Cover your head? No, cover your ass. It’s election day. I’m trying, really trying, not to look at FiveThirtyEight. I’m trying not to listen to the news. I’ve asked my pal Andi to text me at midnight, a mighty Woot! if it’s Obama, and a terrified, lower case canada if it’s not.
Poor Canada. Like they want a bunch of miserable, disappointed, lefty American intellectuals who can’t get a grip on the hanging chads and the Diebold machines moving up there to eat all the maple candies and OTC drugs. Not that that’s the only reason I’d be moving. I happen to like Canadian television. Before there was My Name Is Earl, there was Trailer Park Boys. Ricky, Julian and Bubbles. It’s tempting to make some facile comparison to Bush, Cheney, and Rove, but the Trailer Park Boys have souls.
It’s hard to believe that eight years have passed since the Florida recount. Hanging chads, butterfly ballots, that Harris woman, the Florida Supreme Court, the U. S. Supreme Court, those young Republican guys in suits waving Sore-Loserman signs, it was all so long ago and yet, what I’m thinking now is exactly what I was thinking then – you assholes! You rotten, no good, short-sighted, moronic, soul-destroying, disenfranchising, election-stealing fanny caps! Look what you’ve done to us. Iraq, Katrina, record unemployment, record deficits, feckless deregulation, global warming, international scorn, a financial meltdown, and that’s just off the top of my head.
Elections are important. Who we put in the Oval Office has meaning. And that’s why I can’t stand to watch. I love my grandmother, but she often justifies her vote based on the candidate’s looks. John Kerry? She couldn’t vote for him. Too horse-faced. Al Gore? He had a bald spot. Bill Clinton? She was okay with him, but that was because Bob Dole was old, and she didn’t see how he could be President with that withered arm. I wanted her to vote for Clinton, but I felt obliged to point out that this was the Presidency, not Wimbledon. If Roosevelt could do it in a wheelchair, surely Dole could do it with one hand . . . well, not tied behind his back, but you get my drift.
What other rationales do people use to vote? What sad excuses do they tell themselves for not voting? I don’t know, and I probably don’t want to know. Before I go hide under the bed and wait for the results, I’ll note that the lines for early voting here in Idaho were around the block. That’s astonishing. A few more painful eight-year ass-kickings, and perhaps we’ll get ourselves up to the percentages you see voting in third world countries.
