Kernersville lit drop

Mary and I hit the road for Winston-Salem to do a lit drop, and ended up with a list around Kernersville. After picking up our list in W-S and getting a lunch recommendation from David Fortney (good BBQ place -- Little Richard's), we parked at the top of a neighborhood and split up.

There was some confusion about whether we were knocking on doors. Naturally, I wanted to do it, so I started off doing it and saw some interesting households, including one where a 19-year old hispanic woman was the only one who could vote, had already voted, and was super-pleasant despite the fact that I had woken her up from a nap. Also, there was a "Beware of Dog" sign but the barks I heard from within indicated a very small dog.

The next guy I talked to had also already voted. Next door to him was a very Trumpy household, with a big yard sign and American flag. I asked if he and his neighbor were able to remain civil and he said yeah, but that it was impossible to have a substantive conversation.

Down at the bottom of the neighborhood there was a big apartment complex, maybe 80 units all told. Probably built in the 80s sometime, but really in impeccable shape. The clubhouse and pool were immaculate, and the playground out in the middle looked modern and was getting a lot of use. Very mixed ethnically, I spoke for a while to one white woman probably in her 80s who took a little while to register that I had on a Biden/Harris shirt, then said she was for the other side, but quietly admitted she wasn't going to vote. I talked to her for a little while to get a feel for where she was, and it turned out that she was afraid of people not wearing masks in grocery stores, and didn't realize that the CDC had initially held back on recommending people wear masks because of PPE shortages. I didn't work her too hard. She kept looking down the sidewalk a little fearfully, as if afraid that neighbors might see her talking to a Democrat. She said she appreciated what I was doing.

The neighborhood we hit next was a little more affluent, but we were pleasantly surprised to see how much diversity there was within it. Black households, mixed households. (Kernersville's median income is about the same as NC's ($52k), but the minority sharde of its population is a little lower than average) 

It's always nice to get out and gather anecdotal evidence like this. The great thing about canvassing is that it allows one to easily get out and go around other people's neighborhoods in a way that doesn't arouse suspicion. People understand what you're doing. Even if they disagree with you they support the activity you're engaged in. I always make an extra effort to wave at Republicans and say howdy if they are in their yards.

Overall, a couple of observations. First, both parties have a vested interest in portraying America as being in a crisis which it and only it is uniquely qualified to address. Trump called out "American Carnage," a country ravaged by reverse discrimination and tax-and-spend kleptocrats. Democrats focus on the hollowing of the middle class by the concentrat ion of wealth in the hands of ever fewer people.

The evidence on the ground is not always as clear, though the malefactor that neither party addresses is the chains and roll-ups that make it ever harder for small businesses, especially retail, to thrive. And everybody loves local retail, everybody likes knowing the people they buy their whatever from, keeping things in the community, and the examples set by small entrepreneurs. There's just no good politics to be made of attacking economies of scale, and we all end up gravitating towards price and convenience, just like we love fat, salt, and sugar.

Admittedly, my sample size is small and the last couple of weekends have been spent fairly close to I-85, along which is arrayed one of the highest economic growth arteries in the US. Not in the richest part of it, but not in the poorest. But in this rather median place, things were not all doom and gloom. What was sad, in retrospect, was how few people there were out in the streets on such a fine day.