A reader writes:
My morning started this way. I am a school bus driver in a small Western Massachusetts town. The elementary kids after pestering me to see who I would vote for (I kept silent) held there own impromptu election and voted for Obama 20-1. When I arrived home after the morning run I was greeted by my four children, whom I home school, with birthday cards, hugs and eagerness to go with the polls with us. Guess the only thing I want for my birthday today.
Prop 8:
Bush gave us the worst of incompetent, big-spending liberal statism and interventionism and branded it all conservative for a generation. No wonder Ross seems deflated:
Conservatism in the United States faces a series of extremely knotty problems at the moment. How do you restrain the welfare state at a time when the entitlements we have are broadly popular, and yet their design puts them on a glide path to insolvency?
How do you respond to the socioeconomic trends – wage stagnation, social immobility, rising health care costs, family breakdown, and so forth – that are slowly undermining support for the Reaganite model of low-tax capitalism? How do you sell socially-conservative ideas to a moderate middle that often perceives social conservatism as intolerant? How do you transform an increasingly white party with a history of benefiting from racially-charged issues into a party that can win majorities in an increasingly multiracial America? etc.
Watching the McCain campaign, you’d barely even know that these problems exist, let alone that conservatives have any idea what to do about them. But there were people in the Bush Administration who did understand the situation facing the Right, and set out to wrestle with these challenges – and as a result, George W. Bush had a real chance (especially given the political capital he enjoyed after 9/11) to establish a model for center-right governance in the post-Reagan era. That he failed is by no means the greatest tragedy of the last eight years, but it is a tragedy nonetheless – for conservatives, and for the country.
I’m not counseling despair here: There were people in 1976 who thought Richard Nixon had irrevocably squandered the chance to build a new right-of-center majority, and looked how that turned out. But for now, as America goes to the polls, I find myself stuck thinking about the lost opportunities of the last eight years, and the possibility that they may not come round again.
A reader writes:
My wife and I arrived 20 minutes early to our polling place this morning and found something I’ve never seen before: a line! And a long one at that. I am always one of the first voters in my precinct and rarely is there more than one or two others voting at this hour. For years, the precinct captain and I would bemoan the lack of participation in this most crucial element of democracy. Today when she walked out of the polling room and saw the long line of anxious voters, her eyes welled up. There were many new faces and incredible energy in that line.
Something big is about to happen.
A reader writes:
Half an hour before the polls open, and we’re over a hundred back in line. By 7AM, when the doors open, there are at least another 350 behind us. The line stretches a full city block. By the same time in 2004, turnout was less than a quarter of this.
A reader writes:
I know you will receive many stories today about horrific, horrendous and distressing voting experiences, offset by some that will be inspirational, heartwarming and perhaps even hilarious. I thought you might like to know that for some (lucky?) people, the process came off with no problems, no excitement, and no histrionics. I live in Charlotte, NC. I arrived at 6:00 a.m. and there were maybe 30-40 people on line already. Polls opened at 6:30 and I was done at 7:22.
(Photo: voting at Martin Luther King Jr Library in Washington DC, by Brendan Smialowski/Getty.)
Kevin Drum wonders if Kerry’s loss was a good thing:
…were we, in fact, better off losing in 2004? The downside was four more years of George Bush and Dick Cheney. That’s hardly to be minimized, especially since the upside is still not completely knowable. But for myself, I think I’m convinced. The cause of liberal change is better served by Obama in 2008 than it would have been by Kerry in 2004. Comments?
I endorsed Kerry because I felt I had no choice, given what we had already discovered about Bush and Cheney’s unique mix of incompetent inerrancy. I feel much more confident in the character and ability of the Democrat this time around. But given the damage of the past four years, that’s a minimal requirement. The task ahead is simply gargantuan.
A reader writes:
I’m embedded with the military in Saddam’s Presidential Palace and sent in my absentee ballot – for Obama – weeks ago. One of my colleagues [contractor, retired military] strongly supports McCain-Palin, believes Obama is a Muslim, etc. He told me he wasn’t going to send in the Federal Write-In Absentee Ballot because someone told him it wouldn’t be counted unless the election was close. Well, that’s not true. They do, eventually, count all the valid ballots for the official totals, issued several weeks later.
I showed him how to print one out [from fvap.gov] and encouraged him to participate, no matter what. Even though we disagree on the candidates, he really appreciated my taking the time to ensure that he sent in his vote. Even if, in the end, his state does not count his ballot [maybe he should have requested an absentee ballot in advance, and maybe he didn’t; I don’t know], it’s important to me that everyone have a voice in this election.
If that doesn’t reflect the spirit of Obama’s campaign, what does?
A reader writes:
Those who are wondering if the youth will turn out ought to see what I saw this morning.
One well-known government professor here told me that she has never seen so many students vote in the first hour of voting as she saw this morning. And I’ve never seen so many students up and alert at this hour. They’re normally stumbling out of bed to make it to their 10 a.m. courses. Today, the campus has been buzzing for hours this morning. It appears that many of them decided to go to the polls as groups of twos, threes, fours and more when the polls opened at 7 a.m. The number of students I saw by 8 a.m. walking around with "I voted" stickers on is astonishing.
At breakfast, I sat next to a table of four black students, all of whom had voted. The three men were wearing ties. I asked them why. The answer: It was their first election, and they wanted to mark the occasion.
Marriage will be legal for all in Connecticut on November 12th.
The Dish 