Begin the Odyssey Rewind

Here I sit, alone in Rachel's bedroom in D.C., waiting for her to come home, and trying to somehow make sense of it all. One of her housemates, who I've met once before, pokes his head in the door to say a quick hello and a "Thanks for winning us North Carolina." It was a light thank you, so it was easy to respond to, but lately I've been getting all manner of praise, and I scarcely know what to make of it. A core component of my job the last three months was to make people understand the connection between their actions (or lack there-of) and what goes on in government, and especially the election. Still, when people point out my own impact with their thanks, I'm a little baffled.

I understand that I was part of the instantly-legendary Obama ground game, and that we were a crucial part of his win, especially in North Carolina. Still, after three months of grind and slog, I find my own impact hard to quantify. What I have an easier time with is the Obama field operation as a whole. Yeah, we did that. We won NC, we helped put MI in the bag early on, we protected the lead in PA, we convinced a whole lot of wary Ohioians. I only have a vague sense of what I accomplished, but I can tell you with much more certainty what we did.

Of course, you'll be able to read about the ground game as a whole in many places, and I'm sure a zillion books about it are on the way. So I'm going to use this space mostly to look back on my time in the trenches. Maybe it'll make more sense to me when I'm done.