Election 2008

Last night Clay and I went down to Rockefeller Center to visit the "Election Plaza" before heading home to watch the returns. As people who watched MSNBC will know they were running streamers up the building to indicate the number of electoral votes for each candidate. There were also giant screens on either side of the building showing MSNBC and NBC so we were able to watch the 7:00 states come in. It was fun, but I prefer watching the bulk of the returns in my pajamas at home.

NBC's Election Plaza at Rockefeller Center

The Skating Rink Map

Keith on the big screen!

Vermont for Obama and Kentucky for McCain

An Election Retrospective

I just want to say a quick apology for my complete lack of posting lately. Life has been busy and tiring and still not having a new laptop tends to keep me from writing. The sad thing is there is a handwritten review of Cell waiting to be typed, but right now I just can’t seem to do it. I’m delving into the purely narcissistic portion of blogging for the first time today. This is not a book review and at this time there are no accompanying pictures. I’ve been thinking a lot about previous elections during the run-up to tomorrow and wanted to get some thoughts down. If you care about my history as a voter read on, if not I should have some new pictures in a couple of days.

The first election that I can remember was in 1984, when my kindergarten class voted by making X’s on a piece of poster board. I’m sorry to say that I voted for Reagan. I didn’t know which one to vote for and one of my friends pointed to Reagan and said I should vote for him. He easily won Ms Cowsert’s class with only a handful of votes going to Mondale. In 1988 I was in the fourth grade and my only real memories are Amy telling me that I shouldn’t vote for Bush because he wanted to, “Take all of our nuclear weapons and blow up Russia,” and being disappointed when Bush took Rosa Taylor Elementary in a landslide.

1992 was the first election year when I was fully aware of what was going on and had some knowledge of the candidates thanks to my Mankind teacher Ms. Rogers. Unfortunately being better informed did not lead to my being any smarter about the whole thing. I’m going to go ahead and admit that I voted for Ross Perot in the Kids Voting election. I honestly don’t know what I disliked so much about Clinton, but I think I really liked the idea of saying that I was “wasting my vote on Perot.” That was also the first year that I stayed up to watch the election returns, again thanks to Ms. Rogers. In 1996 I was supporting Clinton and really angry that I couldn’t vote because I didn’t turn 18 until three days after the election. It was the first time that a lot of my friends got to vote and I was very jealous.

In 2000 I got to vote for real. I transferred my registration from Macon to Athens so I didn’t have to vote absentee and I was very glad that I had, as I finally got to vote on the lever machines. When I was a kid Mom used to take Jenny and me to the polls with her, but she never let me pull the lever and I’d always wanted to. While I’d considered voting for Nader, by the time Election Day rolled around I was convinced that Gore needed my vote, even in Georgia. A group of friends and I gathered to watch the results that evening, which turned out to be quite depressing. I went to bed that night at about 2AM when CNN called the race for Bush. About 6:30 I awoke to a knock on my window. Clay was standing out there babbling something about the election and not knowing who had won. That is the enduring moment of that election for me, going to bed thinking, “oh well” and waking up to find that everything had gone completely insane.

The 2004 election marks the first time I got particularly engaged in primary season. Clay was the head of the local Howard Dean group. We were in Columbus watching on TV when he made his infamous cry in Iowa and both felt that he’d just blown any chance he had. That was the cause of a huge blowup at the next Wataugans for Dean meeting where a woman accused Clay of being unbalanced for saying that things did not look good for Dean. After Iowa I changed my loyalties to Edwards. We moved to New York in the late summer of 2004 so I voted absentee in North Carolina for John Kerry. Because I didn’t get an “I Voted” sticker I made my own and passed them out to people who came into the bookstore that day.

This election season feels as though it has lasted forever. I was again supporting Edwards in the primary and was very disappointed when he dropped out before Super Tuesday. This was the first time that I did not feel as though there was an obvious choice for me. I spent a lot of time researching both Clinton and Obama’s positions trying to make up my mind between them. On primary day I literally stood in the booth wavering between the two levers before ultimately deciding to vote for Obama. It’s been a long time since Super Tuesday and I’m looking forward to voting for him again tomorrow. It seems as though practically everyone I know has already gotten to vote and I’ve felt some jealousy, but I have to admit that I probably wouldn’t have voted early even if I could. There’s something very exciting about voting on Election Day. I just hope they give me a sticker, because I haven’t made my own this year.