'Everyone would vote for Kerry if it wasn't for this war on terror,' Mary Maher was told while on the Kerry campaign in Pittsburgh.
This is a story I hate to tell because it dashed all my hopes for at least a few hours and puzzles me still.
The woman in the alleyway was holding a ladder for her teenage son while he fixed a broken window. A much smaller son stood solemnly at attention over a tool bag, ready to hand up supplies. She looked as if she'd be there for awhile and might not mind being pestered for some detailed directions.
When she'd told us what we needed to know, she said what many others have said: "I've seen you people around, I admire the work you're doing." This is as good an invitation to canvass as you get, so I asked the central question. Still undecided, she answered and added sadly: "Everyone would vote for Kerry if it wasn't for this war on terror. I agree with everything he says about the economy and about healthcare. But can we take a chance on him?"
Suddenly my clipboard seemed a foolish waste of everybody's efforts. It was stacked with our best flyers yet, on healthcare. My spiel was ready to roll: 46 million Americans can't afford health insurance; those who can afford it have paid an average of 12 per cent more in premiums every year since Bush took office; drug prices are colossal and Bush won't let the government buy prescription drugs in bulk or allow US citizens to import drugs from Canada, etc etc.
This canvass was supposed to be the easy one. Even dedicated Republicans privately accept that the US healthcare system is in a shocking state; the only argument is about what should be done. There is a minimal public health system, usually a county hospital that has all the folk resonance of the poorhouse. Other hospitals offer clinics for the poor on a sliding pay scale, but only for those who admit destitution and sign on.
Most Americans without health insurance don't go to doctors until they are so ill they have no choice. In an emergency, they lie.
Mark, a young black student, told me he was hit by a car in New York and brought to the nearest hospital on a stretcher. "I had to tell them I had no insurance so they said they'd send me a bill. I gave them my right address, but I made up a name and a social security number," he said. "I was lucky, they only kept me overnight. When the bill came I just tore it up. I'd be moving somewhere else anyway. I remember they charged me like $700 just for the ambulance."
Kerry's proposals to change all that are the pride of the campaign effort. But the woman with the ladder had just announced that they were beside the point and so were his plans for improving education and creating jobs.
I said something along the lines of "well, the 9/11 Commission report didn't think Bush did such a great job and Kerry will involve the rest of the world, which he didn't", but I knew I wasn't really on the mark.
Incidents like these spark soul-searching discussion among the volunteers. Usually, we watch the candidates spar on terrorism with mild irritation - here we go again, Cheney scare-mongering at high voltage, Kerry berating Bush for bungling in Afghanistan and indulging himself with a diversion to Iraq.
Our conventional wisdom is that those who think Bush has kept the terrorists at bay for the last three years are superstitious, wilfully blind to realities, wishful thinkers. Like all the single-issue Bush supporters - the gun-toters, the anti-abortion lobby, the homophobes - there is not much to be done about them except be thankful they are not more numerous.
But lately we have been wondering, in the time-honoured manner of campaigners on the ground, whether the people up there in headquarters are missing nuances and need the benefit of our helpful insights. Slinging insults isn't addressing whatever it is that concerned the ladder woman.
In Jenny's opinion, it was patriotism. "It wasn't just that she was afraid," she said when she heard my story. "She believes that if we are a nation at war we should be willing to put up with deprivations like no health- care and no jobs. That's what people did during the second World War, made sacrifices, right? Because nothing is more important than the war effort."
Lindsay disagreed. "She's just doesn't want to be make the wrong choice. This country is so divided now it's more like the Civil War than the second World War. The people who can't decide are scared of picking the wrong guy. We don't have any patience with them because we're committed on one side and the other side are the same. But maybe a lot of them are just trying to be responsible."
No one had any inspired ideas about how such sensibilities could be met, but we have one more experience to influence a changing perspective on the undecided voter.
Despite quite a few strange, funny and/or daunting experiences on the doorstep, we have learned, rather unwillingly, that a lot of those who are still wavering between candidates are informed, thoughtful and genuinely agonising over their choice.
In this final stretch, coverage of the election is intense in the newspapers and on television. There is evidence to support the pundits' view that there is more interest in this election than in any within memory, such as the New York Times current list of hardback non-fiction best-sellers. There are 11 directly related to the election or the Bush administration, right up there with the usual complement of self-help books.
But the polls are right where they were one month ago, at a dead heat waiting for the final verdict of the undecided. Not that we have any reason, in the depressed neighbour- hoods of this depressed city, to be pessimistic.
Our statistics are just stunning: 83 per cent of the voters who have declared themselves on the canvass are voting for Kerry and only 7 per cent for Bush. Only 10 per cent continue to elude us, unable still to make a commitment one way or another. That's all it might take, one way or another.