The Empty Vote

This afternoon, I left my desk and took a short walk to my local elementary school. Performing our patriotic duty in a sweaty gym is the norm across the country, but this one actually had swarms of our nation's future running around right next to the polling booths. It was a challenge reading through the legalese of a property tax amendment with "No fair! Gimme the ball!" ringing out ten feet away. Mid-vote, I was hit with an errant basketball. Distractions aside, I dutifully cast my vote and walked home without so much as an intimidating look from a Republican thug (which in Florida means something).

Perhaps it would have been more heartening to get at least some harassment, however, as the complete lack of any catch to the voting process spoke to the democratic primary's sad and humble reality: it is an empty vote. If I had lived two blocks further away from the school, I wouldn't have gone and could have spent my time reading the news or watching "The Wire." In a predominantly Democratic area like mine, the polling place was eerily quiet; I was glad that the kids provided the soundtrack to my vote, because otherwise my mind would have been flooded with that democracy-squelching silence.

That is, in effect, what has happened to us Florida Democrats today. We were silenced. One might think that disenfranchising this particular population would draw ominous historical comparisons to 2000; apparently this connection was lost on Howard Dean and the Democratic party. So as a result of their recalcitrance on the early primary issue, we demoralized Democrats of the state trickled in to the elementary school gyms across the state knowing full well that our decisions in the booth wouldn't count for anything.

It is troubling when the voters are penalized for a decision made by their state political parties. No, the decision to move up the state primary was not put to a vote by FL Democrats; it was unilaterally declared by the state party. The national party's reaction to this power play was bullying and short-sighted: "If you vote early we're going to take away all of your delegates!" (just like the childish taunts in the gym this afternoon) Ultimately, this decision didn't penalize the state party; it penalized the state voters and denied Floridians' their voice in choosing the next president.

After all the childishness of this early primary battle in the state, the noisy school gym, surrounded by children, was all too fitting a place to cast my vote.

Update III: One Nation Under God

There was a fascinating discussion on Fresh Air yesterday afternoon with Randall Balmer, author of "God and the White House." In my first post on this theme, I mentioned Roe vs. Wade as the de facto inauguration of the religious right. Balmer, however, contends that Roe vs. Wade has only been adopted by Evangelicals as a political cause in the last 20 years or so. Surprisingly, the Southern Baptist convention in 1973 actually passed a resolution calling for the unconditional legalization of abortion, a measure that was reaffirmed in '74 and '76. The author claims that what really galvanized Evangelicals was the IRS's decision to strike the tax except status from Bob Jones University on the grounds of racial discrimination (the school didn't admit blacks until 1991). According to the author, it was this issue that really angered rank-and-file Evangelicals and pulled them under the charismatic sway of Jerry Falwell and others to support Ronald Reagan. It certainly wasn't abortion - as Balmer points out, Reagan introduced the most liberal abortion legislation in the country during his time as California governor; in his autobiography, furthermore, there isn't a single mention of the word "abortion"). No, Evangelicals didn't rally behind the first modern conservative president because of his stance on abortion; a marginalized group, they left the shadows and entered the political game because they were incensed at the Bob Jones dispute and were convinced by charismatic figures that politics was the way toward power and Godliness.

The Evangelicals of the 19th century had moral force and credibility because they worked from the margins for the marginalized; they eschewed the dirty, worldly game of politics for grassroots social advocacy. This long tradition came to an abrupt end in the 1980s in the figure of Ronald Reagan.