Originally posted at My Left Wing
As this primary season progresses, it’s hard not to be reminded of the ups and downs–ultimately, mostly downs–of the primary season in 2004. And also the sheer ugliness (in my opinion) that can mark some of the political discourse. I remember leaving the room when John Kerry was levelling an attack against Howard Dean (and therefore against values of mine that had prompted my involvement in politics for the first time in my life.) Even though Howard Dean was still way up in the polls, I knew it was theoretically still possible for Kerry to win the nomination, and I didn’t want to get so disgusted with him that I would have a hard time voting for him in the general election. A similar motivation has kept me from reading the “why I support Candidate X” threads, because I know the comments will include some ugly attacks. A lot of people on blogs don’t mind that kind of interaction, but I’m kind of a misfit in that regard. I see (via the “recent comments” feature) that name-calling, insults, and attacks are taking place, and that is my cue to “assume the position”.
What I’ve written so far isn’t the confession part yet. This is…
I was in college during the 1984 election. I didn’t watch news, although I had a sense that it was something I should be doing. Because, like eating my vegetables, it was supposed to be good for me. But I didn’t. On the other hand, it was the first election in which I would be able to vote, and I knew that voting was a Good Thing. Voting was an Important and Patriotic activity.
And apparently, as you were leaving the polls, you were even given a little sticker announcing that you voted today. Stickers are good. They’re kind of like the gold stars teachers sometimes put on your papers, and I’d been awarded my share of those in my younger days. In college, of course, one doesn’t get gold stars, but scores higher than 90 or a letter A on your paper or test. And I got a lot of those in college. Even on papers I had written at the last minute, literally in the typewriter, with no rough draft, and no sleep the night before.
Why am I going on about the grades issue? To let you know that, even though I was a political airhead, I certainly was not dumb in any traditional sense of the word. But I wasn’t tuned in to politics at all. At the time, I don’t think I could have told you the main difference between a Democrat and a Republican. I had a vague sense that I didn’t want Reagan to be president any more. But I don’t think primary elections were even on my radar at that time. When it came to the general election, all I had to go on was what had filtered through to newspaper headlines and the occasional soundbite I accidentally heard if someone else flipped the television in the commons to the news channel.
And all I got from that was that I didn’t “like” either of these guys. But I knew that as a good American, it was my Patriotic Duty to vote at election time. So I did. For the Communist, as I recall. It was a vote for “none of the above”. I became a somewhat better informed citizen in the elections that followed. By the time we moved out to Ohio for graduate school, Demetrius and I identified as Democrats. But we still weren’t tuned in to primaries. I’ve heard that some people harbor resentment against Al Gore because of the way he attacked Bill Bradley in the primaries. That wasn’t an issue for me, because I wasn’t aware of that primary season–maybe I was, vaguely, at the time, but it certainly didn’t leave any lasting impression on me. At that time, I was raising two small children and teaching part time in the evenings.
I did tune in, for the first time in my life, to debates and news coverage in time for the general election in 2000. By that time, thank goodness, there was The Daily Show, which allowed me to learn the bullet points of what was happening in the political world without actually watching the news. I knew enough about the political scene at that point to be acutely, painfully aware of what happened in Bush v. Gore. And I was aware of what was going on after September 11, when our unelected “plainspoken” president transformed into The Decider.
It’s a little embarrassing to share all of this, and I know that I’m potentially opening myself up to ridicule. But I guess I’ve decided I’m okay with that, because I’m already feeling very much like an outsider in the blogosphere. And while maybe this can be dismissed as just one woman’s story, maybe it can give just a tiny bit of insight into the way people who are not political junkies–but whose votes are still counted equally–might be perceiving this election.
