I want a raise.
This year, I have no financial stake in the outcome of any elections. I’m not working for any candidates and I’m not formally consulting for any candidates at this point. While at this time last year and the year before I was a student of political science, and could justify spending vast amounts of time on Virginia politics, I no longer have the luxury.
Yet I have this job of the Democratic races in Virginia. I get a call or an e-mail from a candidate or their staff a few times each day, asking for something. I get dozens of pieces of e-mail each day from various campaigns, a result of having been added to campaigns’ mailing lists. I gave up on following every Virginia political blog a month ago, but I still read a dozen of them, and attempt to comment on them and do my best to remember to go back and continue those discussions. I volunteer for campaigns here and there, stuffing envelopes or making phone calls.
I don’t mean to sound like President Bush, but this is hard work. It’s like I’ve got this a twenty-hour-a-week job that I don’t make a penny on. It’s not even an investment, like if I were working to build a house or something. Come November 9, this job is over.
Now, I’m very happy to be helping these candidates — so hey, you, candidate, don’t stop asking me for help — and I’ll hang in there for the next month. If I’ve told them anything useful (and I genuinely have no idea if a word I’ve told anybody has been useful), then I’m happy. And some of it’s a lot of fun. I’m on a panel at a conference down at Washington & Lee today, and I’m speaking to a group at UVa tomorrow.
It’ll be interesting to see what happens to the Virginia political blogosphere after the elections. Will it wither? Will it remain static? Will it grow, when 49.9% of the electorate angrily rises up and takes to their keyboards? My only forecast is that our total output will decrease, and we’ll improve our personal and collective signal-to-noise ratio.
I’m tired. Bring on November 9. We’ll write up our post mortems, reacquaint ourselves with our families, take a deep breath, and figure out what’s next.
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