I've been living in the US now through six presidential election campaigns -- all of them as a resident of one of the most big "D" democratic states (blue) in the nation, New York. (In terms of voting years, it's 14 in Canada versus 25 in the USA.)
I have memories of six prime ministers: Diefenbaker, Pearson, Trudeau, Clark, Turner and Mulroney. In Canada -- and granted I'm a political animal, always have been, and in my younger years even more so -- it seems to me that during the campaigns for prime minister that I recall, my support as a voter meant something: both to me and the political party that I identified with.
Here, in the US, with its peculiar Electoral College voting system in which the leaders are chosen, the narrative does not revolve around the individual voter. In fact, if you don't live in a swing state, one that does not normally go either Republican or Democrat (oh, if only there were a NEW DEMOCRAT!), or you've got it in your mind to get the vote out by traveling to a swing state and talking to the voters who matter to the final outcome, then there is no individual stake to be found in the mechanics of what should be the imperative of, the very essense of, the individual's social contract with the democratic state: that the vote the candidate solicits actually matters. That your vote is as important as any other vote, that each and every one of us has an equal bearing on the election outcome, and thus on the performance of the public servants who earn the right to represent us.
All of which makes for an argument for getting disenchanted with this process. Especially when the other night during the last of the presidential debates O did not hammer away at R for his "47%" persuasion, and why oh why didn't O man up and suffer being falsely tarred as a Class Warrior by calling the trillions of dollars of savings that will come at year-end when he allows the worst of the Bush tax cuts to expire a TAX CUT DIVIDEND that will be redirected to programs to benefit ordinary Americans AS WELL AS superwealthy ones who R has made himself beholden to?
Yeah, I've always been a political animal. But when it comes to this one, I can't wait for it to be Nov. 7 already.
Next: Running for Your Life: What's Up with Five Finger Shoes?
