Campaigning In New Hampshire-Retrospective

• The people of New Hampshire suffer severe mental trauma as a result of their status as first-in-the-nation primary I personally called at least two people who were literally driven insane by the massive number of political phone calls, both robocalls and calls from real people. Also, one neighborhood had a "Beware of crazy 79 year old man" warning given to canvassers, because he invited canvassers into his house, then realized they weren't supposed to be canvassing the "private" development and started going ballistic, even getting physical (this happened multiple times before we blacked him out and put out the warning)


• People in New Hampshire may well deserve their status as first-in-the-nation The generosity and work done by in-state supporters in terms of providing food and housing to out-of-state people was phenomenal. Moreover, they are astonishingly into the process. We had 1000 people show up at 8:45 a.m. on a Friday morning to see Barack (after his Iowa victory, but still phenomenal). The voters are extremely indecisive but they are into the process (this was probably the major factor in the polls being wrong; so many people told us they'd be making up their minds in the booths and those seem to have gone for Hillary).


• The level of wonkishness was surprisingly high. We had people asking his position on the line-item veto, wind power, and coal. However, one lady's query/anger was on about the most obscure thing possible. It was a bill he co-sponsored with Senator Orrin Hatch(R-UT) exempting contributions to religious institutions from the calculations done by the courts on those being means-tested after filing for bankruptcy. This lady was upset because she felt the creditors deserved to be paid back. My arguments over how the new bankruptcy laws are unfair didn't go anywhere, but when I noted that it passed unanimously by voice vote, I made some headway.