We Are The Champions

The final push is near. Tomorrow and Tuesday will be long, busy days. You can get through polling day on adrenaline (I’ve done it before and will do it again) but it helps if you’ve got some reserves of energy in the tank. So I had a good rest and didn’t get up too early.

When I did get up, it was to make sure I was in time to watch the Brazilian Grand Prix, the final race of the Formula One World Championship. And I’m delighted to report that after a nail-biting finish, we have our first British World Champion since Damon Hill took the title for Williams in 1996. Well done to McLaren and Lewis Hamilton. Lewis’s inspirational victory has set the tone for what I hope will be a historic week. By late Tuesday we could have the first black Formula One World Champion and the first black President of the USA, within three days.

Later in the day, I went over to the office on Bearss Avenue and was presented with a list of people to phone. This was a list of the phenomenal number of people who’ve attended an Obama event, joined a mailing list, given money to the campaign or otherwise shown that they are a strong supporter. My job was to phone and encourage them to give some time to the campaign – preferably as part of the formidable door-knocking machine. I spoke to two people who said they would come and help, and mostly left messages on answering machines. It’s always difficult to gauge how much of a difference these calls make – it’s not the most rewarding work if you’re mostly leaving messages, as I was, but on the other hand, if even a few of the people I’d left messages for rang back, saying they’d be coming down to help canvass tomorrow afternoon, then it would definitely have been worthwhile.