Like so many of you, I had a personal email from Markos Moulitsas this morning asking me to vote for Rick Santorum. Like so many of you, I had heard of this idea since at least Operation Hilarity, and had made my decision; no.
Not because of the Great Questions about subversion of democracy, but because Vermont is a small prize, Romney will take the scant (R) vote by 2:1, etc, etc, etc. I mean, what's the point?
But voting here is so easy. There's never a line. And they have cake.
Free cake.
So I changed my mind after getting that personal entreaty from the guy who built the blog where I hang out way too much, again, like so many of you, and decided to go vote for Sir Rick Of Camelot.
So here's what happened.
From the moment I saw the VOTE TUESDAY banner out in front of my town office this morning I started getting pumped. After all, it is Super Tuesday (!!) and a beautiful cold winter morning, all sunshine, deep blue sky, and frost feathers.
I guess I was feeling a little patriotic about the whole thing.
Anyway, I whizzed through my day and headed home, with the town office on the way.
There wasn't an extra car in the lot, just the few belonging to the clerk and a couple of volunteers. No surprise there, I mused. Can't imagine more than 50 votes were cast there all day, probably a lot less.
That brought me up short and I tromped the brake, jerking the aging Impeachmobile to a stop in a parking slot.
Waitagoddamminute; what the hell am I about to do?
I KNOW these people. They know ME.
They know I like cake. I always make a comment about the cake.
In 2010 she told me I had to vote before I could get my cake, so I wouldn't get it all over the ballot, hardeharharhar.
Well, I thought furiously, maybe I can double down on the running gag and make a big show out my main motivation being the great cake, not the lousy Republicans hardeharhar...but I could feel all the fun running out of this little adventure already.
Then, unbidden, I started the graphic, HD-quality video in my head of myself walking in there, asking for my ballot, and announcing my name as she flips directly to the page she thumbed when I walked through the door.
Of walking into the Voting Room with four sets of four booths each, with their little modesty curtains. All of them empty, while the two little old ladies who have volunteered at every election for at least the last twenty years look balefully at me and wait to ask me my name again when I drop my ballot in the box.
Of looking at a ballot with nothing but monsters on it.
Of coloring in, with my on-loan number 2 pencil, the oval next to one of the most proudly, smugly vicious of those monsters. A man who, more than any of the other three, is openly tribal in his hatred.
Life has taught me that this specific type of hate, this conservative cocktail of arrogant ignorance, utter lack of empathy, and dismissal of logic is too dangerous to play with. It should be deprived of oxygen. What I really want to vote for is for Rick Santorum to shut the fuck up.
The fun had long since drained out of this little adventure, and lay very, very dead. Even the sense of duty that had been hiding behind the fun wasn't interested in committing what suddenly seemed a very mercenary and altogether unpleasant act.
I tried, Markos, I really did.
But President Obama is going to have to get re-elected without whatever obstacles my participation in Operation Hilarity; VT might have thrown in the Monopoly Guy's way.
I wrestled with it for a while, but the outcome was never in doubt. I eased the Impeachmobile back on the road, wondering if I should have just gone in for the cake.
Or perhaps to write in one Markos Moulitsas.