| November 6, 2000 Election Eve
As
I was reformatting my journal entries yesterday, I had to
marvel over the sheer volume of the 1998 archives. [Note:
most of these entries are no longer online.] I won’t
make any claims about the quality, but the quantity is remarkable
(for me, anyway). Then I remembered one big reason why there
were so many entries that year. I was temping, bored to
death, and I used to write them at work. Ha!
Well, tomorrow is the
presidential election and I am ready to cast my vote for Gore and Lieberman. I have no
idea how it will turn out. I vacillate between a sort of doomed hopefulness that Gore will
win and a clutching fear that he will not. What could a Bush presidency do to Social
Security and the Supreme Court? Those are questions I would rather not learn the answers
to. When I look at the candidates and listen to what they’ve said on the stump, I
find it incredible that Bush is doing so well in the polls. I heard him say the other day
that the Democrats seem to think Social Security is some kind of federal program. I am
sure my grandmother, a die-hard Reagan Republican who worked for the Social Security
program for years, would have been surprised to learn that it’s not.
I wonder how Bush has
done so well. He doesn’t have the book smarts of Gore, but he seems to have a kind of
social savvy that has taken him a long way. The press, I think, has been pretty soft on
him, and that’s probably helped. (So much for the liberal media!) And Gore’s
campaign has frittered away a lot of opportunities that have resulted in boosts for Bush.
I have read all kinds of explanations for it: Gore doesn’t want to stoop to negative
campaigning; Gore doesn’t want to align himself with Clinton; Gore wants too badly to
be respected (not necessarily liked). (Although his desire for approval, I think, could
never, ever match Bill Clinton’s. And Clinton didn’t have these problems with
campaigning. So I tend to discount this explanation somewhat.)
But then there are
probably a lot of Republicans out there who find it as distasteful to vote for a Democrat
as I, a Democrat, find it to vote for a Republican. Call me intolerant, I don’t care
if you do. I can’t stand the Republican party’s fawning over big business and
the wealthy. Or its disregard for (and implicit discrimination against) racial minorities,
women, gays, and the poor. Or its positions on gun control and abortion. Not to mention
the environment and education! Compassionate conservatism, my ass!
To be fair, there are
aspects of the Democratic party I could do without too. Still, I find myself on the
Democratic side of the fence most frequently, especially in the big national elections. I
cast my first ballot in a presidential election for Dukakis in 1988, and tomorrow
I’ll be voting for the guy who created the Internet. That’s all I have to say
about it.
And now for a
non-partisan Public Service Announcement: If you’re registered to vote in
the US, please go out tomorrow and do your part. I don’t care who you vote for: Bush,
Gore, Nader, Buchanan, whoever. Just get out there and vote. It’s an important
responsibility, and it’s the only thing that gives you the right to bitch and moan
about the administration for the next four years. You wouldn’t want to miss out on
that, now, would you? |
