Note: For those of you who are sick and tired of last week's election? This post is not for you. It's for me, and my children. And maybe even my grandchildren.
(Be sure to stop by in a few days when we'll get back to other topics.)
On Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2008, I went to vote at 10:00. My goal was to get out, vote, run to the store and find a jacket for a charity dinner Thursday night, then grab my free cup of coffee at Starbucks and still be home before the European Champions League soccer games at 11:45.
I almost made it. There was no line for voting, or at Stabucks. My only hangup was the @#$%ing clothes, which were all ugly. (But this is irrelevant here.)
I voted in person. I'm an anomaly in King County, wher 2/3 of the populace votes via absentee ballot. The county as a whole is moving this way; this may be our last chance to vote live, and I was determined to enjoy it.
The very nice poll worker asked if I wanted to vote via paper ballot or touchscreen. I was undecided. She recommended touchscreen, because it was fun. I opted for paper. I told her I'd go for the fun in an election that was less important.
Yes, this is paranoia on my part, of course, and yet it isn't. Most voting machines in this country are made by hardcore Republican companies. When there is no paper trail, there is no way whatsoever to determine whether the vote cast is the same as the vote recorded. One malicious programmer could, in theory, wipe out results for thousands.
"This one gives you a paper receipts," said the helpful poll worker. I still asked for the paper ballot.
I was home by noon. The soccer games were in progress. I watched one game (French) while monitoring the scorelines of several others. In general, my teams won. And when they finished it was almost 2:00.
I spent the next two hours in a relatively zen state. I intentionally and forcefully did not think about the election, except to call my older son to make sure he'd voted. And other than that? The polls were good, right? So...breathe in...breathe out... Life is good. This will work out. And I will try not to think about the fact that this is the election I care more about that any in my life. The election that could determine whether or not America has a way back from the edge of the abyss, or whether it will continue on in the same mode, with tax cuts for the rich and deregulation as the only weapons in our arsenal. Not to mention whether we'll continue the slow, steady march to toxic theocracy.
In these two hours, I wrote some stuff up for work. I took the dog for a walk in the rain. Breathe in...breathe out.
And then, at 4:00, my daughter and her boyfriend stormed through the front door and immediately turned on CNN. Goodbye, zen.
"I don't want to know," I said at first, remembering the heartbreaks of the early returns in 2000 and 2004. "It will stress me out too much."
My thirteen-year-old son ignored me and said, "Obama is ahead in Florida."
"By how much?"
He didn't know. I went and took a shower.
I came out and he said, "He's still ahead. Two-hundred-thousand votes with four percent of the vote counted."
"That's good," I said, "but it's not enough. That's probably all from the early voting. So I don't want to hear any more." He laughed at me, but at the same time I think he understood. I went upstairs and tried to work, the whole time listening yet not listening to the downstairs TV.
My husband called and said he was stuck in traffic and had yet to vote.
"You haven't voted?!?" I thought he'd voted that morning, so I wasn't as nice as I could have been. But ... He knew how much sleep I'd lost over this election. I
never do the nagging shrew thing, but at that moment I was close.
But he
would vote, he said. He was on the way. Still two hours till the polls closed. But in the meantime, could I pick up his dry-cleaning and some snacks and wine for the election party we were going to?
I heaved a sigh of relief and left the house. And also, gratefully, left CNN.
I avoided the radio and listened to a French CD the whole way down. I got the dry-cleaning and the snacks and the wine. Then I headed home in a state of heightened anxiety.
When I got there, CNN was still on, but my daughter and her boyfriend had headed to choir practice. Virginia had been tilting Obama, but was now tilting back toward McCain. My husband had voted (no lines) and was already home. I put stuff in the fridge and closed my ears and told my youngest son not to tell me what was happening.
He ignored me. Again. "Obama won Pennsylvania!" he said.
Okay, so I didn't mind him telling me that. This was huge. I pulled out my cell to text my daughter at choir and discovered that her boyfriend had just texted me with the same message. "They've called Pennsylvania for Obama!"
What did this mean? Assuming he took the western states, as expected, this meant that chances were that he'd have all the Kerry states! All he needed was what, eighteen more electoral votes?
I started to respond to his text when my husband got on his computer. After a minute he said, "They've called Ohio for Obama. Is that a big deal?"
That would be the eighteen and more. "That's a
huge deal!" I said. I frantically replied to my daughter's boyfriend's text: "NBC has called Ohio for Obama!"
And then it was all waiting for more states to be called when the western polls closed. So what else was there to do but go to the election party?
We listened to the radio on the way over. NPR, of course. We switched it on as the NPR commentator was congratulating somebody on the fact that his state had gone for Obama, but we had no idea who it was or what state. We picked up a fact at a time. Western state. High latino population. (Okay, that probably meant Colorado, New Mexico or Nevada.) Eventually they cleared up the mystery by saying, "Governor Richardson," which meant New Mexico for Obama. Five more electoral votes. I wanted to cry.
By the time we got to the party, Obama was in the low 200s for electoral votes. Magic number 270.
The party was at the home of a lesbian couple, a nice, funny, domestic former co-worker of my husband, plus her partner. (It this a Seattle Democrat's way to celebrate an election or what?) When we got there, the woman said, "Yeah, we invited some Republicans, but they couldn't make it."
Remembering 2000 and 2004, I couldn't blame them.
We sat in a room of Democrats, eating hors d'oeuvres and sipping wine while cheerfully picking out dog hairs that came from their sweet, elderly yellow lab. All of us were engrossed by what was on the TV. When the west coast polls closed at 8:00, they called Washington, Oregon and California for Obama within minutes, which put him over the magic number of 270.
It was official. He had won. We had a new President, and it was our guy. I kept telling my thirteen-year-old son, "Remember this. This is history. You'll remember this night your whole life."
One of the guys there was in tears. I was close.
My daughter and her boyfriend showed up shortly after. She was the one who had been pro-Obama before the rest of us thought he had a chance. When he'd visited Seattle before the caucuses, they had ridden the bus downtown to see him and been amazed by both the crowds and by the cheerful happiness of the crowds. It was a miraculous thing: Everybody was aiming towards the same goal. What was a little physical closeness and body odor?
I hugged her and felt myself tear up. This election wasn't for me. It was for her. It was for the future. If this country was to have any chance at all, this kind of change needed to happen.
We watched together as John McCain made his gracious concession speech. And then we watched together as Barack and Michelle and Sasha and Malia took the stage together, and we realized that this was what our new first family looked like.
I felt the tears again. And we watched the victory speech and
felt the words he spoke: "Change has come to America."
Yes, it has.
We rode home in a glow, full of hope.
Yes, there will be people who desperately want him to fail. And yes, he will not be perfect. And the country's problems are too huge to solve in four, or even eight years. But on this night, at last, we felt change within our grasp. And we felt that America could again be the country of promise that it has been in the past. The greatest country in the world. (And for those who say, "It always has been and always will be, regardless of what it does"? I say, "Torture condoned by the government undermines greatness. Every time.")
Before I went to bed, I sent an email to my boss, a Brit who fell in love with an American woman and gave up his socialized medicine life to live here. He's watched in dismay in these last few years as his adopted country has moved further and further from the country he thought it was. He lives in a mid-Atlantic "southern" state, and his anxiety in the pre-election days was palpable.
His state went for Obama.
My email:
YES WE CAN!!!Because that night, at last, it felt like it could be true.
