Battleground Primary: Texas-eyed View

It's a new experience for me.

I'm middle-aged, and this isn't exactly my first Presidential primary as a voting adult. But as someone who has only lived in California and Texas, my vote has never really counted; the primaries have basically been over by the time they rolled around to me. And to be honest, that's what I was expecting again.

Silly, silly me. Not this year.

For the first time, my vote is being courted. For the first time, I'm receiving multiple phone calls urging me to vote, and asking me to vote for a specific person. The sensibilities of my Uncle John in Derry, N.H. may be dulled by the repetitiveness of this sort of thing happening to him every four years, but for me it's a new experience, and I'm really enjoying it.

So what's it like on the ground here in Austin, Texas for a Democratic voter?

2/29-3/4: Lots of phone calls--no fewer than 5, and probably more that I didn't pick up the phone for--urging me to vote for Obama. None for Hillary. None. Further, the Obama calls were smart; prior to Friday evening, they were all urging me to vote early for Obama. Afterwards, to vote on Tuesday and asking if I knew about the Texas primary/caucus duality.

Obama was in the area last week (I think); lots of advanced notice, lots of information on location and time. Hillary was in town yesterday; no notice, no information on location and time, and she was at a place (The Burger events center? What the hell is that?) that neither I nor my wife have even heard of, let alone knew where it was located.

3/4, 7:45 am: Hauled myself out of bed at 6:30, not because I'm so eager to vote (although I am), but because it was Dad's Turn to get the kids ready for school. On the way to my daughter's school, the number of lawn signs has decreased since yesterday, interestingly. The neighbor across the street has taken down their "Hillary" sign. Lots of other signs on Exposition, a main neighborhood street down near the river, have been removed since yesterday afternoon. Go figure.

8:10am: Pulling up to the voting location--which here in Rollingwood is the municipal building--I see something I have never personally observed before: a line of cars along the road, parked in front. I manage to park in the tiny lot (4 slots, shared with the town's police department in the same building). Hillary supporters have set out a table just the other side of the lot, presumably one inch from the "no canvassing here!" line.

Voting is a multi-step process. You have to show your voter card or ID to the "registrar" lady. She gives you a couple of stickers. Then you move over to your party table; they take the stickers and paste them in forms, and then ask you to sign in. Then you move over to the voter admin guy; he's the one who gives you your--I don't know what to call it; a voter receipt?--and your unlock code for the voting machines. Then it's over to the machines to vote.

Rollingwood is a pretty affluent community, with a population of around 1200, and forms its own precinct. We have about a dozen voting machines, and they weren't all being used by any means, and there sure wasn't a line. Every time I blitz through--I've never had to wait--I always feel bad for more heavily populated precincts where they probably have fewer machines for far more people.

Rollingwood has voting machines; these have four buttons (next, previous, enter, and the big red VOTE! button), and this funky wheel dealie that scrolls through the lists. While I was voting I kept thinking about how easy it would be for someone with shaky hands (and my hands shake because of the Ultram I take) to screw up and vote for the wrong person. You can go back and correct fairly easily, but there's no question in my mind that some people will vote for the wrong person and not know it. There is a final screen that lists all your selections, so you can double-check at the end, but still.

8:25am: Finished voting. There has been a constant movement of people in and out while I was voting. Certainly not a mighty stream, but definitely higher than a trickle. "Good throughput," as we nerds say.

More later at the "precinct convention," better known as the caucus portion of the Texas two-step.

Campaign Bafflement

There's a lot of things about this campaign that defy my understanding, and so I'm going to bore you poor folks with them.

• Why--why why why!--does anyone think Hillary Clinton can win the general election? Too many people hate her, and it is the only thing that could galvanize the republican nutty-right base enough to bring them out in large numbers.
• What's the hooha about Obama's rhetorical gifts being a negative. Whose genius idea was that? What, we're supposed to ignore the fact that, finally, we have a candidate who is an actual, honest-to-god orator. This is a good thing, folks.
• On the flip side, what is it with the press and Clinton? Why do they hate her so much, and enjoy their shadenfruede so visibly when she is struggling? Did she drop fleas in Tim Russert's shorts or something?
• I used to like McCain, but he sold his soul to win this primary. Cut taxes! Fence us in! More war in Iraq! Good God; how can anyone in their right mind vote for that guy? If the world was a just place, McCain would get the 30% hardcore right-wing loony vote, and the democratic candidate the other 70%. Too bad it won't work out that way.
• Anyone who's arguing that Obama is an empty suit is either being obtuse, or simply obnoxious. He went out there in Houston tonight and gave a speech so long and detailed it was damn boring. My preference: to know that he has that stuff in reserve, and then listen to the inspiration stuff that will get it done. Reagan didn't pull in "Reagan Democrats" with his policy wonkishness, kiddies.

On Matters Racial

It would be arrogant and presumptuous of me to even pretend to know what it's like to grow up "biracial" like Barack Obama. Or anyone else, for that matter. But consider this:

When I was a kid, my relatives all lived in New England or New York. All of them. My Dad and uncles and aunts married other white, New England Catholics. My Dad was a radical for marrying a non-Catholic. A non-Catholic.

My cousins and I, not to put too fine a point on it, live everywhere, from New England to L.A. to Texas. One cousin has been in New Zealand for over a year. But even more than that, we've gone outside the bounds of our "culture."

My sister-in-law is Assyrian, moving from Iraq to the U.S. with her family when she was 12 (they're Christian). My brother-in-law is half Japanese, and spent some time growing up on Okinawa. My niece looks Asian, not Caucasian. My son is adopted from Taiwan. My wife is from the South (my daughter qualifies both as a D.A.R. and a Daughter of the Confederacy).

And this is where racism is changing on the ground, I suspect.

How can you think "all Asians [fill in the blank]" when your son is an Asian? When your niece is an Asian? How can you look at Iraq dispassionately when your brother's wife and her family fled the country?

And how can you not look at someone like Barack Obama and not feel that he represents you better than anyone else probably could?

I don't think racial problems in this country are ever going to heal entirely. But if they do, it's going to be because of millions of families like mine, where the children didn't give a rip about following their parent's faith, or staying put in the ancestral home, or dating who their parents thought was "appropriate." We're going to heal because it's harder, and hurts more, when "the other" that you're fighting or railing against is really not "other" at all.

Then again, maybe I'm just a naive idealist.

Exploding Myths

In every election that I can remember, the Republicans hammer the Democrats over two main issues: national defense, and economics. And the craven Democrats truly suck at deflecting these comments.

As Al Smith once said, "Let's look at the record."

"Trickle-down" economics, or Reaganomics, or "VooDoo Economics" (as George H.W. Bush called it) had a 12-year run from 1981-1993. Taxes on the upper income brackets were massively slashed. The result? Some good times, two or three recessions, and a huge buildup of debt from the exploding deficit.

George W. Bush's version also included massive tax cuts that went disproportionately to the upper income brackets. The result: some good times, a couple of recessions, and a huge buildup in the debt. Bush brags about job creation, but many months the number of jobs created has not exceeded the number of new workers entering the market; the way I learned math, that's a net loss of jobs.

Conclusions: Tax cuts do not pay for themselves. "Trickle down" economics increases creates a deficit and increases the debt. Tax cuts for the upper income brackets do not provide a massive stimulus in job creation.

By contrast, against the votes of every Republican in Congress, Bill Clinton passed a budget that included tax increases in 1993. The result: the longest period of economic growth in this country's history, including the creation of millions of jobs.

Conclusion: the Republicans don't know dick about how to make the economy hum, and are just blowing smoke when they say they do.

On defense, the "adults" who took over from Clinton have been responsible for the debacle in Iraq, and letting Afghanistan go to hell after they had taken out the Taliban. Now, the projected defense budget is three quarters of a trillion dollars for next year alone. Yeah, them Republicans sure is good at defense!

So in short, the Republicans have shown through their own actions that they are not superior at managing economic policy or defense. So Democrats, show some friggin' backbone when they accuse you of it!