It’s been three days since I ate anything except for bagels and the endless stream of lasagna being brought into this staging location in a residential Bloomington neighborhood. This is what it is like to volunteer for Obama.

In our little apartment we watch MSNBC, update voter lists and check the latest polls at fivethirtyeight.com in between orientation for new volunteers, organizing voter protection teams and getting chairs and crossword puzzle books to help out those in line tomorrow.

It has been an inspiring few days. Our best volunteer, a 73 year-old woman, has already canvassed for over 24 hours in two and a half days. We have students cutting classes, volunteers from all over the country and mothers toting toddlers. We even had a lifetime Republican offer to spend her morning getting out the vote.

There has been a lot of talk about how Obama is outspending McCain and how the money is really making the difference between an Obama victory and an Obama defeat. McCain complains that if Obama had taken public funding, like he promised, it would have been a fairer fight.

But what I’ve seen over the past few days tells a different story. Our staging location director has volunteered full time for three months. She has almost 150 volunteers working under her. None of them are paid. The apartment is donated, the food is donated, the people bringing by drinks and snacks aren’t being reimbursed.

The chairs, books and magazines are bought be residents who want to do all they can to make sure people actually get into the polling station.

Seems to me that the money game is only part of the Obama success. What is really amazing is the huge base of people who are motivated to get out, walk the streets and turn their pink state into a blue victory. I feel extremely privileged to see it all happen first hand.