...is where I'm going -- or going
back, rather -- as soon as I link this post. I walked around Des Moines 63 the other day. And I ran into a guy named John as he was coming out of his house.
A transplant from Boston (reversed Red Sox hat proudly adorned), John is married and unemployed and has a teenage son who is being actively recruited by local gangs. That's right: Gangs in Des Moines. Mostly young punks, selling pot and maybe Meth. They spraypainted John's fence with "187," which is supposedly the L.A. police's dispatch code for murder-in-progress. They also have thrown rocks in the windows as a curious means of attempting to imitidate John's son into joining them. Call it the "new peer pressure."
Anyway, Precinct 63 in Des Moines is a pretty rough neighborhood. It's due north and within sight of the four corner towers and the central Dome of the Iowa state capital building and governor's office. Mostly white, with some black and Hispanic sub-neighborhoods, things are bleak. There is little more than a few pizza shops and wings-to-go places on either side of University Avenue, which bisects the precinct. There is a Thai food-slash-Karaoke bar boarded up, more likely out of business from a lack of a different kind of "viability" that all us pundits are talking about, than the obviously poor business concept which probably didn't help much either.
Some people in Des Moines 63 take a lot of pride in their homes and lawns, but there are far more homes and cars that are just plain weathered and beaten down. Plastic roll and duck tape instead of storm windows, plastic roll and duck tape instead of car windows -- that sort of thing. It's makes for meagher protection from the Iowa plains. But you gather that life in Des Moines 63 is about just that -- cobbled-together but ultimately meagher protections.
John is not registered. His wife (they married three years ago) is -- or at least he thinks she is. He said he hadn't planned on going out tonight, and who can blame him? Though not as cold as yesterday, it's still very blustery out there. And it's a long way to get from his lone voice and vote cast in one precinct, in one county, in one state, in one party's primary to any substance chance 1000 miles away in Washington, DC. But John said he is really sick of Bush and may turn out to see what happens at East High School, where the precinct takes place.
I hope he does because rather than mill around and bullshit with television anchors and field directors and rah-rah college students here for a day or two, I'll be there, watching, in Des Moines 63 tonight. Why? Because 63 typifies Who-Gives-a-Shit-America, an undermobilized place that nobody would be polling, nobody would be promising to legislate for, nobody would be raising money from, and nobody would be campaigning in unless for this Iowa caucus. And they -- and we, including myself -- won't be back again soon, if ever.
I know I'm getting a bit maudlin here. But I want for little. Politics is more fun than anything else for me. Chatting with the talking heads, writing op-eds, buzzing the buzz. And sometimes, in moments of deep honestly, you realize that it is mostly a complete bunch of crap. Nobody is throwing rocks through my windows or spraypainting my fences or bill-collecting on the utilities. ("We figure out how to get them turned back on, one way or another, helping out our neighbors and them helping us when we need it."
No, that's some other guy's life. John's, in this case.
I hope he shows. In my heart of hearts, I doubt he will. But I spent 15 minutes on the street in front of his house beseeching him to show.
I really hope he shows.