In the weeks leading up to Nov. 4, like so many others I knocked on a fair number of doors to encourage people to vote. I found myself in the Southeast Heights quite a bit, targeting unlikely voters. I was pleasantly surprised throughout by the level of engagement I encountered. These folks might not always pay attention to politics, but they were paying attention this year. That was heartening and made my job a lot easier.

But one man in particular will remain in my memory for some time. He was probably in his early 60s, a self-employed house painter and the father of a person I was looking for. He was sitting in his truck fiddling with tools as I approached his apartment. As I made to walk past him, he asked me who I was and what I wanted. When I told him, he immediately engaged me in conversation. He wasn’t going to vote, I was informed, but he wished me luck and predicted I’d probably have it when I found his son.

I asked him why he wasn’t voting, and he proceeded to tell me that “none of those guys do anything for me.”

As it turns out, this man and his wife live on the edge, paycheck to paycheck. He was quick to tell me that he has a pre-existing medical condition that makes health insurance out of reach. And while they “do all right,” he is hyper aware that he and his wife could be bankrupted if he “has another episode.” I could tell that this was something that weighs heavily on his mind.

He told me his story, and gave me his opinion that the world is divided between the haves and have-nots. It’s a division so rigid, he said, that there’s nothing that will change his lot in life.

As we chatted, he gestured to a field across the street with assorted camper shells and trucks. People live over there, he said. That’s the world we live in these days, he said, and the “haves” don’t have any clue about that reality or how many live it. And it could be me tomorrow, he seemed to imply.

He looked at me at one point, straight in the eye, and asked me, “So are you telling me that the outcome of this election will change these things?”

Flash back to 1992. In the year leading up to ’92, my father had an illness that required major surgery. He worked for a small company and did not have great insurance. The cost of that surgery caused my parents an incredible amount of financial stress, the kind that lingered for many years.

Then Clinton and Gore emerged as a ticket in ‘92. They were dynamic — two young men talking up universal health care on the daily talk shows, promising that the time had come in which all American families would find health care relief. Their message was so compelling, they were so energizing, that my solidly Republican mother cast one of her few Democratic votes, ever, solely on the promise of health care.

Hope was in the air, I remember it well. But that was 16 years ago and we’re still waiting. Who can forget the disappointment of that promise, and the frustration ever since–even during years of plenty–as more and more Americans simply can’t afford to go see a doctor?

When the man in his truck, fiddling with his tools as he gazed at the row of camper shells and trucks inhabited by homeless people, asked me if this election would actually change anything—I had a really hard time answering him. I admit it. Not because I’m pessimistic, but because it takes a lot of chutzpah to tell someone like him that voting is going to make things better for him and the rest of the working poor.

But that’s exactly what Obama on down the line did, including myself.

I believe that if it ever will, this is the year, I told him. Not only did we have an amazing Democratic front-runner who had made health care a major plank of his campaign, but we also had a Republican candidate known for his bi-partisanship who had acknowledged that health care needed fixing.

But now, in just the short week since the election, I’ve been told repeatedly, from the left and the right, that universal health care is out of reach given the economic crisis. I don’t agree. And I hope the Obama administration along with all the Democrats his campaign swept into office along with him—here, there and everywhere–don’t either. It simply takes commitment and creativity — two things we know we have in abundance.