“We meet at a moment of great uncertainty”

You want “folksy”? Obama gives you the true article, not the phony Sarah Palin, fascism-with-a-smile variety. No living politician connects with a crowd like Obama does, and now I’ve seen it with my own eyes.

What you don’t get from the video is a sense of the climate Obama stepped into and managed to take by storm. A procession of hard-boiled Philly union organizers warmed up the rally before the candidate arrived. One of them said he’s reluctant to make speeches to crowds with children because he curses so much. And sure enough, after a couple minutes talking about Bush and McCain, he was powerless to hold back: “We can’t take this shit anymore!!”

Did I mention I love Philadelphia?

All of this took place in front of the Mayfair Diner, a political landmark in Northeast Philly. (Snipers clad in black patrolled the roof.) Here, I’m told, is where every local and state candidate must press the flesh every Election Day, in a long-established ritual. So having been introduced by Mayor Nutter, Governor Rendell and Senator Casey, Obama instantly took the temperature of this crowd and nailed his delivery in a way that must have awed his fellow public officials. He took repeated, friendly jabs at Rendell, at both their expense, and the crowd ate it up like candy.

With the speech over but euphoria still stirring, it was time to find the Frankford Avenue campaign office and get my assignment. I wound up paired with a fellow novice, knocking on the doors of undecided voters in the 57th Ward — a modest middle-class area near Pennypack Park, with suburban townhouses cheek by jowl and a mix of white, Jewish and Latino residents. Here and there we encountered Albanian, Indian and other immigrant families and an African-American household or two.

Most of the folks on our list, even if undecided, were registered Democrats, so there was little if any animosity from the contacts we made. But we did find a pronounced distrust of politicians and a bottomless disillusionment with Washington politics. One woman assured us, “Oh, don’t worry, I’ll vote for your idiot.” That was more or less the mood: the unshakeable sense that no one, including Obama, will be able to fix the mess we’re in. But by and large, the swing voters seemed to be swinging our way.

More than anything, the afternoon brought home to me just how inexact a science politics is. The canvassing process itself, from the short training session to the assigning of teams, had a thrown-together, haphazard quality. I came away knowing that I’m far from the world’s best canvasser, but also knowing that campaigns go into battle with the volunteers they have, to paraphrase Rumsfeld. And the masses, gathered in nice enough but somewhat claustrophobic communities like these, tend not to live coherent political lives. They don’t always fall into the categories that political junkies take for granted as a frame of reference.

One middle-aged, drunk-seeming white man, an “on-the-fence” Republican, said some pretty racist things about Philadelphia but went on to voice withering contempt for McCain on the Bill Ayers issue. To him, the Republican Party was the office down the way where he could stop in and get his immediate concerns addressed, and joke around with the staff while doing it. “Couldn’t you do the same thing with the Democratic Party?” asked my canvassing partner. “I’ve never tried,” the man responded.

After calling it a day, I boarded the SEPTA train at Holmesburg Junction and headed back to Center City. Striding onto Market Street with my navy blue Obama t-shirt, I spotted a thin black man about my age. He seemed mentally disturbed, fairly typical of the street people who hang out on the periphery of 30th Street Station, Philly’s Amtrak hub. Typical, that is, except for one thing: He was wearing a bright white McCain-Palin shirt.

Our paths crossed briefly. He eyed my shirt with anger, then said: “Ain’t gon’ be no Obama. He wouldn’t even join the military. Think of all them dead soldiers.”