The news on the Tester-Burns front has certainly been encouraging lately. Nationally, things appear to be headed in the right direction as well. Frankly, it's making me nervous. I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop, and I'm afraid to let myself think that this might be one election day that doesn't end in howls of frustration.
Traditionally, election day--but for brief shining periods of happiness in 1992 and 1996--has been a day of woe and disappointment for me. I can remember exactly where I was on the first Tuesday in November in even-numbered years from the age of seven on. (OK, maybe the mid-terms are fuzzy sometimes.) In 1980, I was in third grade, and my school held a mock election. You know, the kind that generally end up being a pretty good indicator of what's going to happen in the actual election. I remember proudly casting my vote for Carter and then enduring mocking comments from David Redenbaugh because his dad said Carter was just a loser peanut eater. That night, my family went to a dinner with a bunch of other teachers, and the atmosphere was like a funeral. Not that I'd been to many funerals at that point, but you get the idea. I didn't know much about politics at that point, but I knew that Reagan was not popular at that party.
In 1988, I was a sophomore in high school and had spent a fair bit of time actually volunteering for the Democrats. One of our "rewards" as loyal volunteers was that we got to help out the on-site national Democratic staff at the Heritage Inn when Lloyd Bentsen came to Great Falls. I couldn't believe the pace of things. The woman running the show--I've no idea who she was, but I still remember that she seemed quite glamorous, with a mane of red hair and eyes that looked as if she hadn't slept since the Iowa caucuses--ordered us around (in a good way) and basically ensured that we felt like valuable members of the team. We didn't sleep ourselves that night, and as fun as it was, it taught me that I probably didn't want to be a campaign staffer. When Dukakis and Bentsen got slaughtered, I got in a screaming argument with a Young Brownshirt Extraordinaire about the direction of the country. It was a horrible day.
In 2000, we missed most of the campaign because we had moved overseas well before November. We stayed up as late as we could to watch returns on Czech TV, and I called my brother in the middle of the night to find out who had won. Of course, at that point nobody knew. I spent the next two months accidentally teaching the U.S. Constitution to Czech students learning English because they had a hard time understanding how the guy who got the most votes didn't win. Didn't we all.
The 2004 election was the biggest heartbreaker. We had returned to the U.S. about a month before the election, and one of the first things we did was find the Democratic headquarters so that we could volunteer. We had been working since the springtime in Prague with Democrats Abroad to register expat voters, and we'd had so many great interactions with potential voters that we felt pretty confident. Excited even. That evening we went to a big party at Chadz that ended up feeling a helluva lot like that teacher dinner party in 1980. We all tried to focus on the good stuff--Schweitzer was a big morale booster--but we couldn't shake the feeling that the country had just taken a gigantic wrong turn, and it wasn't even one we could blame on the Supreme Court.
So here we are in 2006. A mid-term election, surely, but still hugely important. And I'm terrified. I think we progressives can make some real strides, but I've been proven wrong so many times before. It's why I'm taking Election Day off to volunteer to get out the vote, and why we'll continue to volunteer this month. It's just too important not to. I hope you'll join in.