Some 300 volunteers worked the Columbus rally, and trying to get a quote from one of them was an all but hopeless endeavor. They knew their responsibilities, and zealously so -- at times it seemed overzealously. At one point, I was observed interviewing people in an area where such activity apparently was not supposed to happen, and with the polite assistance of a couple of Columbus' finest, I was shooed behind the barricades into the section reserved for the press. "You can talk to people from across the railing," I was assured.
Meanwhile, five large vans were at the ready to shuttle people from the rally four miles to the early voting location in downtown Columbus, and an early voting march is planned for the weekend. When I returned home from the rally, I found mailings from both the Clinton and Obama campaigns. And regardless of who has been distorting whose positions (although for the record, the Clinton glossy was an attack on Obama's healthcare policy; Obama's did not mention Clinton at all), both mailings urged voters to support their respective candidates March 4. But while Clinton's left it at that, Obama's went on the explain what documents would be necessary to satisfy Ohio's voter ID law, and then provided -- in three places -- a toll-free number to call for anyone who was still confused.
Perhaps most ambitiously, the campaign has set a goal of knocking on a million doors statewide -- a number almost equal to the toral number of votes cast in the 2004 Democratic primary -- between Saturday morning and the time the polls close Tuesday. A dozen rallying points have been established in the Columbus area where volunteers will meet three times a day each day before heading out.
Not that all of that means Obama's inspirational qualities are meaningless either. Back at the rally, Maggie Ledbetter was manning a "faith table," signing up people to speak on Obama's behalf at their churches on Sunday, or at the very least, to pass out Obama hand-held fans to the congregants, a campaign gift that would hopefully keep on giving through the summer.
Ledbetter, a young criminal defense lawyer from Chicago, quit her job so she could, with some financial assistance from her family, volunteer full-time for the Obama campaign. She has been following the campaign from state to state since November.
"I was telling my parents I was thinking about donating money to the campaign, and they said why don't you volunteer instead," she said. "I've been a big supporter of Obama's since he ran for the Senate in Illinois. I think the ability to inspire is important. When Demosthenes talked, people marched."
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