anita's guest post.

Twenty of us are huddled in a back room of the Hazleton campaign office over the speaker of a cellphone. We're listening to Jon Carson the national field director break down the numbers for Obama:

13 million direct contacts across the country.
Which swing states are up, all hopeful increases, meant to boost our collective confidence.

And what a collective it is - 20,000 team leaders working across the country to make a difference. And this call, this particular call, gets an extra couple thousand phones joining every minute.

It's three days before election day, and in field offices tucked into offices or travel agencies or union halls across the country, dozens of volunteers are waiting to hear the voice of the man that they've been working day and night to elect. Every minute or so, Jon Carson's voice returns to tell us Barack Obama will be with us in just another minute, and fills the air time with stories from the field - numbers up in Arizona and Nevada, Missouri and the Carolinas. He doesn't mention Pennsylvania, where we've all been toiling for days, weeks and months.

A little after 9.30 pm, the patter of stats and silence is broken by Barack's sweet baritone. He's on the phone before a rally in Missouri, in touch with thousands of us to give us a final pep talk before the big weekend, where we fan out to paper cities and towns with voting information for supporters.

He spoke with us for about five minutes.

"I want to call you to make sure you knew how proud I am of all of you," he told us.

He reminded us of all the work that had been done to lay the groundwork for Election Day.

"Four months ago we were behind in key battleground states. No one imagined we would be in the position we are in today. You've stunned the country with what you've accomplished."

He asked for our "every waking moment," and told us we could sleep after we win. He asked us to double our time, a daunting prospect for those of us working 18 hour days. But basically we're kind of up for anything to ensure that on November 5th we wake up feeling like we're not condemned for another four years of war and corporate pillage and politics of division.

And just to remind you who are spending the next few days at home, there's still tons of stuff you can do on mybarackobama.com. I've had friends that have spent their time calling, getting on buses to philly or beyond. We even have one volunteer here who hopped a bus from Montreal! So take some time to make this happen - don't make us wake up sad on November 5th.