Campaign reflections (3 of 4): Fragility.

One oddity of my race is that *after* the campaign where I was trounced soundly in terms of percentage, machine people started being very derisive on social media, in a personal way out of all proportion to anything on my end.

My hunch is that they find me threatening somehow, probably because of the information that I got out on my opponent in a major way through the press and through lit; they had a shit-ton of money to turn out votes, but it must have been very, very difficult for them, because people who dislike him now severely dislike him, and people that  they could maybe have reached in the past are now just turned off by all politicians, so they realize that their base is demographically dwindling and they can't make inroads elsewhere.

Like a few weeks before the election, a guy told me that my opponent got booed by 5 vets when he came into the local VFW hall to buy everyone a round of drinks.

And, I heard through people that the machine people thought I was a "trouble maker" and "stirring people up."

 A couple days after the election, too, me and my one (older) (hispanic) neighbor who's lived in the neighborhood for decades and decades were talking, and it turns out he thinks too that the loss of the machine candidate in the mayoral race was a big psychological blow to them.

"They don't have the power," he was like. "They will always have money, but they are realizing now, they don't have the power."

He also thanked me for the "information" on my one attack flier, which is my hunch is how many, many people in the district processed it, just as facts to know about the incumbent, that are now firmly seeded in the community.

When I mentioned the number of votes they were able to turn out for my opponent in the district, he was amazed.

"That's it?", he was like.