おはようOhio! (Good Morning Ohio!)

Just today I noticed that, according to Real Clear Politics (see links), Ohio is leaning towards Obama! Regarding the importance of Ohio, a state with 20 votes in the Electoral College, this is great news. To turn Ohio 'blue' takes a lot of effort: it's a big state with many republicans, but I can assure you: the democrats are working day and night to make sure that democrats will actually cast their ballot to elect Obama.
Two weeks ago, on Friday the 3rd, I joined the GW College Democrats to Columbus, Ohio, to campaign there myself. Two busses filled with students from four Universities (GW, Georgetown, American University and Catholic University) drove for 8 hours from the Eastcoast to the American Heartland. My first glimpse of the US outside of DC and Northern Virginia. Just the drive was a great experience to me. Travelling for such a long time, just cruising through forests and small villages was like nothing I had ever seen. In Holland, you can't travel for longer than an hour before you get to some big city, and in 8 hours you can easily traverse three countries. Our accomodation in Columbus was very much in line with the democratic constituency: the union of Plumbers and Pipefitters offered their union hall to us for the weekend (didn't see Joe though). So we took our blankets or sleeping bags from our luggage and created a place to sleep for the next two nights.
On Saturday we went campaigning in the suburbs of Columbus. The transportation wasn't organized very efficiently, so after riding from restaurant to some park to the field office of the Obama campaign we were on the streets talking to people for just an hour. It was nice to see that the field office, one of those important outposts from where voters have to be mobilized, was somewhere on a deserted industrial/warehouse complex in a small, old building. There they composed the lists we used to visit people in the suburbs, there they organized activities, from there they distributed posters and yardsigns and from there they brought us to the suburbs where we knocked on doors and talked to people.
That evening I saw how much American Football means for the inhabitants of Columbus. The college team of the Ohio State University was playing and many, many students went to see the match in the stadium or somewhere on the street or in a bar where many screens were set up to attract customers. We didn't get into the stadium, but we watched it outside between all the supporters, dressed in the white and red of the Bucketeers (the team of Ohio State University). However, at the campaign office of the College Democrats of Ohio State University some dedicated students were still preparing the campaign of the next days and weeks. After the match, the supporters celebrated the victory of their team at student houses, bars, the streets - basically everywere in Columbus people were drinking and having fun. So we joined them until we had to take the bus back to our five-star Plumbers and Pipefitters Union hall.
The next day we went campaigning around the university. The dedication of the College Democrats clearly paid off: everybody had a long list of houses to go to in order to mobilize students (an important group of democrats in Ohio). So I went up and down stairs, around houses, into hallways and to verandas to be sure to reach every house, appartment, room and basement where a student could live on 'my' street. It was great to see that students who just woke up, had their girlfriend on the phone, were watching sports or seemed uninterested in politics still took some time to talk to me. Of course, some refused to waste their time, but others appreciated my efforts. One guy (not a students) told me that he had just lost his job and that his father worked in a plant were tanks were assembled, so he was depending on the war in Irak to make a living. Another eyeopener was the amount of houses that were for rent, houses were people had moved out because they couldn't pay their mortgages. In Ohio the impact of the economic crisis are much more apparent than in DC. So even though Columbus doesn't have a White House, a Capitol, many museums or other attractions, it showed me how most Americans live their life and experience the economic crisis, the elections, sports and politics.