Yes it’s a hard pill to swallow, I know. Unfortunately, we will not win the 2008 Presidential Election. You don’t want to hear it, but it’s true. I’ll tell you why. The Democrats have me on their side. Yes, I assure you, that is why. You may be confused, but allow me to explain. I don’t pick winners. In fact I have not picked a winner in 14 years. I have not picked a winner in ANYTHING in 14 years. To be more specific, I have only picked a winner one time since October 27, 1991.
I grew up in Northwest Florida. There were no Tamp Bay Devil Rays or Florida Marlins then. In the south, there was only the Braves. I was raised a Braves fan. I have been a Braves fan since before the Braves were a good baseball team. I have been a Braves fan since their first season in my lifetime, 1985, where they achieved the feat of losing 92 games.
But in the 1991 Season something happened to the Atlanta Braves. After posting the worst record in all of baseball the previous season, the Braves won their division and eventually played in the World Series. ESPN called the 1991 World Series the best ever played. The series went to seven games. Five games were decided by one run. Four decided in the final at-bat. Three games were played into extra innings. Game 7 was a pitchers duel between John Smoltz and Jack Morris. It was scoreless for 9 ½ innings. In the bottom of the tenth, Minnesota’s Gene Larkin singled in Dan Gladden to win the World Series. At six years old, I was heartbroken. My beloved Braves were not world champions. I had picked a loser.
1992 was the first election that I was aware existed. The incumbent president was challenged by a smooth talking southern governor and a Texas business man. I was 7 years old, and had no serious interest in politics. However I had seen a curious looking man with rather large ears speaking on television. He seemed to always utter the phrase, "together, we can do it." The funny looking man on TV became my presidential candidate. He stood for everything that appealed to the second grade demographic: He looked like a cartoon character, had a funny voice and a memorable catch phrase. In a poll taken the second week of June, Perot lead both Clinton and Bush. It looked as if I would pick a winner. Then in July, my favorite cartoon character shot himself in the foot by dropping out of the race, and reentering a few weeks later. The smooth talking southern governor ended up winning, which was fine by me, being that he was supported by both my parents, who told me that, "we can’t afford another four years of Bush". They meant this literally. We were poor. So we had our democrat, but I was a bit disappointed. Again I had picked a loser.
January 1, 1993 was the last time I picked a winner. I grew up in Northwest Florida, but I was born in Enterprise, Alabama. My mother was from there, and my entire family on both sides came from the state. I grew up a fan of the University of Alabama. This was easier than being an Atlanta Braves fan, being that Alabama was a good competitive team in my early childhood. Later in life, at the age of 12, I went to my first Alabama football game in Tuscaloosa. If you are not from the south, you don’t understand what this means. Even if you are, and you are not a Bama fan, you may not get it either. This is equivalent to a first communion, or a bar mitzvah. It was a right of passage. But 1992 was a great year. Alabama ran the table in 1992, shutting out "The Great Satan" and beating the University of Florida for the title in the only real college football conference. Traditionally, my family has their holiday gathering at New Years, since it is easier for everyone to get out of work that week than at Christmas. Therefore, my entire family was gathered together at my Grandparent’s house in Mississippi for the Sugar Bowl on January 1 1993. 20 of us sat around the television rooting for our Crimson Tide, save the three heretics who were Auburn fans who cheered the Miami Hurricanes. I made Bama signs with markers and construction paper and sold them to my family members for 25 cents a piece. I was a young entrepreneur. After 4 quarters, the Tide had routed the hurricanes, 34-17. My young heart was elated. I had picked a winner.
I had remained a Braves fan up until 1995. I was disgusted. After three division titles with no World Series win, and a strike, the Braves and I were not on good terms. My uncle had given me a fitted Dodgers cap. Again, being from a poor family, I had no other team gear. Being that I was in the market for a new team, and I had worn the LA cap constantly since the strike ended, the Dodgers were the logical choice. The ’95 Dodgers won their division, but lost to the Reds in the first series of the playoffs. The Braves swept Cincinnati in the NLCS, and went on to win the World Series. The team I had picked were losers, while the team I had forsaken were world champions. I would never make this mistake again, and stuck by the Braves for 10 more failed playoff appearances. The Atlanta Braves were world champions, but I had picked a loser.
In 1996 it was time for another Presidential election. At the age of 11, I was only slightly more concerned that I was at age 7. I was entering my pre-teen years, and the seeds of rebellion were germinating in my brain. My parents were for Clinton again. Being that they were voting for Clinton, it seemed natural for me to support the Republican nominee, Bob Dole. I even dressed up as Bob Dole for Halloween, carrying my arm in a fixed position with a pen stuck in my fist. Besides being in opposition to my parent’s position, there were other factors that attracted me to Dole. First, I knew he was from the same party as Newt Gingrich. I had no idea about the evilness of Newt at that time. I just knew his name was Newt, and that was funny to me. Also, he campaigned on a flat tax proposal. This seemed smart to me, that everyone would pay the same percentage of their income. I was later confused when my mother explained to me that the middle class shouldered most of the tax burden. However, once you were rich enough, you didn’t pay taxes. This was an oversimplified explanation geared towards an 11 year old, and later I learned what she meant. As we all know, Clinton won. I was for Dole, and Clinton won. I picked a loser.
In 2000, I my rebellion was in full swing. At 16, I was called an expert on socialism (ok, so I was the only person that called me that). I was convinced that the working class was soon to revolt, and I was going to be there, my world history notebook with hammer and sickle sketched on it in hand. I was, however, drawn into the fold of the Democratic Party the closer the election came and ended up supporting Gore. Partly because I knew that Gore was closer to my ideology than Bush, who I immediately knew was evil, and also because in the back of my mind, I kind of always knew that my views on socialism were, well, kind of ridiculous. In a debate in my social studies class, I noted that, "If Bush wins, civil rights in America will be set back 30 years". It was kind of an outrageous claim at the time, but now it seems as though I inadvertently made a relatively accurate prediction. As stated earlier, I grew up in Northwest Florida, Walton County to be exact. We took much delight in the fact that the retirees in counties like Brevard and Miami-Dade couldn’t get their counts strait, yet us Panhandle Floridians, who they called backward and uneducated, got our votes counted without a hitch (with the exception that Bush pretty much swept the Panhandle. That was a major hitch). We all know the end of this part of the story. The succubus certified the results from Florida, and Bush was crowned King George II. Gore did win the popular vote, and it’s pretty clear he, in fact, did win Florida. However, what really mattered was the Bush was the one who moved in at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. So in the grand scheme of things, I had picked a loser.
In high school I had big plans for myself. I teeter-tottered between going to college at NYU to become a film maker, or going to American University in D.C. and eventually becoming an attorney. As my senior year swung into full gear, I came to a few harsh realizations. My grades sucked. I was the student whose GPA marked the beginning of the bottom third of my class. Not that I was dumb, I just had little to no interest in school; so little interest that I was lucky if I made it to school three days a week. My sophomore year, a teacher tried to get me into a more challenging program where I could work at a beach resort during the day, and take college level classes at a charter school run by the resort at night to get my diploma. I turned this down, reasoning that I wanted to stay at my public school with my friends. Of course this logic was flawed, being that I didn’t actively attend school. So I continued down the same path. My life pretty much revolved around girls, playing shows and rehearsing with the hardcore band I was in, skateboarding, surfing, and working joe-jobs to support all of the other listed activities. So my realization was that I wanted to go to some great schools, yet I had terrible grades, and if I could get into those schools I couldn’t get a scholarship and had no way to pay for it otherwise. Sure, I could have gone to the local community college to build some sort of respectable academic record, but no. I was too good, too smart for that. I knew everything at 17. So, against my mother’s objections, I enlisted in the Army three days after I turned 18. I wouldn’t ship out to basic training until after the following summer.
Before I left, Bush squandered all his international support. In March, he attacked Iraq to find WMDs that did not exist. We had to find someone else to put in the White House. I followed the primary candidates closely before I left. Bob Graham was my candidate of choice, being that he was my Senator, the former governor of my state, had never lost an election in Florida, and had an extensive foreign policy background. I was actually in D.C. visiting my girlfriend at American when he declared his candidacy. Graham, however never caught fire, and dropped out of the race. This was the first time I picked a loser for the 2004 election. I then threw my support behind Howard Dean, who’s campaign effectively ended following his speech after the Iowa caucus. Loser number two. I didn’t like Kerry. I didn’t trust him. He looked and sounded too much like a politician. Edwards was the only candidate who posed a challenge at this point, and I liked his message of two Americas. I related it to my experiences in Florida. The difference between the prosperous communities of retirees down south, against the poverty I witnessed in my panhandle town. Even closer to home, I saw the luxury of the resorts I worked in on the beach where the rich came to play and treat the help like shit, and again the poverty of my inland community 30 miles north.
In January of 2004 I was in training at Fort Jackson, South Carolina. The weekend before the primary my friends and I splurged on a downtown hotel, just a few blocks down from the statehouse. Our hotel was full of campaign staff and journalists. It was the closest I had ever been to any event of political significance, and the feeling was electric. Edwards ended up winning that primary, so there was still a possibility that I might pick a winner for the nomination. But Kerry had too much momentum, and Edwards eventually dropped out of the race too. Kerry got the nomination, albeit with Edwards at his side. But in my heart I knew that yet again, I had picked a loser.
We all know what happened in November. Kerry was swift boated. He was spineless, and didn’t fight back. When there were allegations of voter fraud in Ohio, he didn’t fight back, against Edwards’ advice. We lost. America lost. We were sent to another 4 years of an American nightmare. Bush was the winner, and used his "political capital" to continue an immoral war, and kill more of my brothers in uniform. Bush was the winner. I picked a loser.
Now, here we are getting ready for another primary season. I have chosen Edwards as my candidate, because he has a monopoly on substance in this race. I think America needs him. I think he is our greatest hope. I think we will be done a great disservice if he is not our next president. I will vote for him absentee from Afghanistan on February 5th. In November of 2008, I will for the first time, actually vote in a precinct for who ever is the Democratic nominee. I hope he wins the nomination. I hope he is our next president. But he has a bad omen. Me. If he loses the nomination or if we lose the election, I will take full responsibility. I only pick losers. There is still a glimmer of hope in my heart, however, that I will pick a winner this time. And if I’m right I will not be the only winner. I’m going to give my all to insure that in November, America picks a winner.