There will be more Big Operators in your hair, more blokes with votes-in-their-pockets, more people widi their hands out, more hopeful patronage hounds, more of everything which makes politics complicated without adding to the vote.
There is just one thing to be remembered in the midst of all this hurly-burly and confusion: Keep your eye on the ball!
The votes are still in the precincts. Punching doorbells still remains the only way to get out the vote you need, despite anything you may hear from the Important Politicians from down town.
Maintain your own practice of spending two afternoons each week punching doorbells.
Schedule Mr. Upright for another 500 hours of canvassing and see to it that he keeps to his schedule.
Keep your campaign centered around the Doorbell Club and don't use them for anything but canvassing until election day.
Ignore the opposition as before.
The only real differences are these:
(a) You all campaign for the whole ticket and emphasize Mr. Upright only by getting in his name more frequently, principally through quoting him by name in support of the platform and the ticket.
(b) You canvass from a selected list as before, but this time you ignore, in your canvassing, all the members of your party who voted in the primary. With the exceptions of the ones who had to be carried co the polls (and will have Co be again) these people can all be depended on to get to the polls and to vote the straight party ticket. Instead you canvass all members of your party who failed to vote in the primary ... and all members of minor parties and all unaffiliated voters. The known members of the other party you ignore. You have nearly 40,000 people to reach; you haven't time enough nor people enough to do more. Your effort will be to turn out the largest possible vote of your own party... especially the voce of the "sleepers."
(c) Therefore you will put more effort than ever into organizing your election day forces. If additional help for election day can be obtained from the county or state committee you will want it, since it does not require local information, other than a prepared list, Co do election day work, and it does not even take that Co be a poll worker or a count watcher.
And that's all
Along toward the last of the campaign very heavy pressures will be brought against you co change the campaign, but one will come from an unexpected source. A senior member of the party, resident in your district, a nominal member from the beginning of the Upright committee and a fairly heavy contributor Co it, is likely to call on you. He won't put it quite bluntly but the idea is that you should lie down and let Swivelchair win.
He will say you have made a good fight but that Upright does not have a chance. Upright isn't quite ready yet; maybe in two years, or four years, but not this year. On the other hand he happens to know that Swivelchair plans to go for Senator next time; on that occasion he could throw a lot of support to Upright if Upright did not cause Swivelchair too much expense this time. Why not be practical, take a long view, and get along?
You wouldn't even have to drop the rest of the ticket, naturally; just persuade Upright that there was no sense in throwing good money after bad-and get sick for a while.
As for you - well, what appointment would you like? Maybe it could be arranged.
There is no particular reason why you should not indulge in the rare luxury of losing your temper, although it won't help any. Send him about his business. Don't make it an issue - now. But don't let him sit in on any party conclave during the campaign, nor ever again, if you can keep him out. He's a Trojan horse.
Don't let it shake your faith in human nature. Instead, it should build up your faith. They would not try to buy you off if they were not frightened! It is a shiningjustification of your faith in the nature of the average citizen. Your methods and your beliefs are being vindicated in the most practical way possible - and die opposition knows it.
Some time later you will again find yourself seated behind a table with an election night party going on all around you. The radio will be blasting, the phone will be ringing, you will be trying to eat a sandwich and listen to the radio while thinking with half your mind about how to scrape up the postage for the eight or nine hundred-odd letters of thanks that Upright will have to send out in the next two weeks.
The early returns aren't going too badly; Upright is even running a little ahead of the ticket in some spots -but it's still touch-and-go. Swivelchair's organization is experienced and well trained; it can't be discounted. You decide to put off worrying about the postage, and so forth, until about Thursday. You'll find the money; you always have. There haven't been any returns on congressional districts for about an hour. You are getting jittery. The announcer is introducing candidates and notables - why don't those stuffed shirts get off the air?
Here come some figures-9th district, 10th district, 11 th district, 12th district - the announcer stops. What's got into him?
'Just a minute, folks, some new figures just in... any moment now. Here's one item of news anyway. The new figures clearly show that in the Umpteenth District, in a surprise upset, Jonathan Upright has unseated old-timer Congressman Swivelchair. The incomplete returns show a lead of-" You have elected a congressman. You can't leave on that vacation the next day. In fact you can't leave for a couple of weeks. Besides the thank-you notes there are the post-election meetings of the Doorbell Club, the breakfast dub, and the state and county committees. Upright wants to discuss appointments with you, too, of his secretaries. You don't want to go to Washington with him; you don't even want to be on the payroll as his field secretary and stay in the district, as you don't want to be his employee - your position depends on your being your own boss. This attitude gives you at least a veto in the appointments he does make-and on his later appointments. Your own plans have more to do with tying in the Doorbell Club to Washington through a weekly newsletter from Upright and a regular procedure whereby the Club will be kept informed as to what is going on, what it means, and votes their approval or disapproval for the information of Upright and the two senators.
It is nearly a year and a half later that you are sitting in your living room, thumbing through the current Congressional Record - the only tangible thing you got out of either campaign - when you notice a roll call vote on a measure you have been following. It's a good measure in your opinion, and important to the whole country. This is the last vote, the one that sends it to the President for signature. You note with approval that Upright voted for it-as you knew he would; you have corresponded about it.
It just squeaked through, by one vote. You suddenly realize die significance. One vote - Upright's vote, for Swivelchair had a definite record against this sort of measure.
One vote. Your vote!
Your own efforts have put a constructive measure into effect for the whole 140,000,000 Americans -you did it, with your bare hands and the unpaid help of people who believed you.
It's a good feeling!
CHAPTERXI
Footnotes on Democracy
"The target is who and what?"The people, yes-sold and sold again for losses and regrets for gains, for slow advances,for a dignity of deepening wots."- Carl Sandburg
"When you assemble a number of men to have the advantage of their joint wisdom, you inevitably assemble with those men all their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interests, and their selfish views. From such an assembly can perfection be expected? It therefore astonishes me to find this system approaching so near to perfection as it does...."