Rueful election recollections
It rhymes, it’s alliterate — you know it must be fluff. Harkens back to my days writing copy for Us Weekly. Sigh.
Back in 2000, I was teaching Freshman English Composition at the University of Arizona; I went to sleep after the presidential election had been called, thinking Al Gore had won. I didn’t read anything more than the Sports section of the New York Times, back then, so it wasn’t until I was standing before a classroom of eighteen-year-olds the following morning that I heard: Gore hadn’t won. Bush stood a chance. And we all know what transpired in the weeks to come.
I have a friend, a great guy, who works in D.C. A kid from New Hampshire, he’s a screaming conservative; our friendship has lasted this long because we rarely, if ever, discuss politics (whenever there’s a lapse, it’s my fault). I remember, soon after the election, he told me, “Now you’ll see what it’s been like for us for the past eight years.” This is the same guy who told me that, on the Hill, they called Sorkin’s TV drama “The Left Wing.” (Having just watched Studio 60 on DVR, I wonder if Sorkin’s moment hasn’t passed for good.) Well, I still recall that comment, the look in his eyes when my friend spoke the words — and I truly hope I can say the same to him tomorrow.
Please, please, please. I don’t think the world will change for the better, tomorrow. If anything — and by “anything,” I mean if the Democrats take the House, if not the Senate — I expect distressingly little to change, and to find myself bitter and stabby by Christmas. Still, I want to see Santorum’s face after he losses PA.
I really don’t like Rick. My mom and I used to sit around and talk about the celebrities we hated. My dad would say, “How can you hate them? You don’t know them.” Yeah, I’d think, I didn’t know Hitler, either — but when you hate, you hate. I hate Santorum — for what he stands for, for what he says, and for that angry, smug visage that’s eternally on his face. I can’t wait until his loses his seat. I REALLY can’t wait until he realizes that any chance he had in ‘08 has been snuffed.
Most of all, I want the world to see and appreciate that the majority of America (I cringe using those words, as the “majority of America” has voted against the present administration for the past two election cycles) at least recognizes that we’re on the wrong path, and that, regardless of the crimes we inevitably condone in the coming weeks and months, we tried to follow a different path.
Needless to say, I’m not going to sleep until I know the results. Which is hardly a laudable gesture — only, I’m really tired, and my alarm goes off every morning at 6AM, despite any demonstrative show of democracy and conscious of the night before.
