Monthly Archives: November 2008

Voting in New Bedford

My polling place is the old New Bedford Hotel, now public housing. At 11:30, I walked past the people waiting to go into the Mo Life Food Pantry in the basement of the building, up the steps of the main entrance, through the door, and down the hall to the usual polling place. No lines. There was one person ahead of me at the table where the poll workers check you in.

“Address?” said the poll worker. The man in front of me gave his address. “Name?” she said. He gave his name. “You’re not on the list,” she said. “I’ve always voted here,” he said. “Have you moved recently?” she asked. “Yes, I moved last March,” he replied. The poll worker passed him on to another poll worker, who determined that the man had moved to another precinct, and thus now voted at another polling place. I waited five minutes while they straightened him out, but I don’t think that counts as waiting in line.

I got my ballot and went into the voting booth. In the next booth over, I could hear a conversation between a younger man and an older man. “That says Obama,” said the younger man. The older man grunted. “Do you like Obama?” said the younger man. The older man said something like, Who are the others? The younger man read through the list of presidential candidates. “Obama,” grunted the older man. “OK, mark it here. U.S. Senator is next,” said the younger man, “so do you like Kerry?” Again, the older man wanted the whole list of names read off, but this time the older man didn’t want to vote for any of them. “Congressman,” said the younger man, “Barney Frank.” “I like Barney Frank,” said the older man. “Then mark it right here,” said the younger man. By this time, I was done voting, so I left the voting booth, being very careful to not look at who was in the booth next to me.

A poll worker checked me out, and I fed my paper ballot into the scanner. The scanner has a digital display showing how many ballots have been cast, and after my ballot went in it read 402. I usually vote in the late morning, and usually there have only been a hundred or so votes cast by that time.

Revolution

Twenty months ago, when the campaign really started heating up, I didn’t think I’d be able to put up with the insanity and inanity of the typical U.S. presidential campaign for all those months. Twenty months of attack ads — twenty months of avoiding the issues — twenty months of insanity and inanity.

But I was wrong. This has been a fascinating presidential campaign. The primary elections were full of unexpected plots twists:– Mitt Romney going down so quickly, John McCain campaigning so well and wrapping it up so early, the epic battle bewteen Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. In the summer, between the effective end of the primaries and their official nominations, the two presumptive candidates began sparring with each other, and we kept waiting for the attack ads — who would be the first to be vicious?

Finally, I have been absolutely riveted by the last two months or so of this presidential campaign:– McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin as running mate was an utter surprise; I was sure Obama’s race would play a bigger role but it really didn’t; and the financial meltdown changed absolutely everything. As Justin Webb of the BBC put it, “In spite of all the loose talk of the decline of American influence, this is, once again, the greatest political show on earth.”

And Webb captured the real importance of this campaign in a little anecdote. He was in Denver, at the Democratic national convention, when he saw a motorcade begin to form…

Suddenly, in front of me there is activity. Men in grey suits are talking into their sleeves. Huge, sleek cars are being revved. Motorbikes are getting into formation.

It is not [Obama], it is his family.

As the SUVs pass — including several with the doors and back windows open, men with large automatic weapons looking out with keen hard glares — I catch just a glimpse of the children, of 10-year-old Malia and seven-year-old Sasha peering out. I think their mother was sitting in the middle.

This is the true revolution.

There have been, after all, prominent black politicians for decades now, men and women afforded the full protection and respect that the nation can muster.

But seeing little black children gathered up into the arms of the secret service, surrounded by people who would die rather than let them die, is to see something that must truly make the racists of Americas past revolve in their graves.

I do not think Barack Obama will win or lose because of his race, but if he does win, the real moment you will know that America has changed is not when he takes the oath, but when we see pictures of tiny people padding along the White House corridors — a black First Family — representing America and American-ness. [“The Greatest Political Show on Earth”.]

Even the real possibility of a black First Family is a revolution. What a presidential campaign this has been — and it’s not done being boring yet. I’ll doubtless be blogging frequently tomorrow — hope you drop by and leave a comment about your election day experiences.

The ineffectiveness of racism as a political strategy

So at Folk Choir rehearsal tonight, I heard about an incident that happened here in southeastern Massachusetts, which happened roughly like this:– white woman with two black children in tow walks into a store, a couple of young white men ask her if she’s going to vote for Obama, she says yes, they say they hope Obama doesn’t get into the White House because then it would be the “black house,” the N-word was thrown around, and that was the end of that. Well, that was the end of that except for going home and taking a long hot shower to wash the slime off, and then calling some friends to tell them about it, one of whom was a member of our choir.

Oh yes indeedy, there are people like that here in liberal, blue-state Massachusetts. But you know what? The effectiveness of racism as a political strategy is finally waning. Obama is going to win this state and all twelve of its electoral college votes no matter what those two young white men said. And I think most of us would agree that throwing the N-word at a couple of little kids in order to support your own political candidate is only going to make your candidate look bad. So we have made progress, since back when I was a kid, thirty or forty years ago (all right, forty years ago), veiled racial slurs were still an effective political weapon. No matter who wins tomorrow (and at the moment the polls are leaning towards giving Obama the electoral college vote), this is the year we discovered that racism, no matter how veiled, just doesn’t work very well as a political strategy any more.

On the other hand, it looks like calling someone a Muslim has become a pretty effective political weapon. No wonder I hate politics.

Abby’s birthday present

My younger sister is having one of those Big Birthdays today. She said the only thing she wants is for Barack Obama to win the presidential election. As much as I’d like to be a good brother and get her exactly what she wants, I’m not quite up to giving Abby the election result she wants.

However, the BBC Web site is now predicting that Obama will probably win the electoral college vote, based on their review of five different expert projections, including Congressional Quarterly magazine, “Real Clear Politics” Web site, “Pollster.com,” New York Times, and Professor Larry Sabato. Full story here.

If you want to help Abby get her birthday present, you can go vote for Obama et al. on Tuesday.

(Happy birthday, Abs!)

Goodbye to a great documentarian

He was called an oral historian, but I think of Studs Terkel as a documentarian — someone who devoted his career to documenting the lives of ordinary human experience. I thought his book on the Great Depression was his best work, and the human stories in it moved me profoundly.

Now he’s dead, at age 96. Obit at the Monitor. If there is an afterlife, I have no doubt that Studs Terkel is even now planning how to document the experiences of ordinary dead people.

Oh, irony of ironies…

That alleged liberal stronghold, PBS, has an online poll which asks whether Sarah Palin is qualified to serve as vice-president. I just voted (you have to vote in order to see the results of the poll, and as of a few minutes ago, Palin was receiving a 51% positive vote. So the liberal PBS is going to report that a majority of their Web site visitors think favorably of the conservative Palin. That’s the first irony.

My cousin, Abbie F., let me know about this poll, and suggested that perhaps the Republican base has mobilized their constituency in order to vote in favor of Palin. No doubt she’s right, so they have sent perhaps thousands of their conservative constituents to the PBS Web site. This will cause the number of unique visitors to the PBS site to spike. I would imagine an increase in unique visitors will help PBS demonstrate to grant-making foundations that they deserve additional funding. It will also allow them to charge more for the banner ads that appear in places on their site. That’s the second irony –these conservative folks (who probably hate PBS) are helping to support it.

If you want to vote, too, here’s the link to the poll.