Chum

Nothing caused more misery in my 3 months in Richmond county than yard signs. I'm not joking. The very first volunteer meeting I held had a whopping three attendees. One was a solid volunteer, willing to do what he could once or twice a week. The second had heard that something involving Obama was happening at Billy's Chop Shop, but wasn't all that interested in volunteering. The third wasn't there to volunteer either. She wanted to know why there weren't very many yard signs in Richmond county, and when we would be getting more. This was a sign of things to come. I would be dealing with those questions every day, usually many times a day, from then through election day (yes, including election day itself).

So why didn't we have many yard signs? Well, despite having a fundraising operation of absurd proportions, the Obama camp was often very stingy with its cash. Maybe not when it came to advertising, but they didn't want to spend on things that would add up to a significant cost when multiplied by the amount of ground they were trying to cover if those things... um... didn't help win the election. Yard signs and other "chum" might break even moneywise, but they require time, energy and coordination that could be used toward more constructive purposes. From my own assessment, yard signs do two main things:
1) Provide (very) passive advertising and
2) Get stolen
Oh, and 3) Improve name recognition.
Item 3 would be useful to exactly one person I came across in my 3 months in the RC. I was still getting to know my county and I was wandering around the lovely hamlet of Hamlet, chatting with people on their porches and registering a few voters. I came across a couple on their porch who looked like if not for basic bodily needs, could stay on their porch until a tornado or chemical entropy got the best of them. I approached with a Hi, how are you... Are you registered to vote? Blah, blah, Obama, blah.
Woman: Who?
Me: Barack Obama.
Woman: What?
Man: The black guy running for president.
Woman: For real?

Other than her, everyone seemed to know who Obama was.

This is not to say that yard signs are 100% useless, but I did pretty much buy into the idea that they didn't produce many actual votes, and that other forms of campaigning were much more effective. Sadly I was completely unable to convince my local constituents of any of this. Every day, while I tried, often in vain, to cobble together a volunteer base, people would come into my office asking for yard signs. This might not sound all that bad, so, just for a second imagine that Starbucks stopped selling cappuccinos. Most customers wouldn't care, many would be ordering something else anyway, some would be happy to substitute with a mocha or something that costs at least $4 and involves words that did not exist until a few years ago. There would be some people, however, who would come in expecting a cappuccino, and some of them would be angry about not getting one. Disgusted, infuriated even. They would relentlessly point out that this is STARBUCKS and you don't even have CAPPUCCINNO. You might notice them carrying a subconscious belief, perhaps set in by childhood experience, that if they complain enough, the cappuccino will magically appear in front of them, possibly for free. Now imagine that you worked at Starbucks and this happened several times a day. That's what the yard sign thing felt like. Many people expected the Obama office to basically be an Obama store, and when I had nothing for them, they were somewhere between a little disappointed and pissed off. One lady yelled at me and stormed out before I could respond.

That was bad, but the worst were these words from a man I only saw once: "I guess you don't want our candidate to win." That's right sir, I'll leave you to guess why I left a cozy situation in a vibrant metropolis to come work 100 hour weeks in the middle of nowhere, but trust me, it's not because I want him to win.

Sorry, I'm not sure I'll ever be done venting about this.

The thingiest thing about this is that many people understood that this was a perception issue, but it didn't really matter. Even if I could successfully convince someone that yard signs didn't actually get votes, there was a deeper itch to be scratched. There was a warm feeling associated with hammering your Obama sign into your yard. On top of that, people had an expectation about political campaigns in general, and I couldn't do much to fight it. The expectation was that when someone runs for president, they run a few ads and distribute yard signs. If I didn't have yard signs, I or someone I knew wasn't doing their job.

Obama defied expectations every step of the way. It's what made his campaign successful. It also had the occasional side effect of making people think I was running a shoe store where nothing was for sale, and the only thing you could do was call strangers and tell them how great shoes are.