I just got back from my polling place in Sacramento, CA with a sticker on my chest reading "Ya Voté", and I have to say, my mood has improved substantially with the simple act of dropping my ballot in the box.
This is only my third election ever, and it got me thinking about the way my thinking has changed since 2006.
I turned 18 in the Summer of 2006, just in time to participate in the grand insurrection of that election year. I did my part- my vote for congressional rep went for Charlie Brown. That, however, was the only race I paid any attention to.
The only thing I really knew about Doolittle was that he was extremely corrupt and needed to be thrown out. The rest of my votes were simply "anti-incumbent" votes- I simply chose whoever wasn't a Republican and wasn't already in office. It was fun to be rebellious, but I left my polling place feeling strangely dissatisfied and disconnected from my vote.
Like most voters my age, my only intention was to throw a wrench in the process- to go to the polls and be an agent of nihilism in a system I felt I would never fully understand and was entirely disconnected from me. Almost none of my choices (Charlie Brown sadly included) were ratified, but I didn't care. I didn't watch the returns, and I never followed up on the results of the choices I made.
It was only later that I would realize the underlying forces at work in 2006, first brought to my attention by the Democratic takeover of the Senate and Congress. That this takeover had not simply been a "shift in the mood of the country" did not occur to me until I picked up a book that would change the way I think about politics forever- Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72.
I was absolutely captivated by that book, and it opened my eyes to the complexities of the political machinery in this country. I'm a journalism major, and before 2007 I had a lot of lofty ideas about "media ethics" and "objectivity", especially when it came to political journalism. Hunter S. Thompson completely obliterated those assumptions, and opened my eyes to the realities of politics and electoral strategy. I learned more about politics and the way our political discourse is tainted by the media from that book than in the multiple years worth of history and civics classes I've had to take.
I picked up another book that same year- The Audacity Of Hope. My one politically-aware friend and I already loved Obama after his '04 convention speech, and Obama's prescient, crystal-clear analysis of the state of our discourse, tempered by Thompson's cynicism, brought me full force into political junkiehood as a hard-core Obama partisan.
Like most of the new activists my age, my.barackobama.com introduced me to the idea of online political organizing, and by way of cross-pollination, introduced me to the netroots. Campaign Trail '72, especially in its commentary on the way Nixon turned the Republican Party over to the hard right, made me much more aware of the VRWC and not only the very real importance of every single vote, but the importance of "non-partisan" posts like county supervisor and board of education positions.
Then came volunteering for the Obama campaign, traveling to Nevada to GOTC, being a precinct captain in my neighborhood in Sacramento, running for a delegate slot (and losing), volunteering for other campaigns, brief positions as a paid organizer and political consultant, covering the American River College student government takeover by a group of radical Christian Dominionists, and, perhaps most vital to all of this, lurking Daily Kos.
That last line isn't BS. Perhaps more than anything else, you fine diarists and commenters, as well as the utterly fantastic DKosopedia, have contributed to my understanding of the political landscape in a way that simply couldn't happen anywhere else, and I owe eternal gratitude to all of you.
I agonized over the February 5th ballot, especially the ballot initiatives. I now read every single petition presented to me in full before I sign it. I watch election returns the same way my roommate watches football games.
Today, unlike the vast majority of my peers, I voted in what is supposed to be one of the lowest-turnout elections in California history. And I didn't just vote. I carefully scrutinized every candidate on the ballot, including the Democratic Central Committee and County Board of Education posts- choices that, in 2006, I would have made by closing my eyes and randomly putting my pencil down.
I now understand my role and importance in the process better than my parents do, and it is extremely satisfying. I'm not throwing anymore wrenches. I feel like I'm part of the solution for once.
Thank you.