campaign asking me if I could make a few more calls.
But Michelle was texting me at the same time asking me if Wisconsin was going to the democrats.
She couldn't charge her phone at that moment.
So I quickly got on line to get my new list. I didn't exactly get a list, though. I got a name and phone
number. Once I'd called the number, talked to the voter, reported back to the campaign on my screen
another number would pop up.
I was still trying to text election results to Michelle, so I finally said to her sister, Toni- "Actually this
campaign information is in your email so can't you make some of these calls?"
She did. She began to make calls. By around 7:15 I think, they let us off the hook. The polls were to
have closed at 8. So at last we would watch the results on TV.
Some of the polls in Detroit were still open I believe.
Detroit Public Schools calls parents for some reason every week. On November 5th, however, parents
got no calls. At 8th hour they told the students there would be no school on November 6th.
So I promptly got on the phone with the campaign worker who'd given me my original call list. Then
I phoned the Chairman of the DNC of Michigan. He thanked me, so maybe he got the Detroit polls
to stay open a little longer. I then texted five other campaign site heads I had on my call list. I felt at
this moment all our politics really was local. But at around 7:15 election night I was free to veg.
I'd begun watching a cable channel which kept saying "This race is too close to call."
I got sick of the drama, because the races were not all too close to call.
So I changed to Current TV.
Current seemed more  honest, professional, and, informative. So I stuck with them. Until POTUS
was announced the winner before eleven thirty Eastern Standard.
At that point Al Gore began to go on a bit loudly about how both campaigns had neglected to start
meaningful reflection and talk about global warming.
I turned the channel again. I heard President Obama's victory speech. But one journalist on that
channel wanted the President to thank some persons who'd worked on the campaign individually.
The guy even wanted to use this moment to talk about Hurricane Sandy. I gave up.
Later that week-end even one of the Saturday journalists called the win a close race. I don't think so.
By the end of voting, POTUS had 3.5 million votes more than his opposition.
So many people this year wanted to give the campaign the credit for this second four years. The
campaign was stellar. But why? We were stellar because we had the best, most inspiring candidate
in the world...in the wide wide world. Thank you President Obama for running again; and thank you
for representing The United States of America.