Oh, Chillicothe

So the day of the election was spent knocking on doors and making sure people were voting or had voted. I knocked on roughly 200 doors and spoke with so many people in both Hamilton and Chillicothe. James was in Carrolton today, while Liz was in Trenton, and Veronica was focusing on Chillicothe. And after it was much too dark to see the numbers on the houses we finally packed it in. And then we were done....

It was so strange to suddenly be finished. And then the waiting began.

The Chillicothe Democratic Headquarters slowly filled with people gathering around an old color tv to watch the results come in (as an aside...by filled I mean instead of having 8 of us here, we had about 25). Shortly after the local and Missouri polls closed a woman ran in out of breath saying that the results for our area, Livingston Co., had been posted and Obama had won Chillicothe by 1 vote. Liz, Veronica, and I raced across the street to see the posting for ourselves...after all of our work, walking
every street numerous times, talking, persuading, explaining, cajoling, arm twisting at times we said that it would be so fulfilling to have one by a single vote.

We waded into a crowd of locals right out of a Jimmy Stewart movie -- the big stone courthouse in the town square filled to overflowing with the people we'd been calling on: teachers and farmers, union workers eating homemade cookies, pastors, grocers, children playing on the floor...all of them watched the numbers come in underneath a big draped American flag. Unfortunately it wasn't to be. As the court clerk came down the granite stairs again and again to hand updates to the man running the board, the numbers slowly changed to show McCain winning 60% - 40%.

But back at our headquarters the mood was electric and it took very little time for us to come around and feel better again. We may have lost Livingston Co. and Missouri as a whole but we significantly improved the percentages for the state as a whole. There is no debate regarding that statement. Without all of the volunteers here the state would have been one of the few Republican blowouts.

And so we sat, stood, paced, laughed and nervously nibbled on the pies, cakes, brownies, and cookies that the local women had been putting in front of us all week.We watched as thousands of people in Chicago gathered together to celebrate history. We saw the beaming faces of the people in Los Angeles flocking together. Philadelphia, San Francisco, Miami, Boston, Columbus so many people gathering their collective selves shoulder to shoulder to share this historic moment in our nations history. They would always remember where they were, how they felt, the faces they saw, the people they embraced.

And here I was in Chillicothe, MO. The birthplace of sliced bread and the seat of Livingston County. I was here with Liz from DC, Veronica from Oakland, and James from San Francisco. And we were all here with fifteen diehard Democrats of this small rural town. And we were crying and embracing and so happy that we were about to burst.

And there was no where else I wanted to be.