“Hussein Obama!” The slur came rolling out of the window of a pick-up truck, like a clichéd line in a weak screenplay. However, this wasn’t South Carolina or Alabama. We were in Chestnut Hill, an affluent community in northwest Philadelphia. The message from the pick up truck could not support my earlier notions about this neighborhood, because I had been there too long already. Maybe thirty minutes.

I was here volunteering with a group organized by a grassroots group DC for Obama. Breaking the Palm Sunday afternoon tranquility, I led the cheers as other volunteers passed out stickers and did the real work of registering Obama supporters for the closed Pennsylvania primary. Since only registered Democrats could vote, the campaign strategy was to register as many supporters as Democrats prior to the March 24 registration deadline.

I attached the name of our candidate of choice to everyone we saw -- “Dog walkers for Obama!” or “Young people coming out of the coffee shop for Obama!” and “SEPTA drivers for Obama!” The last cheer received a thumb poking up out of a black driving glove as the nearly empty city bus accelerated through the intersection.  We had an opportunity to share with everyone on the corner “Former Republican for Obama!” after a man straddled his Lexus SUV on the curb and took the eight or nine minutes to change his party affiliation in order to “give Obama all the help he can get here.”

My favorite cheer was “The hidden demographic for Obama!” That cheer was reserved for when we received enthusiastic support –thumbs up, tooting car horns, or big waves with smiles – from white women, particularly the middle-age ones who have been overwhelmingly supportive of Obama’s Democratic rival, Senator Hillary Clinton.  The “Hidden Demographic” was everywhere. They were driving Volvos and pick-up trucks; they were passengers and they had kids in the back seat. The longer I stayed on that corner the more I got excited about the prospects for Obama in Pennsylvania. Oonly a few hours before, I hadn’t been so sure.

“We’re not in Obama country,” I said to my canvassing partner Kim Morton, as we first surveyed the corner of Germantown Avenue and Bethlehem Pike in front of the Borders bookstore.  The streets were nearly empty of people at this time, but it was obvious, demographically this was much further away than the twelve minute ride from where we had been canvassing for the past two hours. We had been at a major intersection on Broad Street in West Philly, a transportation hub, where our goal was to register as many black people as we could as they stood waiting to transfer from one SEPTA bus to another or before they could dart into the subway.

Kim, a co-chair in the DC for Obama campaign, and a political candidate herself for the DC State Democratic committee, fervently approached those she hoped would be new voters, braving the cold to get information from people before the next bus arrived. Not everyone knew details about Obama, but the support was strong. Even when we took a break to get some coffee and McDonald’s fries, we registered new voters. We held conversations with a drug dealer who wore our Obama sticker hoping it would help his chances in his next run-in with the law, and with ladies returning from early morning service with palms spilling out of their bags. I didn’t see any of those folks in Chestnut Hill.

The cobblestones, the coffee shop, and the brand new Borders set the back drop for us as we hustled from the car arms full of blue and green signs, rolls of stickers and clipboards with Pennsylvania State Department voter registration forms.  I looked around and didn’t see many people at all, but approached the one person I thought I could easily break the ice with, a mid-twenty something black man wearing sweat clothes.  Wearing my Ward 7 for Obama T-shirt over my long coat and several sweat shirts, I felt like I needed no introduction.

After waiting for him to remove his buds connected to his ipod and giving a “Wassup” and head nod, I jumped right in. “How are we doing here?”  I asked trying to gauge the Obama support before putting my game face on. “Man,” he tells me shaking his head, “This is Chestnut Hill. Good Luck.” Just what I had feared, I remembered thinking. If only I could find that guy to tell him how wrong both of us were.

The irony of my assumption could be considered ridiculous when I had just spent nearly three hours driving up I-95, with Kim in my passenger seat, and Maura Brazill in the back. Maura is as Irish as they come, except no red hair. She was not just some random DC for Obama volunteer who hopped in my car to get to Philly; she and I have a history going back over ten years when we both met on a bus from Philadelphia to New York as Peace Corps trainees. We know each other. Although both of us have been back in DC for years, it took this presidential campaign for us to really reconnect.

After seeing her name on some emails, I was getting a strong feeling I would see her that February morning of the DC Primary as I hustled to park my car and make the 6 a.m. rally start time at the Obama campaign office on Pennsylvania Avenue near Eastern Market. She was on the other side of the entry, bundled up, T-shirt outside her coat and holding her Obama yards signs to plant at her polling place. We shared our excitement about the campaign with each other, both of us saying how incredible it would be to have a president who had lived in other countries and understood that people were multi-dimensional, despite what was presented too often on TV and in the papers. We laughed at how idealistic we were.

“Save me one of those green signs for my mother,” Maura reminded me as I popped the trunk in the Border’s parking lot. The sign’s white lettering is on green background. Three leaves of a shamrock sit in the middle of the “O” that is normally empty on the campaign logo. Another shamrock hovers between the “O” and the “B” in “OBAMA”, acting as the apostrophe so many Irish names use. “My mom is getting all her friends to vote for Obama, by telling them he’s Irish,” she says proudly, talking about her 70-year old parents.  “My dad hasn’t voted for a Democrat in over twenty years!”