I think its worth a pause on election eve to stop and think about where we've come from in the last 4 years. Its almost hard to believe that this struggle (the struggle of electing someone other than Bush, I know our work needs to continue), which some of us have been thinking about, planning for and working towards for several years is coming to an end tomorrow.
Use this diary to post some of your own reflections on the last 4 years. I try not to be a diary whore, but given the rate the diaries move these days, please recommend this if you think this thread will be interesting for people to post and read.
My own thoughts below the fold...
Like many of us, in 2000 I was not a political junkie. I probably paid a little more attention to politics than your average person, but I had never worked on a campaign before, let alone given money to one. I really didn't think that anything I could do besides voting could have an impact on the direction of our country. I actually gave a good, long consideration to voting for Nader 4 years ago. His argument that by qualifying for federal matching funds with 5% of the vote was a crucial first step in forming a legitimate Green Party in America was appealing. Gore puzzled me by turning away from Clinton and I didn't like Lieberman, though I probably wasn't sure why at the time. In the end, I voted for Gore. Partly because some polls indicated things were getting tight in Illinois in the final days leading up to the election, and partly because I thought he gave good debate & convention performances and I resented, and was frankly a little surprised, by the way the media turned those against him.
I want to talk a little bit about the media before I get into my post 2000 election thoughts. At the time, I got pretty much all my news from NPR. I thought they had intelligent, non sensational, non partisan coverage of most major issues; but at the same time I didn't really see other media outlets as being biased or fundementally flawed in any way. I knew Fox had some success with right-leaning "screaming heads" style talk shows, but I didn't have cable at the time and didn't really have any reason to think that their news operation was slanted in any way.
I was living in Chicago at the time, one month shy of my 24th birthday and about 2 weeks away from starting what I thought would be an exciting new job in the music industry, on election day 2000. I stayed up that night watching the election coverage on TV and when Dan Rather called Florida for Gore, I went to bed. I told my girlfriend at the time who had stopped watching and gone to bed that Gore had won. The next morning on the way to work, the radio coverage seemed to indicate that all was not what it seemed last night. That after I went to bed, Bush had retracted his concession. The weeks that followed left me more and more disillusioned. I started my new job and began talking to people in England as a part of it and they asked me what the hell was going on over here? By the time the Supreme Court handed down their edict, my thought was that our democracy had just lost all legitimacy. I had hoped that with Bush losing the popular vote that he would be forced to govern as a moderate. I even thought he might appoint a cabinet that was made up of 40-50% Democrats. That was clearly not going to be the case and I knew we were in trouble when he announced Ashcroft's appointment. I already began hoping that 2004 would get here soon.
I suppose these events for many of us were a wake up call, that we had to do more than just vote, that we had to fight. By 9/11, I had cable and I couldn't believe what was passing for news on television. How could these people just get up there and lie and have no one call them on it? My dream job failed to interest me any more and by the end of 2002, I had moved back home to Ohio. I suppose it's convenient to look at it this way now, but I think somehow I knew that a part of the reason I came back to Ohio was an important part of my work to unseat Bush. Adding insult to injury was the 2002 midterms when Dems rolled over and got crushed at the polls. As Bush did more and more outrageous things: War in Iraq, tax cut after tax cut, "clean skies" initiatives; the Dems didn't try to stop him and Bush seemed to get more popular. Personally, it took me 8 months to find a job after I moved back to Ohio, I was broke and I knew more and more people like this. I was devouring political books by now and began viewing the media with a far more critical eye. As the Dem candidates emerged, Edwards intrigued me initially because he seemed to be esposuing a working class populism that I wasn't hearing from others. I also was interested in getting to know more about Howard Dean, since I knew governors had a better track record of getting elected President than Senators. By spring 2003, I liked more and more of what I was hearing about Howard Dean. He convinced me that I could make a difference in getting Bush out of office. I was working by then and all told probably gave about $300 to his campaign. I went to Iowa and wore the orange hat, canvassed cold Cleveland neighborhoods, attended meetups, etc. I was far from the most active Dean volunteer in NE Ohio, but for the first time I felt empowered that I could change things in this country. During this time, I found dailykos and after a few months of lurking found that I actually had something to say and that people were listening.
When Dean lost, it was certainly disheartening, but by April when I saw the images coming from Abu Ghraib, it put things back in perspective as to why I joined this fight to begin with. I thought, if this isn't the final straw that turns people away from Bush, I don't know what is. And then it wasn't. I began looking at Kerry more seriously. I found a man of intelligence, strength and wisdom. I knew that our image around the world was possibly Bush's worst legacy and I saw in John Kerry, one of the few men who had the credibility internationally to repair that. I attended a rally, got a bumper sticker, gave more money, spent the last few weekends canvassing and tomorrow I'll be out all day doing GOTV in Akron for Kerry Edwards.
Sorry for this long and self indulgent post, but what striked me about it in re-reading, is that its actually far from complete. I don't talk about how Bush has divided me from much of my family, or about the many great people I've met along the way, or the ways I've become much more informed about local issues, or the ways in which I've really come to define why I have the views that I do. What is obvious is that the past 4 years has been a human revolution of sorts. I've learned so much and gotten involved in ways that seemed unimaginable to me 4 years ago. I go into election day cautiously optimistic about our chances, but knowing that I'm a better person for my involvement.