If Mitt Romney defeats...

...President Obama in November, it will be because he outspent him, not because he out-organized him. (And for the first time in history, the challenger is expected to outspend the incumbent.)

That was the main takeaway I had from my experience knocking on doors for the Obama campaign in Iowa on Saturday.

That, and the observation that everyone in Davenport must own a dog. (A crazed dachshund, like the one above, even chased me half-way down the street at one point. Awright, already! So vote for Romney; see if I care!)

Other than that, the trip was unremarkable.

Eight or nine of us assembled at the Democratic Party headquarters in Evanston at eight o'clock on Saturday morning. I was grouped with three other college students and we drove to HQ in Davenport, about three hours away. Ben, a tall history / secondary ed major at Northeastern, owned the car. Since I prefer to drive, I took the wheel, and Ben sat in the passenger seat. In the back were two undergrads from Northwestern: Ani, an Indian guy from Houston, and Emilia, a journalism student from Los Angeles. I spent the whole day with these three and I came away very impressed; they were all intelligent, well-informed and pleasant. I really enjoyed their company. And, they were incredibly patient and polite to the old guy in the front seat.

We arrived in Davenport a little after twelve and got our marching orders from the field organizer. After a quick bite at a Wendy's we were off to our canvassing neighborhood. We split into two pairs; I went with Ani. (A political junkie, I learned by the end of the day that there isn't too much about American politics that this young junior doesn't know.) Each group hit about forty or so houses; they were all identified as likely Democratic voters. The challenge here is to make sure they turn out. To this effort, we handed out a number of Vote By Mail forms that allow individuals to cast their ballots ahead of election day. We'd been told this would be important.

The four of us finished at around 4:30, just as it began to rain slightly. Ani, who had been talking about some chain called Pizza Ranch since we'd left Evanston, rallied the troops for an early dinner. The name of the place rang a bell with me; I seem to remember Rick Santorum spending a lot of time there during the Iowa caucuses. According to Wikipedia:

Pizza Ranch is a Christian based company. This can be seen on their mission / vision posters in their restaurants and on their Web site. The Pizza Ranch vision is "To glorify God by positively impacting the world we live in."

That may be, but all I know is that when I went up to the register to pay for the buffet -- yes, a pizza buffet -- the young woman looked at me, looked down and then looked up at me again.

Yeah, what is it?

"Sixty-five?" she said sheepishly.

NO!

"Uh, no. But that's okay; everyone asks me that."

The three students all looked at me as if to say, "You're not sixty-five?"

After loading up on pizza of all kinds -- including dessert pizza -- we got back in the car for the return trip to Chicago. (As Ben described it at the beginning of the trip, it was a college car. In other words, when I went to open the driver's side door from the inside I found out that the handle was broken off. I had to roll the window down, reach out and open it from the outside -- excellent!)

About an hour outside of Chicago, Ben noticed that the car was near empty. We made it to a gas station on fumes, somehow, and filled it up. I offered to spring for it since I was the only one gainfully employed, but the others wouldn't hear of it. They insisted on chipping in. As I said, they were three really nice kids.

That's probably the only canvassing trip I'll take this year. My weekends between now and November are starting to fill up. But I was very impressed with the people I met on Saturday and the Obama campaign in general. They seem  really well organized.

I just can't see any of Mitt Romney's supporters having that much dedication.