THE election

I've been on vacation for ten days. I had a great time and, yes, politics came up in conversation more than once. But we didn't take my car and so I was cut off from XMradio and the POTUS08 station - all election all the time.

Considering that I did my best to ignore all of the primaries - it was two years long! - I find it really amazing that I am now really interested in the election itself. Don't get me wrong, I have always exercised my right to vote but in the last decade, I haven't been excited about that. Now, I am listening to reporters, pollsters, commentators, speeches - XM plays them from start to finish without comment - and even morning conference calls from both campaigns. This is crazy! But it feels really good. It feels like this year we get to vote *for* someone. I've been going to the polls to cast a negative vote for far too long. Even the show hosts on the station sound excited.

I'm a Democrat mostly and will surely vote for Obama/Biden this year. That doesn't mean that I think either of them hung the moon or that there isn't room for improvement. For instance, I'd like candidates to really answer questions at debates rather than twist the questions to fit the prepared responses. I may have to go back to The West Wing and see the debate camp episode again to make me feel better about debates.

This afternoon, I had an email from the Obama campaign about the debate - okay, it came last week but I've been ignoring email on vacation - and the subject was "How do you think I did?" Alas, there was no way for me to answer the question! It was merely another request for money. It's not that I haven't contributed but I would have liked a chance to tell Obama that he needs to answer the questions directly so they really sound like answers and not "here's a piece of my campaign rhetoric that almost speaks to that question."

Ah well, I'm still excited about the election even though I live in a state that is so red you can't get an Obama bumper sticker here or a yard sign. Maybe by the next election, all states will be in play and everyone will campaign in all states rather than only in those where campaigning might make a difference. Even better, maybe by the next election, the parties will have discovered that the obscene amount of money spent by each campaign would have been better spent on anything else and we can just have a few televised debates, email flyers and skip all the racing around the country giving the same speech a zillion times. I don't know how they do that last part and instill life into that speech. If I have to preach the same text three times on Sunday, the folks at the third service get a pretty dull sermon. ;-)

So get out and vote for someone who you want to win! I may even have an election night party if I can find enough Democrats to do more than make a foursome for bridge or golf.