This is the fifth and final installment in CEM’s series of dispatches from Indiana, courtesy of our intern Christina Arrison, who has been there working with the Obama campaign.
Last Thoughts
It’s all over, and everyone I’ve talked to has been pleased with the outcome of yesterday’s primaries. While an outright win in Indiana would have been nice, the margin was so narrow in Indiana and he won North Carolina by so much that the night as a whole was certainly a victory. To me, though, one of the best outcomes of the primary was that it led a lot of people in Indiana to participate in politics for the first time. There were so many new volunteers coming into the campaign office who found out that it really is easy to help out. So many people were able to talk to volunteers, or to cast a vote for the first time. When I wrote my first post I was torn between appreciating the chance to give every state a voice and my worry that it would divide the party. But listening to the speeches of both Obama and Clinton last night it seems like the antagonism has been toned down, and now I’m convinced that the positives have outweighed the negatives. The work that the campaign and volunteers did during the primary didn’t stop mattering when people cast their vote yesterday – come this November, and in many elections to come, the people who were energized by this primary will still be there, and hopefully will still remember that their voice matters.
