I won’t say I remember November 2004 vividly, because I don’t. At least, not the hour-by-hour rundown of the election. I know where I was, and I know what I felt. Names have been changed to protect the innocent.
My friends Patrick, Karen, and I were at Patrick’s apartment, a cheap but maintained one-bedroom in south Minneapolis. All three of us had gone to the polls earlier, and gotten together to drink boxed wine out of Walmart tumblers while watching the next four years unfold in front of us - at least, the start. We picked whatever channel came in the best, and made bets on which states would go to whom; the discussion was peppered with comparisons to last election, and arguments over whether there’d be a solid answer tonight. That was one thing I think we all wanted.
Karen was a staunch liberal, voting for the candidate who wasn’t named Bush. Patrick voted for Bush most likely because of people like Karen, finding the concept of voting against a candidate to be a distortion of the basic precepts of American Democracy with a capital D. I’m sure he had some policy issues as well, but in the interests of interpersonal harmony we all agreed not to grill one another.
I guess I fall into the category of independent. Not because I’m full of hatred for either/both parties, nor love for a particular one- I just like the idea of being an actual political force. There’s something hugely tempting to think that instead of being a known demographic that just needs to be shoved into a booth to register as a vote for Jim the democrat or Larry the republican, I get to decide elections. Candidates need to talk to me, they need to win me over, because I’m a thinking being and not part of an already-thought group. I’m my own political party, however small it may be: the Danielcrats.
Of course, it is small. My rallies tend to be poorly attended and entirely in my head. There are plenty of people with ideologies similar to mine, but also a good chance that I’ll disagree with everyone on something, leaving potential landmines in every conversation. Fundraising is rough. Worst of all, I have an awful time finding my party’s box on the ballot.
I’m not sure if my friends and immediate family know this, because I doubt I told them when it happened, but I didn’t vote for the candidate who wasn’t named Bush. Living in a state that’s gone blue for the past 50 years with only one exception has its benefits, and one of those is that people like me can make protest votes: I showed up at the polls, and wrote in a giant “ABSTAIN”. Just like that, all capital letters. I don’t know if that counts as a spoiled ballot or if some poor election worker had to start a whole new column for Senator Abstain from the United States Territory of Abstinola, but I felt like I made my point, albeit to no one but myself.
Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t an uninformed voter. I was just making the case that absolutely none of the candidates, first two parties or third parties, had held out a political umbrella that I was standing entirely under. I felt like a weird concatenate of my two friends: I hated Bush and his policies, but I also hated the idea of voting for the cardboard cutout of the word “Bush” with a red circle and line over it. Neither was interested in me, the independent thinking election-deciding non-group member, they were interested in mobilizing their party base. Both parties were perfectly willing to make it an either/or proposition, and throw people like me (and their opponents) to the wolves. The republicans did a better job, and so they won.
Fast forward to today, and the Democratic party is in a position where they’re asking themselves whether the “win the loyal Democrats” strategy will work this time. They’ve got a candidate who has a legitimate chance at winning this way, by railing against the enemy to rile up the reserve contingents in the war against the other half of the country. Name recognition, moderate left policies, and a willingness to fight back against those Republicans who ruined our country for the last 8 years! Sounds great, I’m not really an official Democrat so I guess if that’s the way the party wants to run things, they’re welcome to.
However, I’m pretty excited to vote this year, because somehow my party of one has managed to field a candidate. There’s this guy who’s been going around, talking about a lot of the issues that are important to me, and somehow he’s managed to avoid hurling giant gobs of blame at everyone around him. He’s not afraid to point a finger at bad policies, but he is afraid of demonizing the people who voted those policies into office. This makes a lot of sense when you consider that if he did, he’d be running for president of a country half-full of demons. He’s the kind of guy who’d talk with his roomate about taking out the trash, and work out a plan to ensure that the trash keeps getting taken out, instead of dumping the trash on his roomate’s bed after one too many broken promises.
Of course, my party can’t take all the credit for this diamond in the rough. Apparently, he’s decided to go for a Democratic nomination instead of a Danielcratic one, which comes as a blow to my party’s self esteem. However, one of the basic tenets of being independent is that I get to talk and think and finally choose, and this year I’ve done a lot of talking and thinking. The next part is choosing, and I’ll be putting a big fat checkmark next to BARACK OBAMA on the ballot. Or writing it in at the bottom in capital letters, and putting a big fat checkmark next to that. Whatever works. I’m voting for him because he’s my party’s candidate.
