From New Hampshire. Sort of.

(This post was started while I was still on the ground in NH, but was interrupted by travel.)

At about 11:00 AM, faithfully “on the doors” in the GOTV effort, I get a call from a local Sanders coordinator who tells me to get to the Ward 5 Community Center polling station by 11:45. A number of canvassers, like me, are being pulled from the doors for a photo op with the candidate who was due to show up there at noon for a polling place visit.

The media is there and about 60-70 canvassers line both sides of the the walk into the polling station waving Bernie placards. We wait. And wait some more. I am still confident about the campaign’s GOTV effort, but the field manager inside me starts mentally calculating the number of doors that weren’t being knocked on. 

The Bernie campaign, not very surprisingly, has a very sixties feel to it. From the high school kid at the Union Hall staging center, singing old union organizing tunes updated with Bernie-relevant lyrics to the chants of the placard wavers outside the Ward 5 polls:

“Hey hey ho ho super PACs have got to go!”

“Feel the Bern!”

“This is what democracy looks like!”

“Bernie Sanders has our back! We don’t need no super PAC!”

As is always the case in campaigns, the candidate is running behind schedule and almost never where he’s supposed to be when people are told he will be. So we wait. And wait. And word gets back to Clinton headquarters that a Bernie photo op is about to happen. So about a dozen Hillary supporters show up, but with eight-foot wooden poles with four Hillary placards on each side, stacked on top of each other.

Calls are made back to Bernie headquarters. Fifteen minutes later, a new platoon from the Bernie brigade shows up with 12 long staves similarly adorned with Bernie placards and one or two giant wall signs, about 4′ x 6′. Because, of course, whoever has the most signs wins.

After more than an hour, Bernie finally shows up and works his way down the line of supporters, spending all of two minutes there. He continues walking out to the street and then proceeds to walk down a block then around that block. He looks a little frazzled, like he wants to be left alone. Fat chance. The press is swarming him. It reminds of that scene in the movie Brazil where Jonathan Pryce looks down a long dark corridor and a boss is walking back and forth in the distance with a gaggle of sycophants following along, eagerly sopping up every syllable and gesture.

Bernie gets back to the polling station, gets in his van and is gone.

***

During the wait I decide to go back to my car to get warm. I’m staying at the home of a former state representative and candidate for congress and governor. She’s a delightful radical who now hosts a radio show on the local community station, part of the Pacifica network. I turn on the show in the car and she’s interviewing a Bernie canvasser from Brooklyn who has been canvassing in Manchester. He tells a story about seeing Chris Matthews standing outside the Radisson Hotel there.

He and two other canvassers walked into the hotel to get a beer at the bar and Matthews was just standing outside the hotel, not smoking–just standing in the cold, like he wanted to be noticed. They left about an hour later and he was still standing there. They decided to ask to get their picture taken with him. He obliged and then noticing their Bernie badges he started sparring with them. During the course of the discussion Matthews berates Sanders calling him a “fucking dirtbag,” says Bernie doesn’t really believe in the Black Lives Matter movement and that he (Matthews) makes so much money “it would make their heads spin.” You can hear the whole story here at 18:43. Small wonder Bernie-ites think their candidate’s not getting a fair shake from the media.

***

Wednesday morning. I’m at Logan airport waiting for the shuttle bus from the rental car center to the terminal. A guy walks out to the curb to wait. He’s well attired. Slightly graying hair, nicely coifed. Expensive luggage.  Maybe mid-40s. I notice he has a rather worn Hillary sticker on overcoat. This is definitely not a canvasser. Maybe a campaign operative?

“Tough loss,” I say.

“Yeah,” he says. No smile.

I turn away to check the number of minutes until the arrival of the shuttle. I turn back to him and he’s peeling the sticker off his coat. He looks up at me.

“We’ll win the next one,” he says.

I say, “Well, it looks like you’re pretty clear in South Carolina. It might get interesting in Nevada though.”

“We’ll see,” he says. I realize just how bad a mood he’s in and don’t risk further engagement which he clearly does not want.