...And even if canvassing is tactically effective, I still have the concerns (raised in the diary) about the long-term effects of canvassing on the political environment. Again, I can't back it up with numbers, but the popular perception is that people hate politics - and canvassing may only reinforce that hatred, to the long-term detriment of the political process.
I would counter that any intrusive voter-contact method may reinforce the hatred of politics, which leaves us with no person-to-person contact methods.
That statement implies that all person-to-person contact methods are intrusive, which is not entirely true. Target-driven contact methods, such as booths/tables at county fairs or concert venues are not intrusive, although they are limited in their scale and applicability to GOTV efforts. Low pressure contact by neighbors or relatives is only mildly intrusive, although, as others have pointed out in the comments, building a social network based on neighbor-to-neighbor contact would require a substantial and prolonged effort that would be extremely difficult and, in many cases, impractical. Virtual (Internet-based) communities hold promise for mobilizing activists but may not scale to the point where they could be relied upon for GOTV.
I think this is a problem but I don't have a novel solution. Maybe there isn't one. But I would like to think the future belongs to someone who can find something better than sending us out to get screamed at by pissed-off suburban homeowners.
Ideally, we'd build networks of local volunteers who would canvass their own neighborhoods, so as to lessen the annoyance factor. That's hard to do, but not impossible. It's machine politics not on a precinct level, but on a neighborhood level. Or, a school district level: imagine teachers on a canvass targeting households with school-age children to discuss the election in regards to the local school and education policy. There are other ways of doing this (union members talking to other members), but it will require some heavy lifting on the front end.
My experience is that folks are a lot more polite and a lot more willing to talk to a live canvasser than to someone on the phone, for what that's worth.
I think it's more likely the flood of highly negeative ads on tv, radio, the robocalls and people not seeing much difference between the parties because of pro-corporatist democrats undermining what the democratic party really stands for that is more likely to turn people off.
Canvasing and calling has been a part of politics for many, many years now and everything hasn't fallen apart yet. I'd really argue things started getting worse when the grassroots efforts whithered and the parties turned to mass media instead.
