Eff this noise

Seriously.

Don't get me wrong, I am so impressed and inspired by what my candidate has accomplished and how well she carries herself, but working on a candidate campaign during primary season is complete balls. At least conservatives and Republicans have the chutzpah to back a candidate early. Democrats either don't want to hurt anyone's feelings or are too wishy-washy to actually make a decision on who they want to be their candidate. Take my race, for instance.

There are now four "official" candidates running in this race. There are six names floating around, but one couldn't officially get on the ballot (but is running as a write-in candidate... good luck) and one couldn't qualify for the public funding option available in my state without one of their staffers being charged with fraud. Sucks for him, but great for my team as that's one less person we need to worry about.

So there are four democrats running for this position, and there doesn't seem to be a single democrat in my turf that will just come out and say who they are voting for. Even more frustrating than that is people don't understand the need for volunteers during a primary because most people see it as a warm up lap to the real race.

I have the utmost confidence that my candidate will win the primary. I really do. But my confidence doesn't translate to hard results, so my supervisors get pissed because my deliverables are low and my metrics are completely skewing the rest of the folks in the state.

The other problem is my turf is the base territory for an competing democrat, so most of the activists in the area are already on board with him and I can't pull them away.

I think the most frustrating thing about this whole effort is that the LGBT community here is siding primarily with one candidate because of a skewed sense of their involvement in our marriage equality fight. My candidate had a much bigger hand in the first stage of the campaign, and the other guy showed up to a phonebank or two, shook a few hands and disappeared.

Which leads into ANOTHER fantastic part of democratic primaries -- endless infighting. It should be obvious to everyone that in this kind of political climate, democrats need to stick together and unite or else batshit conservatives are going to take over. Don't misunderstand me... I know that there are conservative democrats and liberal republicans (socially liberal, at least) and I know the democrats, in reality, are simply the lesser of two evils (or three if you want to include the teabaggers) but the dems are more likely than any to further federal LGBT rights, even though they've been doing a crap job so far. Oye.

I do have to say though, both of my Senators are republicans, and they have BOTH signed on as co-sponsors of ENDA, so props to them. I just wish the one who is on the Armed Services Committee would move from tepid support to co-sponsorship of the repeal of DADT, but I know that's too much to ask. As long as she votes to move it out of committee, I think I can deal.

Wow. That was a lot of politics. I feel dirty.

One thing that kind of bugs me about working in field is that so much of it is on the phone, and that's a hassle. I can't ever do work in busy, high-traffic areas where I can just sit with my computer, instead I have to always be in a quiet, secluded space where I get distracted and, what I really meant to write about when I started this, no chance to meet people. I just want to meet people. Not political junkies, just normal people who are smart and funny and who don't really know a lot about one subject, but enough to get by on a lot of different topics. Jack of all trades, as it were. And what I am about to say sounds lame (not in the sentiment, but more in the actual syllables and sounds), but I just want a goddamn boyfriend, damn it. Didn't help that last night this GORGEOUS guy stayed on my couch. He's a friend of my roommate from Utah, 6'5", red hair, well-built, scruffy beard and the sweetest guy. He bought a motorcycle in Boston, flew in to pick it up and now is riding back to Utah on it. He was just so damn attractive.

Problem is, I don't know where gay guys just hang out. I guess that's a plus and a minus about this city... the LGBT community is so well-integrated that there isn't really a gayborhood where all the queers hang out. The only identifiable location are the gay bars, and at that point everyone is just drunk and horny.

Aaaaaaand it's come to the point where this post got sufficiently whiny, so I think that's where I stop.

Oh, as a side note, I'm changing my name. I don't know to what, but it will change.